PJ Nabarro

PJ Nabarro
Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications: Little White Lies, One Room With A View, Patrick Nabarro

Movie Reviews Only

T-Meter Title | Year
3/5 94% Babyteeth (2020) It's in its quieter, less determined moments that Babyteeth moves away from its forced dramaturgical confections into something more meaningful and emotive. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 11, 2021
2/5 85% Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm (2020) Its political prescience can't obscure from the fact that Borat Subsequent Moviefilm just isn't very good or funny - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 1, 2021
2/5 70% Tenet (2020) Nolan's reverence for tech and the cleverness of pulling off a metaphysical narrative puzzle finally swamps his awareness of whether the thing in question is even any good. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 30, 2021
2/5 49% The Holiday (2006) Thoroughly preposterous, utter bourgeois fantasy of a romantic comedy. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 27, 2021
3/5 64% Love Actually (2003) It's almost a shock to see such a well constructed and beautifully acted scene (Emma Thompson opening her present) amid the rest of this film's more mainstream machinations. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 27, 2021
2/5 34% Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) Sorely lacks the situational specificity and just the vague whiff of 'this could actually happen' from the previous film. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 9, 2021
3/5 67% Home Alone (1990) A not completely unnuanced riff on the themes of family, safety and sanctity. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 9, 2021
4/5 96% The Silence of the Lambs (1991) Although, in essence, it could be considered a police procedural work, Demme films it like an arty horror, always cloaking the action in an air of non-omniscience. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 8, 2021
3/5 85% Elf (2003) Classic family Christmas fodder: the gorgeous candyfloss colour schemes and New York in all its resplendent wintry beauty help the film pass effortlessly by too. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 8, 2021
3/5 98% Parasite (Gisaengchung) (2019) The film feels too insincere and hypocritical to take genuinely seriously on its theme of social injustice. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 31, 2020
2/5 88% Sorry We Missed You (2020) The clumsiness of the drama and its crude didacticism obscures the potential import and power of the film's politics. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 31, 2020
3/5 No Score Yet Anelka: Misunderstood (Anelka: L'incompris) (2020) Revisiting Anelka's career makes for a strangely watchable documentary, and is a reminder of just how nomadic and mired in controversy his life in football actually was. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 31, 2020
3/5 100% Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell (2008) The poignancy of Russell's orthodox Iowan upbringing, counterbalanced with the bohemianism of his latter New York lifestyle, makes for a fascinating contrast. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 21, 2020
4/5 76% La Mujer sin Cabeza (The Headless Woman) (2008) Where other arthouse filmmakers use the slow aesthetic to draw out the glaringly obvious metaphors and subtexts of their narratives, Martel's style is lucid and transcendent. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 21, 2020
2/5 87% The Descendants (2011) Payne has substituted his usual scepticism for a huge quota of sentiment and schmaltz which, though undoubtedly appealing to a mainstream audience, seems a fundamental misstep - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 21, 2020
3/5 78% A Dangerous Method (2011) Cronenberg plays the material straight down the line, employing renowned playwright, Christopher Hampton, and relying on the experienced trio of lead actors to get on with it. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 21, 2020
3/5 70% Carnage (2011) Polanski doesn't shy away from the inherent theatricality in the conceit of having four characters stuck in an apartment, and is wise to actually make a feature of it. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 21, 2020
2/5 67% The Woman in Black (2012) A largely effective shocker - one which will no doubt play well to the multiplex audience it so clearly covets - but it has no lasting value beyond its basic remit to spook. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 21, 2020
2/5 78% The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012) There are one or two nice moments, but the unmistakable whiff of mediocrity does sully even the gentle, crowd-pleasing pursuits of this film. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 21, 2020
2/5 26% This Means War (2012) It feels more like the first vague sketch of a goofy film concept, than anything else. And it's the film sheer confidence in its own stupidity that impresses me. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 21, 2020
5/5 100% Leave No Trace (2018) Another tour de force from Granik - a filmmaker who instinctively knows how to alchemise the dramatic, cinematographic and anthropological elements of her stories so acutely. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 12, 2020
3/5 70% Legally Blonde (2001) A crowd-pleasing, girl's own fantasia of self-empowerment. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 10, 2020
2/5 78% Greyhound (2020) The perpetual reminder that Hanks' character is a very Christian man betrays the 'sanctity of the everyman' thesis that is so prominent here and in much of Hanks' filmography. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 8, 2020
2/5 68% Dirty Dancing (1987) The film exists in the main for a handful of seductively lit and framed dance sequences that aestheticise Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze's bodies and physical chemistry. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 8, 2020
3/5 No Score Yet 89 (2017) A genuinely illuminating football documentary, with something in it for the die-hard Arsenal fan, as well as a wider football supporter. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 8, 2020
