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There are many, many ways that pop-culture fans have discovered shapeshifting rocker/actor Michael Des Barres over the decades. Some may know him from his big-screen debut at age 17 in the 1967 Sidney Poitier film To Sir, With Love; or as the frontman of the Deep Purple- and Led Zeppelin-associated bands Silverhead and Detective; or as the cowriter of Animotion’s 1983 hit “Obsession”; or as the longtime host of the Little Steven’s Underground Garage morning show on SiriusXM; or as iconic MacGyver villain Murdoc; or for his many other television appearances on shows like Roseanne, Seinfeld, Melrose Place, Northern Exposure, Frasier, and Nip/Tuck.

But if you’re one of the Gen X kids among the estimated 1.9 billion people (nearly 40 percent of the world population at the time) who watched the global Live Aid concert broadcast 40 years ago, on July 13, 1985, then you might best know Des Barres as the...

“The Order” (2024) is a brooding investigative thriller that puts another feather in director Justin Kurzel’s cap. After the chilling character portraits in “Nitram” and “The Snowtown Murders,” Kurzel returns with an equally harrowing depiction of evil in human beings. This time, he shifts his focus toward a White Supremacist terrorist group that was active in the 1980s. He paints the picture of a small American town mainly through the eyes of an FBI agent, who ends up in a cat-and-mouse chase with the terrorist group’s members. Although the plot essentially leads us toward its leader’s capture, it is more interested in interrogating the human tendencies that affect the usual order of any place, and how people react in such situations of change.

Spoilers Ahead

The Order (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:

“The Order” starring Jude Law offers a grim portrait of an FBI investigation in the 1980s to investigate a white supremacist group,...

The criminally underrated The Order did not gain as much attention as other titles released on the big screen in 2024. Last year provided moviegoers a number of critically acclaimed features across various genres, leaving the Justin Kurzel-directed crime thriller somewhat overshadowed. However, that doesn’t mean the film wasn’t a critical success, with a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score as of this writing. Now, the movie is bound to be introduced to a much wider audience this month. The Order — starringJude Lawand Nicholas Hoult — will be added to Hulu's extensive library starting April 18, 2025.

The crime thriller boasts an ensemble cast led by Law and Hoult, both of whom have impressive acting portfolios under their belts. Law, best known for his performance in 1999's The Talented Mr. Ripley, has continued to prove his range as an actor time and again with a range of genres, including comedy, thriller, drama, and action.

Somewhere in the woods of the Pacific Northwest, the older, more pragmatic and 'wise' leader of a hate-group fraction pays a visit to the young lion who leads the more extremist splinter of it in a more militant way. Reverend Richard Butler (Victor Slezak) warns Bob Matthews (Nicholas Hoult) that it is not the right time to take drastic action and start the war with the government, since it would be wiser to wait and do things at a more moderate pace, like getting their supporters in the Congress and in the Senate. That conversation between actual 'minor historical figures' took place in the early Eighties and now, 40 years later, it seems that Butler was more than right, since the hate groups think they even elected the president that supports them, but it still sounds like a sour joke.

Although it is not a downright masterpiece, there is nothing sour.

The Order is an American action thriller film with a satisfyingly slow-burn style that is maintained till the very end. Adapted from Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s non-fiction book titled The Silent Brotherhood, the film’s plot follows the arrival of an FBI officer, Terry Husk, at the small town of Coeur D’Alene, in the state of Idaho, where he suspects a White supremacist group to be the perpetrators behind recent crimes. Overall, The Order makes for quite an interesting and intense watch, particularly because of its connection with true events, and is definitely recommended to fans of the genre.

Spoiler Alert

What is the film about?

Set in 1983, The Order begins somewhere in the outskirts of Denver, where three men dismiss the words being spoken on the radio program as the show host talks about how anti-Semitism is just a sign of cowardice. Clearly having some staunchly racist views,...

Jude Law, Jurnee Smollett, and Tye Sheridan in ‘The Order’ (Photo Courtesy of Vertical)

What a disheartening reflection on our times that The Order ranks among the most relevant dramas of the last ten years. It shouldn’t. 2024 should not see us still struggling with the issues of white supremacy and armed extremist groups. Yet here we are.

The Order is based on the true story of Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult) and his followers, a violent neo-Nazi group responsible for a series of bank robberies, bombings, and murders in the 1980s. FBI Agent Terry Husk (two-time Oscar nominee Jude Law) is sent to the Pacific Northwest to investigate the Aryan Nation with little in the way of support. The local sheriff is willfully blind to the extensive presence of Nazis in his community and tries to blow off Agent Husk. But deputy sheriff Jamie Bowen steps forward, volunteering his help...

