Episode 27: Valhalla Rising / Bronson / Starred Up / True Detective S3

| Original Score: 78/100 | Sep 9, 2021

Refn probably burns too much of the juice he could be using for character motivation or some perspective on crime and punishment on the style-for-style's-sake gangsta glam of Guy Ritchie.

| Jan 23, 2020

Whichever part you feel the most uncomfortable with, it's worth enduring it for "Bronson" is filled with imaginative and memorable imagery.

| Jan 17, 2020

It's actually quite an intuitive work, taking Bronson's publicity-courting profile as a base to conjure a lurid opera on the phenomenon of 'Bronson'.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 12, 2018

It's not a masterpiece by any stretch; but it's original and pacy, and those qualities are rare enough.

| Nov 15, 2017

Hardy does an admirable job of making this monster human, which he achieves with surprising wit and a visceral, attention-grabbing passion.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 3, 2015

...the film can barely contain Tom Hardy's performance. It's a Method turn so bloodily immersive it's hard to imagine the actor getting his head straight afterwards.

| Sep 26, 2014

The movie's giddy brio can leave you punch-drunk, and oddly unsatisfied.

| Mar 5, 2014

An overstylized mess, with a brave but pointless performance from Tom Hardy as a lifelong prisoner who just wants to destroy everything around him, most of all himself.

| Original Score: C | Jun 22, 2013

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 16, 2011

...an anthropological study in human viciousness, like a nature film done by Stanley Kubrick.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 8, 2011

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 4, 2011

full review at Movies for the Masses

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 17, 2010

| Original Score: C | Nov 4, 2010

Bronson doesn't have much to say, but it's a very fun exercise in bad behavior that's neither glamorized nor bemoaned.

| Feb 26, 2010

It's content to be a kind of freak-show character study of a man who embraces anarchy, not for its own sake but for the fame and adrenaline that it brings him.

| Feb 17, 2010

This is psychotic behavior as performance art, and Hardy makes it irresistible.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 22, 2010

For such a potentially exciting subject matter, Bronson hits way too many lulls.

| Original Score: 40/100 | Jan 14, 2010

In the end, "Bronson" is a beautiful, intense film about a man that may or may not be insane, based on events that might actually have occurred in his life.

| Original Score: B | Jan 5, 2010

Director and co-writer Nicolas Winding Refn strives mightily to match his star crescendo for crescendo, which can be exhausting. But the film is nimble and spare enough to absorb most of the director's outré inspirations.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Nov 24, 2009