My Old Lady
Where There’s a Will There’s a Nay Starring: Kevin Kline, Maggie Smith Review written by Robert D. Patrick Isreal Horovitz, the writer and director of My Old Lady, creates a color wheel of incendiary black humor and repressed ire in his opus about a rascally opportunist named Mathias Gold (Kevin Kline). Adapted from the stage play of the same name, Horovitz’s picture lampoons honesty in favor of expedience....
Mood Indigo
Watercolors and Wild Flowers Starring: Audrey Tautou, Romain Duris Review written by Robert D. Patrick From the hallucinatory hopscotch of Eternal Sunshine and the Spotless Mind to the wonky fabric of Be Kind Rewind, French director Michel Gondry is known for dipping his paintbrush in clouds. The animated aesthetic of the auteur is on display in his newest opus, Mood Indigo. Adapted from Boris Vian’s book, Froth on the Daydream,...
Le Chef
Pots and Panned? Starring: Jean Reno, Michaël Youn Review written by Robert D. Patrick Ah, flippant movies about virtuous chefs and serpentine critics. Exorbitant portions are subdued in favor of strategic plating and multi-tiered flavor profiles. And how about those plates that flourish with primary colors? Daniel Cohen, the director behind Le Chef, sets his movie in the eccentric battlegrounds of affluent kitchens. Alexandre Lagarde...
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa
Talk Dupe Starring: Steve Coogan, Colm Meaney Review written by Robert D. Patrick Steve Coogan’s dry, acerbic humor gnashes down on everything in director Declan Lowney’s rabid, unbound Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. Starring as the title character, Coogan, whose tongue is given free range to lash at whatever it wants, gives his most inspired film performance since 2002’s 24 Hour Party People. Since then, it’s...
Bad Words
Alphabet Dupe Starring: Jason Bateman, Kathryn Hahn Review written by Tom Bevis If you’re a fan of Arrested Development, chances are you have already seen the single episode directed by series star Jason Bateman. Now, Bad Words provides the public a chance to see Bateman try his hand at the big screen in his feature directorial debut. In the film, 40-year-old underachiever Guy Trilby (Bateman) who, via an over-looked loophole, enters...
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...
The Hangover Part III
Sequel: The Sequel Starring: Ed Helms, Bradley Cooper Review written by Tom Bevis Full disclosure, here: I didn’t see The Hangover Part Two. Or The Hangover Part II, whichever they decided to roll with. Why didn’t I, you may ask? Because I liked the first one a lot. It mixed dirty comedy, ridiculous scenarios, and a mystery just one step below any neo-noir picture being made today. I wasn’t so surprised that it exploded the way it...
Quartet
House of Waxing On and On Starring: Billy Connolly, Maggie Smith Review written by Robert D. Patrick Dour expressions, plunking piano keys, swansong speeches and misty-eyed stares characterize the barely palpitating heart of Dustin Hoffman’s directorial opus, Quartet. The aforementioned film is about the follies and illusions of talented men and women, once in the limelight of the opera, who are now figureheads of a retirement home...
This is 40
A Screenplay So Boring It Relies on – – – Review written by Robert Patrick Starring: Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann This is 40 isn’t raunchy, clever, spiked with zingers or braised with shenanigans. There aren’t saucers of weed smoke or tweeting bird blackouts, either. The film is contemplative and observational. This is 40 is like Steve Martin’s Parenthood as directed by Judd Apatow. The humor has a muzzle...
Moonrise Kingdom
Into the Idle Starring: Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward Review written by Robert Patrick Wes Anderson’s films are a phantasmagoria of pastels, popped bubblegum, fistfuls of glitter, and dust from the panes of some forgotten memory. The purveyor of the absurd and whimsical has shared his ice cream spoon, most recently, with the likes of the sardonic Noah Baumbach and the clownish Roman Coppola. While not all of Anderson’s films...