Early in “The Order,” the ’80s-set historical crime thriller, there is a chillingly timely stand-off between the staid establishment and the insurgent next generation. Aryan Nation founder Richard Butler (Victor Slezak) attempts, and fails, to defuse Bob Matthews (Nicholas Hoult), the charismatic young leader of an ultra-violent and extremely organized splinter group planning an armed white supremacist revolution. “Robert, you have a gift … a voice,” says Butler, clad in a conventional trench coat over a full suit and tie. Eye-to-eye on the dusty dirt road, Matthews stands defiant in a weathered waffle shirt barely tucked into belted, worn-in jeans.

“Justin [Kurzel, the director] and I wanted Bob to feel really recognizably all-American,” costume designer Rachel Dainer-Best told IndieWire. “He’s super simple — wearing jeans and a T-shirt for basically the whole movie.” Because photos of the real Matthews and his acolytes proved rare, she studied ‘70s and ‘80s images of the Aryan Nation...

[This story contains light spoilers for The Order.]

Jude Law is having a December to remember. The two-time Oscar nominee is currently the star of two critically acclaimed works on the big and small screens, and he is again proving that he’s among a select few actors who can bring a sense of authenticity to roles as disparate as a battle-weary FBI agent in The Order and a Force-using pirate on Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.

In the former, Law’s composite character, Terry Husk, is relocated by the FBI to a sleepy field office in Idaho after a punishing career opposing the likes of the Sicilian Mob and the KKK. Written by Zach Baylin and directed by Justin Kurzel, the 1980s-set true story instead positions Terry for his most notable case yet in taking on Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult), the real-life leader of a white supremacist group known as the Order.

Mathews’ movement was a...

The following contains light spoilers for The Order, in theaters now.

One scene in The Order depicts the startling reality of modern-day America, despite the film taking place in 1983. Two neo-Nazi leaders of American white-supremacist movements face off in a meeting. It ends with Bob Mathews (played by Nicholas Hoult) instigating a quiet chant that begins with "Defeat, never. Victory, forever," and transitioning into a bombastic roar of "White power." The other leader, an extremely racist Richard Butler (portrayed by Victor Slezak), is appalled at Mathews' violent influence. The Order isn't making a case of which is the lesser of two evils, but is rather showing how extremist hate groups always find a way to spiral into something much worse.

The Order is uncomfortable. It's based on the true story of Mathews, who left the Aryan Nations movement to form his own radical group of white supremacists to fight against the United States government.

Cover songs are a divisive topic in music, at once celebrated for their ability to bring new life to old material while also being decried as the provenance of schlocky tribute acts or wedding singers. Yet covers have been an integral part of rock and roll ever since the beginning, with many of rock's earliest stars relying heavily on old blues standards.

There's certainly no formula to what makes a good cover song. Some are great because they distill a song's essence into a stronger form of itself, relying on an artist's chops and passion to stand out from what came before, even if not much changes in the arrangement. Some are transformative, playing with genre and instrumentation to create something that would never otherwise have existed. Here, then, are ten rock covers that rocked way harder than the originals.

Honorable Mention: The National - "Sailors in Your Mouth"(Originally...

Based on true events in the 1980's The Order stars Jude Law as FBI agent Terry Husk investigating a series of car heists and bank robberies. He soon discovers that the crimes are the work of a Neo-Nazi terrorist group, fronted by Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult), looking to fund their uprising against the US Government.

Set to release in US cinemas on July 6, Justin Kurzel's crime thriller received a 7-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival. Early reviews put the film at an 86% Rotten Tomatoes score, with critics largely describing the film as a compelling and intelligent docudrama. In a newly released trailer, suspicions grow about Husk after white supremacist fliers begin to appear around Washington.

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Bill Skarsgrd previously opened up about how the role of Count Orlok was like "conjuring pure evil."

Looking into the fliers,...

The Order trailer shows Jude Law's FBI agent going after Nicholas Hoult's white supremacist group in a new action thriller with an 86% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Today, Vertical released the first official trailer for The Order. Watch it below:

More to come...

Source: Vertical

The Order (2024) 8/10

A lone FBI agent, stationed in a small Idaho town, uncovers a disturbing connection between a series of violent bank robberies and a white supremacist group known as The Order. As the investigation deepens, the agent finds himself up against a dangerous domestic terror organization bent on sowing chaos across the Pacific Northwest.