3/5 60% Iverson (2014) There are some really interesting social politics: the absence of the father figure in many Black communities, and the sense that sport is often the only way out of the ghetto - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 8, 2020
1/5 78% Burn After Reading (2008) Intended as a pastiche of those grim Washington paranoia movies, it's almost as if that strived-for drabness drains the film of any real intent. It's patently unfunny too. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 8, 2020
3/5 68% The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015) As evidence of Guy Ritchie's new position as one of the better genre directors around, it's a diverting confection and worth a visit. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 6, 2020
1/5 67% Átame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!) (1990) This film hasn't aged at all well and really does, in light of #metoo, look like an unfortunate anomaly in the otherwise compassionate and humane filmography of Almodóvar. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 1, 2020
3/5 83% Julieta (2016) There are lovely individual moments and sentiments in Pedro Almodóvar's Julieta, but these touches fail to cohere into a satisfying whole. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 30, 2020
3/5 95% Nightcrawler (2014) Gyllenhaal is compelling and there is some truth in the way his character is able to elevate his status through sheer dogged determination and the demented zeal of a sociopath - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 27, 2020
3/5 70% American Psycho (2000) The idea that this is all a fantasy inside Bateman's head is brilliantly realised in his growing realisation that he's been able to get away with all of this in plain sight. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 23, 2020
4/5 92% Da 5 Bloods (2020) One of Lee's great successes is to re-appropriate the Vietnam War and its subsequent mythologization from the stranglehold of white Hollywood's narrative of the last 40 years. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 13, 2020
3/5 96% Thunder Road (2018) Is it pure screwball or more sweet indie fare? Either way, there's no denying Thunder Road projects charm and generates some smiles along the way. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 10, 2020
4/5 84% Batman Begins (2005) Batman Begins is certainly a worthy staging post in the inescapably compelling career of Christopher Nolan, and stands the test of time some 15 years after its release. - One Room With A View EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 9, 2020
3/5 92% Ex Machina (2015) At best, it feels more like a calling card or extended short film, but there is enough singularity here to mark Alex Garland out as a writer-director of promise. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 9, 2020
4/5 84% Bamako (2006) Bamako works because it offers a corrective to the - sometimes unintentionally - condescending western stereotype of Africa as an afflicted and pitiable continent. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 2, 2020
2/5 27% Bel Ami (2012) This transparent Robert Pattinson vehicle is little more than a nineteenth century Parisian episode of Gossip Girl. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 2, 2020
3/5 59% Enduring Love (2004) Michell finds a way of filming the balloon accident in such an unnerving manner that it hints at the psychological torrents that will ripple through the narrative from thereon - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 2, 2020
1/5 62% Proof (2005) An unlovely film about an unlovely group of people. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 2, 2020
4/5 94% Liverpool (2008) Shot with the otherworldliness of science fiction, Alonso's gaze follows a middle-aged sailor disembarking in Ushuaia before wandering into the wilds of Tierra del Fuego. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 2, 2020
3/5 92% Shattered Glass (2003) Hayden Christensen and Peter Sarsgaard in the two main roles turn in career-best performances as their respective characters' descent/ascent is so cleverly played out. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 2, 2020
4/5 No Score Yet Around the World When You Were My Age (A volta ao mundo quando tinhas 30 anos) (2018) Koretzky honours her father's spirit through film's scruffiness, rather than allowing the rotate and crop imperative of digital photography to excise such imperfections. - One Room With A View EDIT
Read More | Posted May 31, 2020
4/5 89% Ema (2019) Ema stands as a harbinger for the 2019 spirit of revolution, with her ingenuity and the tearing asunder of the conventions of patriarchy and bourgeois family structures. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted May 29, 2020
3/5 88% The Post (2018) Steven Spielberg's didactic and mainstream sensibilities restrict The Post from being anything other than a slightly shallow reconstruction of its incendiary journalism story. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted May 25, 2020
4/5 97% Maria Full of Grace (2004) The drug mule theme is somewhat of a distraction from Marston's more transcendent aim to push the story as a parable about one woman's self-determination. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted May 23, 2020
4/5 88% Carancho (2011) Comparisons between Martin Scorsese's crackling brand of fraught, moralistic cinema and that of Trapero's doesn't feel at all far-fetched. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted May 23, 2020
3/5 12% Gone (2012) One of the most purely thrilling genre films of recent times, although, in some respects, its end effect is greater than the sum of its parts. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted May 23, 2020
1/5 38% Holiday in the Wild (2019) Beyond satire. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted May 23, 2020
3/5 84% Lion (2016) There are some structural problems with Lion, but the undeniably emotive pulse of the narrative is hard to deny in its final moments. - Patrick Nabarro EDIT
Read More | Posted May 23, 2020