Legend
Multiplici-ZzZzs Starring: Tom Hardy, Tom Hardy Review written by Robert D. Patrick Legend may be billed as a liquor-lacquered, knuckle-thumping barrage of brogue and barrels, but the film has a neutered temperament and a barely palpitating heart. Tom Hardy is present, growling in a thick cockney accent that would put curdled milk to shame. But behind the frame of this classic car are the pedals of a Big Wheel. Director Brian...
True Story
Close-Ups: The Movie Starring: Jonah Hill, James Franco Review written by Robert D. Patrick The gossamer web that director Rupert Goold weaves is more of the plastic bag, Halloween variety. Fake, difficult to pull apart, and without a genuine aesthetic. True Story is a film about two desperate men interrogating one another by spitting venom through their incisors. It’s a film that prides itself on the weight of a clock’s...
Inherent Vice
Smoke on the Water Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin Review written by Robert D. Patrick Inherent Vice is a Rubik’s Cube comprised of sand and California sunshine. The thwacking reverberations of weathered sandals on heat baked concrete. Hushed whispers and drowsy head tilts form the hazy aesthetic. Paul Thomas Anderson eases off the pedal in a film that has the urgency of a swinging hammock. Based on novelist Thomas...
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...
Out of the Furnace
Sticks and Stones Starring: Christian Bale, Casey Affleck Review written by Robert D. Patrick Scott Cooper’s windswept, booze soaked, throaty debut won the bedraggled Jeff Bridges an Oscar in 2010. Cooper’s opus, a film about a weathered country singer on the precipice of demise, was a minimalist project that worked because of the steel guitar twang and the gutsy, visceral performance of its lead. “I felt like if we...
Pain and Gain
Bad Taste: The Movie Review written by Tom Bevis Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Mark Wahlberg Spoiler Alert: Pain & Gain is bad. Irredeemably bad. Bad in every sense of the word. I try not to make these kinds of judgment calls when reviewing movies, but it is unavoidable to review this movie without making mention of how severely, irreversibly, unavoidably, and unforgettably bad it is. And I’m not just saying that the film, as a movie...
The Silence
Cold Case: Germany Review written by Robert Patrick Starring: Ulrich Thomsen, Claudia Michelsen The Silence’s pastoral and yet sinister title implies that you’re about to see some concentrated brooding, unbridled heartache, and teeth gnashing detective work. Baron bo Odar’s melancholy film is about two murders, committed twenty-three years apart, in the same location. What sort of macabre shadowplay is at work? Why...
A Good Day to Die Hard
Will the Real McClane Please Stand Up Starring: Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney Review written by Tom Bevis Alright, let me start right off the bat by saying I love Die Hard. Die Hard is one of those quick action movie franchises that was loud enough, big enough, bright enough, and suddenly funny enough for me to really dig when I was a kid. Mind you, I wasn’t even a year old when the first one hit theaters, I must’ve been three years old...
21 Jump Street
Spoiler Alert: It’s Good Review written by Robert Patrick Starring: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum 21 Jump Street’s wonky, bombastic action premise is ramped up with crude jokes and staccato delivery. These aforementioned comedy tropes bring to mind the barbed brains of directors such as Todd Phillips and Adam McKay. Strangely, 21 Jump Street is directed by the duo held responsible for Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, the...
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Not Angelina Jolie in ‘Hackers 2’ Starring: Rooney Mara, the android Daniel Craig Review written by Robert Patrick Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series, a trilogy of books about the androgynous computer hacker and razor-tongued counterculture herionne Lisbeth Salander, began with the Swedish author’s first installment of the franchise, dubbed “The Men Who Hate Women.” That book, which sounds like...
