The Hunt
Community Ostracizes Sheepish Man Starring: Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen Review written by Robert D. Patrick Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen’s square jaw and esoteric glare provide the perfect bone structure for playing amoral, unsettling figures with blood stamped fingers. The Copenhagen born thespian has played heavies in movies like Casino Royale and Pusher. In one of the actor’s best films, Valhalla Rising, he plays a...
The World’s End
Of Suds and Sods Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost Review written by Robert D. Patrick The World’s End is about five raucous, syllable bending Brits whom white knuckle barley pops with feverish gusto (most of that is accurate). The old pals reunite, after absconding from one another twenty years earlier, to take on a fanged beast of a pub crawl that they failed to slay in their youth. The mad capped league of friends, headed by...
Kick-Ass 2
Utopian Toilet Humor Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Chloe Grace Moretz Review written by Tom Bevis As far as books go, “Kick-Ass” is special to me. Not because it’s particularly that great or because I love it so much or anything, but because it’s one of the few Mark Millar books I actually liked. It’s not particularly good (you can read my thoughts on the original comic book and the first film) but it’s effective. In...
The Spectacular Now
The Basically Okay Whatever Starring: Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley Review written by Robert D. Patrick Movies about teens are usually shrink wrapped in sleazy, salacious, glass cracking abandon. At parties, bras zip through the air like volleys of arrows. Livers are brined because guttural howls must be had. And much like Sisyphus’ boulder, kegs are rolled back and fourth forever – or at least until the weekend ends. The other...
Elysium
Paradise Lost; Subsequently Found By Matt Damon Starring: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster Review written by Andrew Younger In dystopian storytelling, the protagonist often serves as little more than an avatar for the audience in order to explore some exaggerated negative feature of civilization. In order to be an effective audience surrogate, whether it is Winston Smith or Bernard Marx or Josef K., the dystopian protagonist only needs to...
The Canyons
The Canyawns Starring: James Deen, Lindsay Lohan Review written by Robert D. Patrick The fang baring, salacious, psychosexual bloodletting of Bret Easton Ellis’ literary works are lumbar straining. His worlds are urban marshes of depravity and, more often than not, a decalogue of amoral drum rolls. The author’s catalog of works, beginning with his heralded debut, Less Than Zero, have all contained, in some form or another,...
Redemption
Post-Traumatic Stress Diss-Order Starring: Jason Statham, Agata Buzek Review written by Robert D. Patrick Jason Statham comes with baying gunfire, the expression of an Easter Island statue, and a jaw stubble reminiscent of Marvel’s Punisher. One does not often shoehorn the herculean actor’s block-like frame under the hood of a movie that demands bruised introspection and barbed self-exploration. In Redemption, director...
Byzantium
Vampires, Audiences Both Suckers Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Gemma Arterton Review written by Robert D. Patrick Vampires are rarely the gangly, spindly creatures of yesteryear. The cartography of the German vampire’s gaunt, drawn face has been replaced with coverall, pulpy gel and a propensity for pomp. And while teen literature is buzzing like a beetle on its back over the empirically salacious versions of the fanged and supernatural,...
Maniac
The Wood Son Starring: Elijah Wood, America Olivo Review written by Robert D. Patrick A windmill of knives and an assortment blood specked sheets, curled up like a python, is probably not what you would think of when someone mentions the mousy, cue ball eyed Elijah Wood. Franck Khalfoun’s fleshy remake of the 1980 slasher, Maniac, is a macabre, cuticle-snapping foray into the twisted psyche of a sociopath with serious mother issues....
World War Z
Call of Duty: Zombie Mode The Movie Starring: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos Review written by Tom Bevis A lot of people said World War Z, Max Brooks’ sequel to The Zombie Survival Guide, couldn’t faithfully be adapted. In a lot of regards, they’re right. Not as a film, anyway – the spanning and erratic narrative, told as an oral history of a world-wide zombie epidemic spanning tens of years, is more suited for television than for...