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91It's one of the most unexpectedly enjoyable cinematic experiences of the year, even if you couldn't pick a Metallica track out of some hypothetical never-ending playlist.
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83With "Gravity" around the corner, Metallica Through the Never isn't the year's most groundbreaking achievement, but it's surely the most earth-shattering, and that's enough to make it one helluva comeback story.
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80In between songs there's a movie within a movie as Dane DeHaan silently takes on the forces of anarchy on behalf of the band. Awesome.
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Sep 26, 201380One drawback: While the swooping and careening visuals capture the depth and darkness of an arena experience, the sound doesn’t. As burly as the acoustics in a theater may be, they’re spindly compared to the sucker-punch fans prize at an actual Metallica concert. Luckily — for its visuals alone — “Through the Never” has enough grit and power to deserve two fists up.
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80Maybe because the band enjoyed raves for its daring 2004 psychodrama, Some Kind of Monster, an experimental narrative is shoehorned in, involving a roadie (Dane DeHaan) doing bloody battle in a deserted city. Your heart sinks with every cutaway.
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80A definitive document for anyone who’s ever hoisted the devil-horn fingers in metalhead solidarity.
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Sep 26, 201375In this film, Metallica elevates headbanging to matters of the head that will consume the viewer long after the fade to black.
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75If you’re looking for an orgasmic trip to heavy-metal heaven, this is it.
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70It makes for a unique sort of concert film, but also a weaker one. It would have been better if it had dispensed with the frail narrative or else committed to being completely bananas. But as die-hard Metallica fans well know, a little buffoonery is worth weathering for the main attraction.
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Sep 24, 201370This is a movie made for people who mash themselves up against those steel crowd-control barriers at concerts and still don't think they're close enough.
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70However mindless and heartless it may be, Through the Never succeeds as pure sense-swamping spectacle. It is a blow-out banquet for Metallica fans, and a blockbuster rock-and-rollercoaster ride for any heavy metal tourists curious to see this music played at major-league level.
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67This stereoscopic IMAX vanity project presents the titular rockers not as men, but as living legends, playing the hits at a gigantic venue, for thousands of bellowing diehard fans. In place of introspection, there is only lionizing spectacle; if Monster laid bare the wounded egos of metal’s biggest stars, Never simply re-inflates them.
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Sep 25, 201367The Song Remains the Same. There, said it – as will every other rock & roll fanatic considering Metallica: Through the Never.
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Sep 27, 201363If this review had to be in pantomime, it would be me head-banging and busting out some gnarly air guitar for an hour straight – and loving every minute of it. That’s how much fun this concert film is. But be warned: If you’ve never rocked-out to a Metallica song, or don’t even know what throwing the horns is, this movie is not for you.
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Sep 26, 201363The music is central, so viewers without a preexisting taste for thump and thrash will probably not be converted by the Imax 3-D spectacle.
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63Since the movie’s street side dream doesn’t add much more than a gimmicky “interpretation” of their sound, you’re left with a deafening dirge –well-played, but really, no improvement on your basic concert film.
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60Even at its goofiest, Through The Never brings back the communal appeal of those early concert films, which were often just a way for young fans to bond with other young fans over the music of entertainers who seemed to understand what they really wanted.
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50Despite swooping camera movements and elaborate stagecraft, the film produces detachment rather than immediacy.
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Sep 26, 201350The problem is that Antal and Metallica took two different movies — a fine live-band document and a supernatural end-of-days romp — and smashed them together to make both of them more boring.
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50The guys in Metallica are here to remind us that there’s a band behind the rage rock. The IMAX 3-D release Metallica Through the Never is all about reasserting their relevance, loudly.
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Oct 5, 201340It’s a histrionic distraction from the band doing their thing. Watch "Some Kind Of Monster" instead.
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40Their fans will love the efficient, well-shot concert scenes: but its woeful parallel story suggests bands like Metallica are rarely more than one remove from Spinal Tap.
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38This movie is basically “Spinal Tap” minus the jokes. Two of the band members have the word “Metallica” emblazoned on their clothing. Metallica — it’s the band that has to remind fans whom they’re watching!
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38The songs still sound great here, but the instruments aren't amplified nearly as much as the nostalgia and vanity of the men who wield them.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 10 out of 13
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Mixed: 2 out of 13
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Negative: 1 out of 13
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Sep 29, 201310
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Sep 27, 201310
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Oct 16, 201310