2011 was a volley of disappointment, for the most part, as the furry-browed Elliott Gould was nowhere to be found. Michael Sheen failed to have a starring role as an English Prime Minister. And Melanie Laurent was only in one movie. I couldn’t even, reasonably, compile a top ten list of [...]
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A Freudian Slip Up
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen
Review written by Robert Patrick
Director David Cronenberg is known for his spatterfests, where heads explode like Gallagher watermelons, guts spew from television sets, and severed fingers are nonchalantly plucked like flower petals in a child’s hand. In recent years the maestro of macabre has toned down the science [...]
Not Angelina Jolie in ‘Hackers 2′
Starring: Rooney Mara, the android Daniel Craig
Review written by Robert Patrick
Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series, a trilogy of books about the androgynous computer hacker and razor-tongued counterculture herionne Lisbeth Salander, began with the Swedish author’s first installment of the franchise, dubbed “The Men Who Hate Women.” That book, which sounds like [...]
Brigitte Berman, whose last full-length documentary was nearly twenty-five years ago, took home the Oscar for her look at the prolific Artie Shaw. Since then she has culled drama from her fingertips by creating fiction. Now, almost three decades later, the Canadian filmmaker releases a feature-length documentary that took three-years to make. A kaliedescope of [...]
Justin Bartha’s character, one of moody intrigue and gaudy affluence, is a brash menace in director Kevin Asch’s “Holy Rollers.” Playing the role of a seedy, unapologetic man named Yosef, who has veered so far from his faith that the traditional Hasidic attire he dresses in serves only a reminder of his former virtuousness. Yosef [...]
Starring: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth
Review written by Robert Patrick
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy must have sounded like a great idea. An espionage thriller based on the acclaimed, serpentine book of the same name. Shifty-eyed spies in dapper suits, mulling around cafes and hiding behind baguettes, all while carrying around pistols under their pant legs. Once you have the plot from the 1974 book down, the next progression would be to hire a motley crew of all-star Brits that could embody the pressed collared secret service agents. Enter the dogged Gary Oldman, who looks like he stepped off the set of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, complete with Commissioner Gordon’s wardrobe on. Next would be to find the affable Colin Firth, the cantankerous John Hurt, and the dough-faced Toby Jones to round out the cast. The players in this film are not lacking in talent, surely, so this hardscrabble film about a Soviet double agent should be a crackerjack of movie, right? One would expect as much, especially with the visionary director of Let the Right One In, Tomas Alfredson, under the hood of this Spy vs. Spy thriller. And then, someone christened the ship for its voyage, and the ship sank in the harbor.
The film is ugly to look at, with its weathered reds and soiled grays, but the muted colors give Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy a frayed authenticity. The set designs have that linty, squeaky-wheeled feel that you would expect from 1970s office interiors. So neither of these are problems. And then the screenplay stumbles in, looking as blocky as a Rubix cube and just as difficult to figure out. Husband and wife duo Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan are responsible for the oil spill on this story. The action, as listless and monochrome as it is, feels confusing, poorly edited, and without hand rails. Alfredson and his screenwriters made a film that is less a movie and more of a word problem.
For the cast being so rife with talent, they have, due to the muddy script, nothing to do but skulk around like reptiles in a glass tank. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy wants Gary Oldman to be enigmatic, calm, sharp and intuitive. But his presence on the screen makes him seem daft, impenetrable, and strangely vapid. The celebrated actor drags his feet and pedals his gums while saying nothing of importance. Colin Firth rarely appears in the movie. And John Hurt may as well be a cardboard cutout, as he does nothing but leer and stand idly by. There’s no rule against an espionage thriller being smart and captivating without perilous gun-play, but there needs to be, at the very least, interesting dialogue or chiseled character development. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy feels like a story waiting to happen, but instead gets stuck in a bottomless queue.
