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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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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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Know your Django

Thanks to Quentin Tarantino, we all know the “D” is silent. But if his is the only Django you know … well, friend, you don’t know Django. For one thing, he’s not African-American, but Italian. He’s not a slave, but a Civil War vet. He’s now 47 years old and drags a coffin behind him […]

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Rush

Instead, it’s a rather drab biopic about 1970s-era Formula One jerks that compete against each other in a high-speed pissing contest that totally leaves the audience out of the argument. In capable hands, this might have been an exciting, daring look inside this world, with the competitive nature of the drivers giving the viewer an […]

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Kings of Leon — Mechanical Bull

Contrasting the band’s first two albums (Youth & Young Manhood and Aha Shake Heartbreak) with their last two (Only by the Night and Come Around Sundown) is like comparing the Rolling Stones to One Direction. Where there used to be cunning bite, there is now mawkish arena rock, and not even the good kind. The “Southern […]

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