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100It isn't until the story reaches its fancifully abstract final passages, where cinema displaces music as Douglas's weapon of choice, that Chase's reverie reveals itself as a particularly exceptional exploration of how art ceases being an idle hobby and becomes an obsessive vocation.
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90By focusing on musicians who are talented but finally not good or persistent enough to succeed in the big time, Not Fade Away offers a poignant, alternative, antiheroic history of the big beat.
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Dec 18, 201290It's a small gem with a killer rock soundtrack, well worth seeking out amid all the awards-season Sturm und Drang.
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88Triumphs when David Chase's empowerment as a kind of autobiographical historian is balanced with the thrill of submersing the viewer in the tidal pool of his memories
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83Chase deals with the mundane reality that squashes those dreams, but he doesn't downplay the dreams themselves, which he keeps honoring throughout Not Fade Away, right up to an audaciously abstract final scene that rivals the end of "The Sopranos" for sheer nerve.
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80A stirring snapshot of America from 1963 to 1968 and the many rock 'n' roll thrills, cultural and political watersheds, and whirling emotions that erupted in between. It's also deviously smart and darkly funny.
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Dec 4, 201280The film may be too meandering for mainstream acceptance, but its focus will make the Paramount Vantage release connect directly with many baby boomers. It's also a warm, funny, poignant scrapbook that evokes a spirit of youth still relatable in later eras.
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75In writer-director David Chase's heartfelt delivery, this same old tune somehow comes out sounding fresh.
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75Not Fade Away is Chase's reward to himself - a transparently autobiographical work, his first feature-length film, and one that he's said he has wanted to make for years.
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75Not Fade Away is a movie by a filmmaker who treasures his memories, cares about social history and relishes getting it right.
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75Mostly, Not Fade Away is a hit.
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75If any one aspect of Chase's film keeps it from being more than merely coolly engaging (which it is), it's the casting.
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75His (Chase) ardent, acutely observed debut makes him, at 67, a filmmaker to watch.
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70Solid, enjoyable, good, but not great.
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70A glancing, disjointed little movie that captures as well as any film I've seen the mind-expanding mojo of rock and roll at the dawn of the counterculture - particularly rhythm-and-blues-oriented rock, particularly the Rolling Stones, the group that synthesized R&B and made it commercial.
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63The highlight of Not Fade Away, a meandering and bittersweet coming-of-age story, is its killer '60s pop-rock soundtrack.
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63Ultimately a disappointment – this is a movie easy to watch and even easier to forget.
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58Though not a poor effort per se -- David Chase's Not Fade Away does authentically captures the heart and soul of the music of the era and the intoxicating/naive dream of making it big -- the picture isn't exactly a remarkable one either.
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58Gandolfini, though, is a standout as the old-school father who can't abide his new-style son (but loves him anyway).
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58It's a period piece composed of familiar pieces, none of which have much to say beyond surface elements that have been explored countless times before. Using a typical coming-of-age mold, Chase turns cultural ephemera into formula.
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50It's both achingly affectionate and a terrible mess.
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50The acting is OK, but none of the leads has the kind of sizzle that might have turned this into something as special as another film set roughly in the same era, "Diner.''
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50Music drives the movie, and the producers popped for the real stuff: Robert Johnson, Moby Grape and - curiously - the Sex Pistols are all here. The soundtrack is so overstuffed that it relegates Beatles and Dylan tunes to the end credits.
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40Now that his passion project is out of the way, I look forward to seeing what Chase does next. He's sure to have his editor's pen back in hand by then.
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40Mood is more important to Not Fade Away than anything, but writer-director David Chase, who turned mood into masterpiece with every season of "The Sopranos," allows nostalgic feeling to be the sole reason for this, his first feature film.
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40Painful, and not in a good way. A glimpse into the '60s should give us not just the warm bath of recognition but the shock of the new, as least as it felt in days of old. That doesn't happen, in a movie that evokes less empathy than apathy.
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38I hope his life was less dull than the movie he's made from it.