Most strangely is the way that the auspicious Alfredson directs this film. Flatlining heart monitors have more peaks and valleys than Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy does. It’s hard to rate the film adaptation of John le Carre’s book, because not once, during the entire running time of the picture, did it actually feel a movie-going experience. What we have is a poorly executed film with a relatively well known book attached to its languid limbs. If you want to see John Hurt sit, without moving, you can look at internet stills of him on Google for free. No need to see this clunker.
R.L. Stine, Is This What It’s Like?
Starring: Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt
Review written by Robert Patrick
Counterculture queen Diablo Cody cuts her teeth on dialogue that is rife with alliteration, hipster-like musings, and fanged insults. Many would think her writing is a modern, barbed version of Howard Hawks’ spitfire snark. The reality is that Cody’s banter is [...]
Patrick Bateman’s Long Lost Cousin Emerges
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan
Review written by Robert Patrick
If you look under the hood of most movies this year, Michael Fassbender will be there. The thespian has completed period pieces, comic-book films, biopics about bearded psychoanalysts, and now a film about a vacuous thirty-something whose pilgrimage across the bodies of [...]
Does this Movie Come with an Ejection Seat?
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Watts
Review written by Robert Patrick
Warner Brothers should have renamed J. Edgar “Watch Clint Eastwood Fall Asleep at the Wheel”. This historical biopic about the advent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is terse, rife with plasticity, and about as warm as an insulated container [...]
I wanted to confirm my suspicions that Pootie Tang was indeed relegated to hatred and disgust prior to writing this column. Yes, I am that delusional about this film… according to others. I browsed to a certain spoiled produce aggregator and saw a resounding 26% approval, lauded as dismal, and completely admonished by various critics. [...]
A new column written by Kyle Henke that argues against critical viewpoints shared by many. Was the movie really awful or actually great? Is the actor playing the role amazingly while being shamed for the script? Lets find out.
Andrew Kenny’s achingly ethereal voice whittles away your preconceptions about what a band, emotionally, is capable of doing. The singer-songwriter has been a workhorse when it comes to traveling coast-to-coast – he has done it practically nonstop – throughout his career; if you tracked the flight lines across the United States it would look like [...]
Listening to Freezepop is akin to watching a rainbow perform harakiri; neon colors jut out everywhere. The band’s sound is a dichotomy of saccharine and cyanide, a swandive into a pool of glitter and reverb. Freezepop’s lead singer, the multitalented Liz Enthusiasm, pulls back snarky syllables with the bowstrings of her lips as she feathers [...]
Motopony’s frontman, Daniel Blue, lulls out achingly barrel-aged vocals on the band’s self-titled record. The airy and yet splintered delivery of Blue is reminiscent of Neil Young’s rasp and Bon Iver’s maimed whispers. The salted-emotions of Blue and company aren’t epigenuous as they seem, and, by merit of their minimalist compositions, crawl and brood under [...]
Wild Beasts’ lyrics aren’t stymied by cloyingly banal word choices, instead they are aplomb with unique textures and colorful petals. And while the band’s lyrics can be pleasantly barbed, the delivery of the words, sung with aloof playfulness and sometimes even carnaptious snark, come off as fascinating as they are multilayered and rich. Wild Beasts’ [...]
Adam Goldberg’s Rolodex of films is so vast that if you flipped through it you would hear the sound of a hummingbird’s wings. The forty-year-old thespian, producer, director, musician and general jack of all trades is the entertainment version of a Swiss army knife set to overdrive. But Goldberg does them all well. From rocking [...]
Chaotic and composed, in a world full full of cackling unrest and marred melodies, comes Women, a band from Calgary that is hauntingly ethereal. Their debut album was crosshatched with airy-reverberations and distorted instrumentation. Chris Reimer and company create a landscape of flickering memories and weathered musical notes. On their newest record, “Public [...]
