REVIEW: Lords of Chaos [2019]

One shot to the head and it’s all over. Talk to “true” Norwegian black metal fans and they’ll tell you Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind‘s book about the scene’s origins and criminality is a bunch of baloney (but in much harsher words). It’s interesting because the facts behind a series of church burnings, the suicide of a lead singer, and two subsequently high profile murders are indisputable. Those who were tried and found guilty before serving their time in prison don’t dispute the acts themselves, but merely the way in…

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REVIEW: Brooklyn [2015]

“I’m not sure I have a home anymore” I believe a very crucial distinction should be made before going into director John Crowley and writer Nick Hornby‘s adaptation of Colm Tóibín‘s Brooklyn for those unfamiliar with the book. When I watched the trailer it appeared very much like an Oscar-bait romance with a firecracker love triangle between young Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) and two men in Tony Fiorello (Emory Cohen) and Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson). To a certain extent it is, but don’t get fooled into expecting swooning melodrama to…

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REVIEW: The Gambler [2014]

“I think you’re the kind of guy who likes to lose” I was very surprised to see James Toback‘s name as Executive Producer on The Gambler remake after reading a 2011 editorial explaining how he found out about the project secondhand after it was already announced that William Monahan was adapting his original script for Martin Scorsese. While this shouldn’t be too much of a surprise in a Hollywood where studios give EP credits to anyone they feel a need to appease and have no remorse retooling properties without caring…

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REVIEW: Beneath the Harvest Sky [2014]

“I’ll figure it out” A movie doesn’t always have to be one hundred percent unique to prove effective if those involved propel it above cliché through authenticity. Writer/directors Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly‘s Beneath the Harvest Sky is a prime example, seemingly familiar from frame one and yet still resonate. You have your down-on-its-luck town on the Maine/Canadian border, its thick-as-thieves high school friends (one a bruiser the world dismisses, the other a kid with promise) planning a post-graduate escape, and the rampant drug trade threatening to consume them both…

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TIFF12 REVIEW: The Place Beyond the Pines [2013]

“Your skill set? Very unique.” Retaining the gritty authenticity of his lyrically heartbreaking Blue Valentine, Derek Cianfrance‘s new insanely ambitious look into the nature versus nurture equation feels much smaller than its reality. It would be easy to say The Place Beyond the Pines gives us too much to process in too contrived a way, but I believe that would be too quick a judgment. Shifting character focus three times, the film will have you wondering if it would have worked better with an earlier ending. But then you’d miss…

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