LORDS OF CHAOS (full review at Diabolique Magazine)

Lords of Chaos (2018) is the fourth feature from director Jonas Åkerlund, and charts the inception of Norwegian Black Metal in the early 1990s. The movie attempts to shine some light on mysterious progenitor Øystein Aarseth a.k.a. Euronymous, Olso’s infamous record shop Helvete and the bands that sprung up around it. But mostly it’s a segway into the outrageous, headline grabbing events that brought Norwegian Black Metal to the attention of the World.

Based on the book of the same name by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind (but omitting the salacious subtitle The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground), Lords Of Chaos is a hard film to categorise because as the creaky old saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction. So it emerges as part musical biopic, part thriller, part horror movie. It’s the age old story of teenagers being dickheads, large egos running rampant, money, suicide, church burning and murder.


Read the full review at Diabolique Magazine:
https://diaboliquemagazine.com/lords-of-chaos-review/

IMDB: Lords Of Chaos

BEAUTIFUL BOY (full review at Screen Realm)

Beautiful Boy is the true story of David Scheff and his son Nic’s battles with drug addiction and the impact it has on their family. Directed by Felix Van Groeningen, it is adapted as an amalgam of David’s book Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction and Nic’s memoir Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines.

The story unfolds from David’s (Steve Carell) point of view and follows his family’s journey though the turmoil of Nic’s (Timothée Chalamet) drug addiction, recovery and relapse, recovery and relapse. We see the impact it has on David, his other children and his wife, Karen (Maura Tierney). We see the impact on Nic’s mother Vicki (Amy Ryan), and we witness Nic’s life unfold and compose and unfold again.

Read the full review at Screen Realm:
https://screenrealm.com/beautiful-boy-movie-review-2018/

IMDB: Beautiful Boy

THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE

Going into this film I was, as I suspect a lot of people will be, more familiar with Bettie Page the icon than Bettie Page the person. I was largely unaware of her interesting life story and I would assume that was the reason this film was made. It’s an interesting and enjoyable biopic of a person whose iconic image looms larger than life!

The film charts the story from Betties early days in Nashville, through to her move to New York, burgeoning modelling career and subsequent retirement following a governmental crackdown on lusty material!

On occasion I felt it could have done with a ted more exposition. For example, I was unclear as to whether the times she was in Miami were all a flashback, or took place in the timeframe of the film where she was becoming well known. I also felt that tonally, some of the incidents in her early life (including some disturbing sexual abuse), did not sit well within the context of a film aiming for the same light-hearted naïveté that Bettie herself seemed to possess. Still, this was not to the detriment of the film overall.

Gretchen Mol was totally convincing as Bettie, and it was also good to see the excellent Chris Bauer (aka Frank Sobotka from The Wire) and dependably brilliant Lilli Taylor playing Betty’s employers / photography entrepreneurs.

Shot in black and white, but flicking back and forth with colour, it was an entertaining, well made biopic. It was interesting to see the outrage that Betties pictures caused at the time in the light of their relative tameness by today’s standards. But of course it would be ridiculous to judge it by today’s values.

This film is worth checking out.

IMDB: THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE