The Tree of Life
Mostly Sean Penn Free Starring: Brad Pitt, Hunter McCracken Review by Robert Patrick Terrence Malick doesn’t work in simply one medium, he paints, molds, sculpts, grafts, and chisels his way to the finish line with his camera. But is the finish line ever really drawn in his pictures? The director has no use for pacing, and often times kicks the conventionality with the toe of his boot as he strolls, blithely, along a forlorn and...
The List: Katherine E. Scharhon
Guy Maddin’s “Brand Upon the Brain!” is an abyss of frayed memories and curled echoes. A film where sight and sound, when being rapped against one another like chalkboard erasers, create enigmatic plumes of mystery. And in this world where each frame is smudged with charcoal fingerprints and squid-like ink, Katherine E. Scharhon holds onto a monochrome flame and leads the way. More recently, “God of...
Everything Must Go
Including this Film Starring: Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall Review by Robert Patrick The late literary wunderkind, Raymond Carver, penned a frayed yarn, called, very appropriately, “Why Don’t You Dance?”, about a man whose life gets rubbed out, and dusted away, like excess pencil shavings within the frame of a 24-hour period. What happens next is an emotional stalemate that takes place, of all locations, on his own...
Interview w/ The Goldberg Sisters
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. But Goldberg does them all well. From rocking a creaking, battle worn helmet through the maw of a steely European theater in “Saving Private...
Terrible Love: A Commentary
Charlie Sheen’s bourbon-soaked maw seems to affix itself to the pages of every entertainment rag. The actor has become a dystopian hellhound on wheels, cruising across America like a pull-string doll spurting out catchphrases. Sheen’s one-liners are like baseball cards on the spokes of everyone’s bicycles – or Facebook pages these days – and I can barely handle the noise anymore. I suppose this actor has become a lolling...
House: A Commentary
Has someone pierced a rainbow with a buck knife? Why are colors jetting from the screen like a severed artery? There are too many pastels everywhere! I feel like someone dumped a bucket of water on a coloring book and let it bleed. “House” is a visceral experience that plugs any would be platitudes into a guillotine and lets the blade whoop. It’s not really important to describe the plot, to be quite honest, as the film is essentially...
Winter in Wartime
How To Make WWII Uninteresting Starring: Martijn Lakemeier, Yorick van Wageningen Review by Robert Patrick Filmmakers continuously draw from the monochrome pool of barbed history that is World War II. It’s a repetition compulsion fueled by an acrimonious past that binds us all together. The timeline of atrocities finds itself wrapped around the wrists of every continent; the history of this great tragedy cakes our emotions and...
The Thin Red Line: A Commentary
Commentary by Robert Patrick “The Thin Red Line” is a lyrical catwalk onto a barren shore. The film is nourished by ideas, the indemnity of foreclosed dreams, the artifice of young wisdom. James Jones, the author of the book on which the film was based, hated war films, for the most part, giving them short shrift for their phallic heroism and sculptured morality. Jones passed, in 1977, before he could see his book become...
Take Me Home Tonight
The 80s for Kids Who Were Born in Them Starring: Topher Grace, Teresa Palmer Review by Robert Patrick The 1980s have become less of a decade and more of a marketing device in the last ten years. Being that I was born in the 80s myself, I was accustomed to people of my age, each one shining with glee, when they would purchase a wristband that said, in some blocky font, “Made in the 80s”. VH1 was using the decade as if it were a money...
Even the Rain
A Playlist of History on Loop Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Luis Tosar Review by Robert Patrick “Even the Rain” is sewn with heavy handed fingers, rustic palms, and furrowed brows. There are messages woven into the jacket of this story, containing an entirely different color of thread, that stand out to the naked eye. Nothing is done with subtlety, and most of the movie hits you on the head, aggressively, like an honors...
