The Gambler
Know When to Fold Them Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Brie Larson Review written by Robert D. Patrick A razed piñata of spilled spirits and emotional needling. Imagine a 21-year-old community college student who loves Charles Bukowski, Jameson whiskey, existential seething, and the musing of Tom Waits. Now, imagine that he’s seen a lot of Charlie Kaufman films, secretly loves action movies, and enjoys using the word “dig.”...
Unbroken
Dad Bait: The Movie Starring: Jack O’Connoll, Takamasa Ishihara Review written by Robert D. Patrick Chapped, sun-braised lips and unbridled suffering? It must be December, because the saliva slacked maws and welted skin is in full effect just in time for Oscar season. Clint Eastwood’s Unbroken – – – I mean Ron Howard’s Unbroken – – – I mean Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken is a...
The Better Angels
Abe-bout a Boy Starring: Jason Clarke, Diane Kruger Review written by Robert D. Patrick The Better Angels offers no levity, no flecks of light or booming laughter. No school taught anecdotes or conventional wisdom. The Better Angels, instead, leaves you with sharp monochrome images of buzzing insects and weathered faces. Arboreal light and rough, wooden chairs. The synopsis will tell you that this film is chiefly about Abraham...
The Last Temptation of Christ
What sets this film apart – the story of Jesus Christ leaving Nazareth to collect his apostles and ultimately begin the chain of events that will lead to his crucifixion – is that it presents itself as a narrative instead of a gospel.
Annabelle
Guise and Dolls Starring: Annabelle Wallis, Ward Horton Review written by Robert D. Patrick Dummies, dolls, and plastic fortune tellers make up the axis of evil in the land of possessed inanimate objects. Their lifeless orb-like eyes, stare, without motive, as their frozen lips curl into a macabre smile. A perfect conduit for demons, to be sure, these facades hang out until they have the appropriate opportunity to scamper across a...
Kelly & Cal
Sheena is a Punk Mocker Starring: Juliette Lewis, Jonny Weston Review written by Robert D. Patrick Middling, downtrodden, clawing out of a heap of emotional malaise. Kelly (Juliette Lewis) is steeped in repressed fears, admonishment, tides of doubt. Having just had a baby, she is in the throes of despondency and existentialism. Her husband, Josh (Josh Hopkins), is a responsible but unvaried partner. And with a onerously stuffy in-law...
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....
A Letter to Momo
Fun for the Whole – – – What Is That?! Review written by Robert D. Patrick Hiroyuki Okiura’s pastel swept yarn is an eccentric, emotionally debilitating dive into self-doubt, skewed modality, and grief induced psychosis – the perfect kids movie! In A Letter to Momo, an eleven-year-old girl moves to an island, soon after her father’s untimely death, and internalizes her crackling guilt. Unable to...
Happy Christmas
Christmas Blights Starring: Anna Kendrick, Joe Swanberg Review written by Robert D. Patrick The tepid, doldrums approach of lo-fi cinema is evident in minimalist director Joe Swanberg’s latest drama, Happy Christmas. The film is grainier than a bag of wheat, but at least the camera isn’t bobbing like a buoy in a directionless ocean (all that often, anyway). Swanberg has been entrenched in the often-hazed genre of...
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,...
