High school literature teacher Germain (Fabrice Luchini, Ozon’s Potiche) is fed up with the student body at large, but impressed with the quality of writing by 16-year-old Claude (Ernst Umhauer, The Monk). For an early assignment, the student turns in a rather voyeuristic, true story about visiting the home of his awkward classmate, Rapha (newcomer […]
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The Kings of Summer
Socially awkward and undersized classmate Biaggio (Moises Arias, TV’s Hannah Montana) comes along just for something to do, but the machete he brings along sure does come in handy. Although he indulges in shots of super-slow-motion too often, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts (TV’s Funny or Die Presents …) ably recaptures that feeling of when summer […]
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Behind the Candelabra
It’s a role I never would’ve expected him to play, either — at least not the Douglas who defined the American Man of the 1980s and early 1990s: the triumphant philanderer of Fatal Attraction, the greedy banker of Wall Street, the onscreen sex addict of Basic Instinct, the real-life sex addict. The dude definitely had […]
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Redemption
The film is more crime drama than crime action, but relax: The Stath still gets to kick ass aplenty. He’s Joey, a former Special Forces soldier on the lam from a court martial. Homeless and haunted by the demons of Afghanistan, he becomes a muscle for Chinese mob and finds himself strangely attracted to a […]
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Seattle’s best
The Seattle-based band Pickwick has played some of the biggest venues in its hometown of Seattle — including opening day for the local professional baseball team, the Mariners — but they’ve never played a museum. It was an unexpected shock to frontman Galen Disston when the band was booked to play the Fred Jones Jr. […]
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Go Limp
“We wanted to make a band that was so over the top and ridiculous and over-confident that no one could possibly take us seriously. So we had to throw an ode to Limp Bizkit,” singer Taylor Young said. “There’s nothing more punk rock than misspelling a word like Bizkit or Wizurdz and talking about skinning […]
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Take shelter
It takes a private studio to keep up with Dr. Dog’s output, and heading into album eight, the Philadelphia folk outfit had officially outgrown its kennel and built a new one, basically from scratch. “We had been at our old place for seven or eight years, and it was getting kind of stale and kind […]
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Humming along
You would think that following the huge, surprising success of Silver Lake indie rock outfit Local Natives’ 2010 debut album Gorilla Manor, the four-piece would be riding high into its sophomore album. But the passing of Kelcey Ayer’s mother and the severed relationship with former bassist Andy Hamm had the band feeling quite the opposite. […]
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Power Pyramid — The God Drums
The album’s searing, swirling guitar riffs lay pinned to defiant bass grooves and drum loops, moving from pretty, tempered aggression (opener “Diving Lessons,” “Holland”) to more edgy, snarling anthems (“Runner,” “Stop Your Pulse”). Early on, Power Pyramid establishes a formula that it refuses to deviate far from, but like Beach House smothered in cigarette smoke, […]
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Gettin’ Dirty
Formed in the Texas border town of El Paso, The Dirty River Boys are an anomaly. Going against a rising tide of heavy metal acts, singer and guitarist Marco Gutierrez said the band didn’t find its home until it relocated to Austin. While he believes it was a “change that needed to happen,” the band […]