Metallica: Through the Never‘s Weird Provocation of White Aggreivement

In their experimental new film, Metallica endeavor to translate the anger and pain in their music into a visual medium. Directed by Nimród Antalis, Metallica Through the Neveris the band’s second big-screen effort, the first being being the 2004 behind-the-scenes documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. That debut, created by…

Rush: An Action Movie Worth Seeing on the Big Screen

It’s 1976, a year when all the groovy girls are traipsing around in tiny suede skirts and all the cool guys have Badfinger hair. One of those guys was English racing driver James Hunt, the charismatic rapscallion who won that year’s Formula One World Championship — the embroidered badge on…

Blue Caprice Finds Fresh Terror in the D.C. Sniper Case

With so many violent movies and lurid movies and straight-up bad movies, most of them just so much murderous product, it’s rare anymore to be seized by that feeling, as a film plays, that maybe there’s no reason for this particular violent or lurid or bad movie to exist. They…

Out in the Dark: An Affecting Israeli-Palestinian Romance

When it’s concerned with the most trying of lives in the most troubled of regions, it can feel petty to complain that a tragic-minded romantic thriller is laying things on too thick. Out in the Dark is the story of a closeted gay Palestinian man who falls in love with…

Isaiah Washington Had to Hurt to Play the D.C. Sniper

Isaiah Washington didn’t want to play John Allen Muhammad, the Beltway Sniper who triggered three weeks of terror in 2002. The man — make that murderer — felt too familiar. Like Washington, Muhammad was a veteran and a father of three. Both were analytical, observant, and quick to vent their…

Metallica: Through the Never Is One of the Great Concert Films

The last time the men in Metallica made a documentary, they let the cameras into their therapy sessions, their private lives, their struggles with their families. It wasn’t good for their image, but it made for a compelling film. This time, they reverse tactics. In Metallica: Through the Never, the…

Don Jon: Joseph Gordon-Levitt Triumphs Over Online Porn

To paraphrase the Bee Gees, Joseph Gordon-Levitt should be dancing. He’s already done it in (500) Days of Summer, where he led an exuberant ensemble routine that out-Dr Peppered any Dr Pepper commercial. Then there was his smashing Saturday Night Live re-creation of Donald O’Connor’s “Make ‘Em Laugh” — like…

On FX’s The Bridge, Serial Killers Are a First-World Problem

Mild spoilers up to The Bridge’s ninth episode below. Artisanal murders are all the rage these days. On Showtime’s Dexter, NBC’s Hannibal, and Fox’s The Following, small-batch, labor-intensive, sold-with-a-story slaughters have become TV’s equivalent of the Cronut. Handsome, intelligent, and mannered as court eunuchs, serial killers have become the new…

Dexter Series Finale: All Good Things Must Come to an End

Dexter’s final season has come to an end, and with a still mourning heart, it’s time to say goodbye. Before the final episode aired, a touching reel of the cast saying thank you to fans played, in which Jennifer Carpenter (Debra) let us know that, “We’re going out the way…