Bear In Heaven’s album “Beast Rest Forth Mouth” is a kaleidoscope of detached drums and ethereal vocals. The chaotic symphony pouring from your speakers sounds like a swelling of marred beauty and yellowed memories of adolescence. Jon Philpot, the lead vocalist of the Brooklyn band, channels an otherworldly voice that wafts and ducks throughout the [...]
Listening to Best Coast is almost akin to listening to the cackle of a car speaker, worn down by the effervescent saltiness of the sea air, as it sits beside a nearby boardwalk. You can hear the ethereal hum of the treble, the waves crashing like faraway mortor fire, and the detached voices of beach [...]
Sage Francis is a poet laureate, crowned with a sweaty brow and an exuberant open palm, whose movements are deliberate and without reservation. Often times unpredictable, the Rhode Island emcee, whose songs are thronged with thorned rhymes and eclectic beats, released his newest record, “Li(f)e,” earlier this year. The LP, not atypical of the artist’s [...]
“The Magician’s Private Library,” an eclectic gnashing of marred horns and spectral pianos, is a brilliant offering of jazzy-distortion and airy vocals. The perpetrator of the album, whose music is both quietly sinister and radically unchained, is Holly Miranda. The musical maven was somewhat of a wunderkind, learning piano and guitar at an early age, and [...]
I was a child of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and as a result I was weaned on action movies, particularly the glorious works of Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, and, OF COURSE, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Watching these films still imbues me with a sort of visceral delight, an upsurge of joy and contentment within the universe.
I [...]
I was thrilled this weekend when I glanced through a $3.99 movie bin at Albertson’s and pulled out the most random inclusion I could find: Volume One of the 1966-7 Japanese TV show ULTRAMAN: A SPECIAL EFFECTS FANTASY SERIES. One look at the cover art and I knew I’d be in for a treat.
A quick glance [...]
We’ve all got our little pet peeves when it comes to movies and television. Sometimes it stems from our areas of expertise (“Well I’M a fighter pilot and there’s no way I’d do it like that”) or sometimes we just learn some trivia and can never look at those troublesome scenes the same way [...]
Review by Sam Wood
Jon Mikl Thor, the Legendary Rock Warrior, has had an expansive career spanning back to 1973 and continuing on in the present day. According to his VERY self-aggrandizing website, “THOR first made waves in the bodybuilding world, becoming Mr. Canada and Mr. USA, always using heavy music as an intensive training [...]
My little column turns twenty posts old today, and what better way to celebrate than by reviewing the most ridiculously sleazy Hong Kong exploitation film I have ever seen?
“A Chinese Torture Chamber Story” exemplifies the concept of a guilty pleasure film. It is as hilarious as it is disgusting. The first time I watched it [...]
I was puttering around the Box Office Mojo website recently and came across an interesting comparison: the domestic box office gross of films about U.S. presidents. This includes documentaries, fictionalized accounts, and accounts that are entirely fictional in the first place.
Here are the fifteen top-performing presidential films (rounded to the nearest million):
Independence Day – 300 [...]
In lieu of an article this week I thought I’d provide something special for all the procrastinators out there.
If you haven’t sent out Christmas cards this year, but you vaguely intended to do so, and now you’re looking at the calendar and realizing there is no way in hell they would arrive in time: [...]
From the moment the title screen flew at my face, I knew I was in for something special. And I was right! “Solarbabies” is not just special, it is exceptional, mind-blowing, earth-shattering (sometimes literally). The movie has a whopping 0% approval rating on Rottentomatoes (though in its defense there are only 10 [...]
Guys, I have a confession to make. I am really excited about the upcoming “Cowboys and Aliens.” Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell? Um, cowboys fighting aliens?
I’m a little nervous though, because often when Hollywood raises my expectations with a fun concept they are planning some prank to dash it all away [...]
I was initially planning to do another B-Movie review this week, but decide to do an old-school movie review instead. There’s a fine distinction between them sometimes, but in this case I couldn’t classify the film in question as B-grade material. Mostly it’s just… horrible. Plain horrible. Just not due to [...]
