Digging For Fire
Improvised, corkscrewed dialogue and loose body language. The mumblecore moniker wraps itself around director Joe Swanberg’s existential opus about the suppressed desires of a modern adult couple. The contemporary malaise of thirty-somethings has been explored, ad nauseam, recently. Here, however, we are not tracing the lines of a disheveled manchild whose confidence bobs and weaves through a plume of weed smoke....
Aloha
And John Krasinki Starring: Emma Stone, Bradley Cooper Review written by Robert D. Patrick If Aloha had been insufferable, the headline would have been different. “Ha, Why Me?”, “Lei Me Down to Sleep,” or “Oh, no! Ahhh!” But Cameron Crowe’s wistful, sun-strafed luau of the soul came breaking into the shoreline, all foamy and comforting. Aside from a few dramatic footnotes with very obvious...
Top Five
The Numbers Game Starring: Chris Rock, Rosario Dawson Review written by Robert D. Patrick Bumbling lunacy, plumes of weed, and anatomy jokes – that’s been the popular well for comedies in recent years. Writers and directors, such as Judd Apatow and Evan Goldberg, make their money drilling for this kind of crass oil. Sometimes the affable schlubs in these buddy comedies come across as exhaustive and stale. Sometimes they...
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...
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...
Anna Karenina
From Russia with Hate Review written by Robert Patrick Starring: Keira Knightley, Aaron Johnson Regal attire, cocked grins, and swan-like floating in luminescent ballrooms. Leo Tolstoy’s revered and universally coddled Anna Karenina is a staple of literature that is air-tight to criticism and sordid guff. Here, director Joe Wright takes a praised work of art and ratchets it in the head with strobe lights and a weird melee of...
The Loneliest Planet
Backnapping Through the Caucasus Mountains Review written by Robert Patrick Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Hani Furstenberg A spattering of pastoral candy, winding treks through a foreign countryside, and an affable guide that looks like a Georgian Dave Attell. The Loneliest Planet is fueled by the slow-burn of hillsides at dusk and the absence of sound. Director Julia Loktev carves out a movie that is minimalist, skeletal, meditative....
Delicacy
Love, Loss and a Swedish Suitor Starring: Audrey Tautou, Francois Damiens Review written by Robert Patrick The doe-eyed, stencil-lipped Audrey Tautou is often cast for her boppy, carbonated persona. Gaining fame for her portrayal as a lovelorn Parisian in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie, Tautou’s waifish frame has been coddled by the hearts of filmgoers for years. Sadly, in the wrong hands, Tautou is like key codes to a...
The Deep Blue Sea
Weepy Mawkishness & Cigarettes Starring: Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston Review written by Robert Patrick The slow build of that not-so-esoteric and maudlin violin. Sweeping, diving, floating like a miserable buoy in a lost sea. The instrument has cannibalized itself by working almost too well. So esteemed is the petite and stringed headrest that its high-pitched cry is pined for in cinematic sequences of devastation and loss. The...
