Client 9
The Fantastic Mr. Fox Written by Robert Patrick George Fox aka Client-9 aka Eliot Spitzer has more pseudonyms than a cold war spy. These politicians, day traders and wall street moguls are so colorful they make a rainbow look monochrome. I think of comic-book characters like Two-Face and Kingpin, snickering and gallivanting around these crosshatched and seedy looking cities, wearing pinstriped suits that look like barcodes made out of...
The Freebie
Dax Shepherd = Zach Braff? Starring: Dax Shepherd, Katie Aselton Written by Robert Patrick “The Freebie”, with its breezy poster art cobbled into a whimsical frenzy, looks like a date movie. Dax Shepherd and Katie Aselton are in bed together, their expressions melded into an inquisitive stare, as the movie’s title lies at the bottom of the winsome duo, pumped up in a goofy font, making the movie look like comedic pap. Whomever took...
B-Movie Review: Futurekick
Earth was once a beautiful, blue planet. But that was a long time ago. After endless wars the wealthy left earth to build a civilization on the moon, while the poor people they left behind suffered beneath the iron fist of ‘the corporations.’ The corporations engineered Cyberons, bio-mechanical men programmed to hunt down corporate crime—till the Cyberons discovered that corporations WERE the crime, and so the corporate police were...
My Dog Tulip
Less Flowery Than the Title Implies Featuring Voices of: Christopher Plummer, Lynn Redgrave Written by Robert Patrick J.R. Ackerley was an English writer who, in 1956, wrote a book about his German Shepherd, Tulip. A veteran of the great war, the old gentleman confided in no one, living out his years in pensive solitude, until, one particular day, he brought a scruffy, misbehaving canine home. The cartoon – made for adults, the...
Due Date
Forgive Its Name: It’s Not that Bad Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Zach Galafianakis Written by Robert Patrick The road trip movie. There’s probably a section for this genre in video rental stores at this point. Covers with daffy characters flushed with tepid smiles or puffed up hair, often with clothes in a disarray and some sort of vehicle in the background. I think everyone has a repressed desire to have a string of disastrous...
Fair Game
More Watery Eyes Than a Benedryl Ad Starring: Naomi Watts, Sean Penn Written by Robert Patrick When I saw the press screening of this film, nearly a month ago, I had taken a chisel to my hippocampus to make sure I remembered everything I needed to remember when swinging my fingers around on my keyboard and writing this review. I watched the film in a pose not unlike The Thinker, a statue by Auguste Rodin. The story was an...
The Holocaust in Film
I’ve long been interested in the way that Hollywood presents history, or anything ‘based on a true story,’ ‘inspired by real events,’ etc. A lot of people only know about historical events via their pop culture representations, no matter what disclaimers attend the opening of the film. Think “300,” “Spartacus,” “Braveheart,” “Amadeus,” “Elizabeth.” (Hm, lots of one-word titles there, what can I infer from that?) Movies are defended as...
Douchebag
Finally, A Road Trip Movie With Smarts Starring: Andrew Dickler, Ben York Jones By Robert Patrick There aren’t any allusions to wine aficiandos. Zach Galiafanakis doesn’t miff Mike Tyson. No one drinks a fourth of Absinthe and makes out with their sister. No, this isn’t “Sideways”, “The Hangover” or “Eurotrip”. In the aforementioned road comedies everything is Murphy’s law, in the most bombastic way possible, and if a spud missile...
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
The Girl Who…Oh Forget it Already Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist By Robert Patrick “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” sounds like a title that would come out of a random name generator. Personally, I think “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Girl Who Played With Fire” aren’t much better. Better titles for the series would include “Perverse Old Men Against Computer Hacker” or “Watching Protagonists Read...
Product Placement!
Movies are expensive. And sometimes movie executives sell a little piece of their souls to advertising giants in order to make ends meet. And SOMETIMES they blatantly gear their films toward those advertising giants for the sole purpose of raking in the dollar bills from the get-go. We know all of the obvious examples already. Head and Shoulders shampoo saves the day at the end of “Evolution.” In the future every restaurant turns into...
