Alive Inside
Waltz of Mysteries Review written by Robert D. Patrick A mosaic of incorporeal, lost memories coupled with jolts of expression. Ethereal images flutter and dissolve. And the past becomes nothing but an old, scorched match head. But what if the intangible profundity of music can cull perforated memories out of someone’s mind? Or, at the very least, make the abyss more comforting. Dan Cohen, a social worker with an unyielding...
Life Itself
All Things Once and Forever Review written by Robert D. Patrick It’s the most labored, arduous, sometimes portentous profession. Bereft of pity – “you watch movies? that cant be hard” – and pockmarked with confusion. The film critic is irascible and snooty; a divisive force with cloven hooves. A film critic, to the public’s eye, is often times an affluent, pear-shaped Magoo. They exist to be pelted...
Bettie Page Reveals All
A Page Unwritten Review written by Robert D. Patrick Bettie Page’s flippant cascade of hair, pouring over her forehead in a coy, puckering expression of cavalier openness has become synonymous with the taboo architecture of the 1950s and beyond. Whether posing with open arms and breezy bathing suits or slithering around in the leather-laden recesses of eyebrow-craning acts of bondage, Page was an actress that enjoyed the trained...
Happy People: A Year in the Taiga
Ron Swanson’s Favorite Film? Review written by Robert D. Patrick Werner Herzog, the enigmatic, sleepy-voiced German director has become a sort of lick-the-thumb and turn-the-page storyteller. He is a grandfather figure that has both acerbic wit and calm reticence. Most recently, the auteur has been adorning his lens with pastoral landscapes and philosophical documentaries about the human condition. Here, with Happy People: A...
Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
The Revolution In Fragments Starring: Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael Review written by Robert Patrick Director Göran Olsson’s documentary, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, has a clunky, cumbersome title; the name is like a topiary that needs reshaping. Something with more steely brevity, clenched fist punctuality would be more fitting of this snapshot of the Black Power movement in America. Olsson’s thoughtful doc is...
Beats Rhymes & Life
Your Favorite Emcee’s Favorite Emcees Review written by Robert Patrick The nasally, warbling voice of Michael Rapaport would, for many people who are only mildly familiar with his work, be an unlikely voice for the hip-hop community. Strangely, when Rapaport isn’t playing ill-fated characters in films (he has died more times than Kenny from “South Park” throughout the myriad of movies that he has been in), his...
Waste Land
This Is My Reaction to this Film Starring: Vik Muniz Written by Robert Patrick “Waste Land” is dark, gross, sticky and noisy. And no, that isn’t a synonym for coitus or open heart surgery, it’s the description of men and women who dig through garbage for a living. No, it’s not about homeless people, either. Oh boy, this is going to be a difficult review. “Waste Land” is actually about a coalition of people who work at Jardim Gramacho,...
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 Radiant Child
The Feast and the Famish Featuring: Jean-Michel Basquiat By Robert Patrick Jean-Michel Basquiat was, for all purposes, completely innovative and untraditional. The street artist would jab and swoosh his brush against whatever canvas he deemed appropriate, whether it be the wall of a building or a sheet of paper, to create loud and bombastic pieces of chaotic and aggressive art. Art aficionados in his time generally shirked his work as...
I’m Still Here
The Scariest Film of the Year Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck By Robert Patrick “Towards the end, he kept saying, ‘I’m tired, I’m tired. I’m sick of it. I don’t want to do it anymore.’ But at a certain point you just don’t even want to listen to that; you just think it’s the ramblings of someone at the end of a shoot, so I kind of ignored it. But that was the only thing I heard about it. And then two months...