Director Justin KurzelRelease Date December 5, 2024Writers Gary Gerhardt, Kevin Flynn, Zach BaylinCast Chantal Perron, Stafford Perry, Sally Bishop, David LeReaney, Judith Buchan, Shawn Markwardt, Paul Wood, Jerod Blake, Reid Fisher, Lenore Stillwell, Dayna Lea Hoffman, Sarah Haggeman, Matias Lucas, Sean Tyler Foley, Geena Meszaros, Randy Fisher, Huxley Fisher, Morgan Holmstrom,...

Jude Law's latest film, The Order, received a seven-minute standing ovation at the Venice International Film Festival and promises to be one of the best movies of the year. While much of the attention went to the film's leading man, Law's co-stars and director also enjoyed the celebration-like reception of the crime thriller, which is based on a true story. The Order is director Justin Kurzel's latest drama and stars Law alongside Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Sebastian Pigott, Jurnee Smollett, Huxley Fisher, and Marc Maron, among others.

Per a report from the event via Variety, the premiere in Venice resonated with the audience, who cheered for the director and cast for seven whole minutes (some reports put the number as high as eight), during a standing ovation that would likely have lasted longer if the cast and crew hadn't exited the theater. Other films that received standing ovations...

Justin Kurzel’s The Order opens with a sound familiar to podcast aficionados: a Marc Maron monologue. Deploying a slightly more nasally voice to embody the late Denver talk radio host Alan Berg, Maron delivers a searing broadside against far-right agitators as “too inept to be in the world” and thus “get by on the curtailing of others’ enjoyment.” Zach Baylin’s script uses the shock jock as The Order’s equivalent to a Greek chorus, loudly screaming its condemnation of anti-Semitism as exhibited by the eponymous domestic terrorist group.

Mercifully, this isn’t the extent of political dialogue in The Order—especially given the recent lack of efficacy in simply trying to yell “Nazis bad” to stop the rise of the far right. The version of white separatism on display here is less alarming because of signifiers like skinheads and swastikas. Rather, it’s terrifying because the film clarifies...

There’s a scene in “The Order,” a riveting and explosive docudrama about the dawn of the modern American white-supremacist movement in the 1980s, that creeps you out in a very eye-opening way. Two leaders of the movement are meeting on an isolated country road in Idaho. One of them, Richard Butler (Victor Slezak), is the white nationalist who founded the Aryan Nations, the neo-Nazi cult that has its compound nearby. He’s a racist extremist, but he has the demeanor of a courtly preacher, and he’s consciously political about the growth of his movement.

The other man, Bob Matthews (Nicholas Hoult), is a former follower of Butler’s who has split off from him, all because he thinks the Aryan Nations movement isn’t extreme enough. Matthews wants an armed uprising now, and the insurrectionary band of ruffians he leads, called the Order (he named them after the...

If you think heavily armed white supremacists are some kind of new threat to America, you should take a look at The Order, a gripping, superbly made historical thriller about a neo-Nazi gang that terrorized the Pacific Northwest nearly four decades ago, robbing banks and armored cars to fund their plans for a full-scale insurrection.

A nail-biter from start to finish, Australian director Justin Kurzel’s bleak and brawny true story stars Jude Law as an FBI agent trying to take down the film’s titular faction, which he tracks over several years, from one hold-up and killing to the next. Backed by a cast that includes Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan and Jurnee Smollett, The Order is the kind of tense reflection on American violence that Hollywood rarely puts on the big screen anymore. After launching in Venice’s main competition, it will hopefully find supporters stateside, with Law’s...

If three makes a trend, then take “The Order” as a proof of fact: Nobody delivers true crime quite like Justin Kurzel. Following 2011’s “Snowtown” and 2021’s “Nitram,” the filmmaker’s latest factual thriller confirms the Australian auteur as an expert of the form, a skilled technician at ease and at the peak of his abilities when conveying ambient unease. Premiering at this year’s Venice Film Festival, “The Order” might be the filmmaker’s most accomplished work to date, offsetting a kind of broody fatalism against natural splendor, and punctuating the bloody affair with an action beat.

While both “Snowtown” and “Nitram” played as slow builds towards specific tragedies – tallying the institutional and personal failings that led to the Snowtown murders and the Port Arthur massacre – this latest film hews a more rolling timeline, tracking a white-supremacist splinter group responsible for a handful of murders and a string of heists,...

