Avis Metacritic

It 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.

It's a small gem with a killer rock soundtrack, well worth seeking out amid all the awards-season Sturm und Drang.

Triumphs 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

Chase 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.

The 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.

His (Chase) ardent, acutely observed debut makes him, at 67, a filmmaker to watch.

It'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.

Music 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.

Painful, 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.

Mood 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.