My Afternoons with Margueritte
Best Costume Design of All-Time Starring: Gérard Depardieu, Gisèle Casadesus Review written by Robert Patrick Colleen Atwood couldn’t whirl up a better outfit than the not-so-foppish digs that Gérard Depardieu is sporting in director Jean Becker’s “My Afternoons with Margueritte”. As seen in the screencap above, Depardieu looks like he kicked in the closet of Bob the Builder and ransacked the cartoon...
Restless
The Grapes of Daft Starring: Henry Hopper, Mia Wasikowska Review written by Robert Patrick This is the best picture Alan Smithee never directed. “Restless” is so bad that the mascara wearing elk in Hot Topic wouldn’t dare screenprint their minds with Gus Van Sant’s scurrilous picture about two morose teens in search of young love. Henry Hopper, the son of the mercurial thespian Dennis, plays Enoch, a teenager...
Moneyball
Archival Footage and Concentrated Brooding Starring: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill Review written by Robert Patrick If I had said that there would be a movie released this year about sulking and computer screens, you would probably predict that the film was about a depressed teenager glued to his PC. Alas, the fog has lifted and instead it is about baseball and grown men. Michael Lewis, the author of The Blind Side, penned Moneyball, a movie...
Love Crime
Uneventful Manipulation; Boring Outcome Starring: Ludivine Sagnier, Kristin Scott Thomas Review written by Robert Patrick Alain Corneau’s swansong is a little bit of Scooby Doo, a whole lot of melodrama, and a little bit of repressed erotica. “Love Crime”, at its core, is about Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas), a stiff-lipped big wig of a multinational company whose manipulative and serpentine tongue wags viciously....
Brighton Rock
Switchblades and John Hurt Starring: Sam Riley, Helen Mirren Review by Robert Patrick “Brighton Rock”, first published in 1938, was a product of the quill pen wielding Graham Green, whose work, sordid as it was, brought about a couple of gangter odysseys starring Pinkie Brown, a young brute with a mop of hair that spilled over his forehead like a young Jimmy Cagney. “Brighton Rock”, here, in its second film...
Bellflower
Mumblehorror Review by Robert Patrick The pulpy, unfiltered theme of the apocalypse bares its fangs in director Evan Glodell’s caustic and unhinged “Bellflower”. An uneasy feeling crawls over the film like the legs of a mantis, as things go from conspicuously unsound to hysterically sociopathic, before the movie finally collapses from exhaustion. “Bellflower” is more about the fallout of the mind, more...
The Names of Love
Existentialism through Convolution Starring: Sara Forestier, Jacques Gamblin Review by Robert Patrick “The Names of Love” is what happens with kinetic imagery plays kick the can with dull dialogue. The first half is like a live wire of protein laced thoughts, energized and manipulated to auteur like form, the second half is as boring as listening to talk show radio with the volume down. Michele Leclerc’s lukewarm...
Our Idiot Brother
Likable Protagonist’s Shoes Filled by Winsome Rudd Starring: Paul Rudd, Zooey Deschanel Review by Robert Patrick “Our Idiot Brother” siphons the basic story structures of “What About Bob?” and “You, Me and Dupree” and inoculates them with Judd Apatow-like serums. The wholly likable, dog-eyed Paul Rudd is so sugary that when he smiles the enamel on his teeth could be made of saccharine....
Point Blank
Hide Your Kids, Hide Your Wife Starring: Gilles Lellouche, Roschdy Zem Review by Robert Patrick “Point Blank” is the ground beef of the meat market, if we’re measuring quality, and there is little doubt that the film borrows everything from “The Bourne Identity” and “Run Lola Run” to Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog. “Point Blank” has a pretty standard plot: nurse’s pregnant...
Salvation Boulevard
The Wrong Street to Turn Onto Starring: Greg Kinnear, Pierce Brosnan Review by Robert Patrick “Salvation Boulevard” at it’s core is an exploration of hubris, self-preservation, megalomania. Director George Ratliff isn’t overtly attacking any sort of ideology head-on, though it may seem, at first glance, that he is throwing “Religulous”-like cocktails at Christianity. Really, the movie is about...