Marc Charles Williams, better known as Mars Williams, the front-and-center saxophonist of ’80s New Wave bands The Waitresses and The Psychedelic Furs, died Nov. 20 of the rare and aggressive ampullary cancer in a Chicago hospice facility. He was 68.

His death was announced by his family on a GoFundMe page last month, but has more recently gained widespread attention. His brother Paul R. Williams confirmed the cause of death to The New York Times for an obituary posted today.

Following his initial stints in the Waitresses and Psychedelic Furs – both bands were early MTV favorites with videos often spotlighting the playful Williams, and he would reunite with the Furs throughout his life – the saxophonist went on to lead his own jazz ensembles including the influential, Grammy-nominated acid jazz group Liquid Soul in the 1990s.

A statement posted by his family on the GoFundMe page reads, in part, “Until the end, Mars’ inexhaustible humor and energy,...

The Psychedelic Furs have released a music video for “Wrong Train,” a track off the new wave outfit’s 2020 album, Made of Rain.

The black-and-white clip was directed by photographer and filmmaker Hans Neleman, who drew inspiration from paintings made by Psychedelic Furs frontman Richard Butler. The clip comprises a compelling collage centered around sequences in which Butler covers his face in paint. The photos and videos that Neleman and Butler made were then handed over to Peter Sebastian, who digitally manipulated them for the final cut.

“‘Wrong Train’ explores...

Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me By Your Name” made the already iconic Psychedelic Furs ’80s classic “Love My Way” iconic once again in 2017. It’s most famously used in the summery gay romance as Oliver (Armie Hammer) and Elio (Timothée Chalamet) dance an endless night away in an Italian club, and when the film was released it jumpstarted the biggest streaming week ever for the song.

In a new interview with USA Today, the band’s co-frontman Richard Butler looked back on their output’s use in pop culture, in both “Call Me By Your Name” and John Hughes’ 1986 Brat Pack favorite “Pretty in Pink,” named after another one of their hit songs.

“Once I heard ‘Call Me By Your Name’ had ‘Love My Way’ in it, I went to go see it,” Butler said. “I was surprised the amount of times you hear the song in [the film], and there’s...

At the end of the month, the Psychedelic Furs will release Made of Rain, their first new album in nearly three decades. On Thursday, they released a video for “Come All Ye Faithful,” the latest offering from the LP.

Directed by Imogen Harrison, the black-and-white video features a woman in a long, silk dress, walking barefoot through the woods. She walks over railroad tracks, runs through fields and ends up on the shore of a beach. “Come all ye playboys, you saints and sinners,” frontman Richard Butler sings. “And watch it rain on,...

The Psychedelic Furs dropped a haunting new track “Come All Ye Faithful,” the latest single from their upcoming LP Made of Rain, out July 31st via Cooking Vinyl.

Accompanied by a video that features the song’s lyrics and the Made of Rain vinyl over a purple hue, Richard Butler sings over crunching guitar and horns. “When I said I loved you well I lied,” he seethes. “I never really loved you I was laughing at you all the time/When I said I needed you I lied/I never...

The Psychedelic Furs dropped a scorching new single Monday — “No-One,” off of their upcoming LP, Made of Rain, out July 31st on Cooking Vinyl.

“Who’s gonna wear your crown, no one/The queens of the underground or no one,” frontman Richard Butler sings against a crunchy guitar riff. “The sirens will never sing/Just silence in everything.”

“No-One” follows the lead single, “Don’t Believe,” and “You’ll Be Mine.” Made of Rain marks the New Wave band’s first new album in 29 years, after 1991’s World Outside. The...

The Psychedelic Furs have dropped a stark new song, “You’ll Be Mine.” The track is the second single from the band’s upcoming LP Made of Rain, their first album in 29 years.

“You’ll Be Mine” opens with the chaotic strumming of an electric guitar, as the piano enters with Richard Butler’s vocals: “Don’t be surprised when every second has its place/Don’t be surprised at all.”

Made of Rain drops on May 1st via Cooking Vinyl. It’s currently available for preorder, including a double...

The Psychedelic Furs have announced their first new album in 29 years. Titled Made of Rain, the record will be released on May 1st via Cooking Vinyl.

The New Wave band also dropped the album’s lead single, “Don’t Believe.” “Life is short and God is gold/And promises are bought and sold,” Richard Butler sings over blaring guitar, “And everything I never said/Comes crashing on my tiny head.”

The Furs will perform Made of Rain in its entirety — as well as hits that include “Love My Way” and...