PJ Nabarro
Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications:
Little White Lies,
One Room With A View,
Patrick Nabarro
Movie Reviews Only
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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
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| Posted Feb 11, 2021
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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
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| Posted Feb 1, 2021
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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
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| Posted Jan 30, 2021
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2/5 | 49% | The Holiday (2006) |
Thoroughly preposterous, utter bourgeois fantasy of a romantic comedy. - Patrick Nabarro
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| Posted Jan 27, 2021
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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
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| Posted Jan 27, 2021
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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
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| Posted Jan 9, 2021
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3/5 | 67% | Home Alone (1990) |
A not completely unnuanced riff on the themes of family, safety and sanctity. - Patrick Nabarro
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| Posted Jan 9, 2021
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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
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| Posted Jan 8, 2021
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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
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| Posted Jan 8, 2021
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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
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| Posted Dec 31, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 31, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 31, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 21, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 21, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 21, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 21, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 21, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 21, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 21, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 21, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 12, 2020
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3/5 | 70% | Legally Blonde (2001) |
A crowd-pleasing, girl's own fantasia of self-empowerment. - Patrick Nabarro
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| Posted Aug 10, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 8, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 8, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 8, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jul 8, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jul 8, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jul 6, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jul 1, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 30, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 27, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 23, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 13, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 10, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 9, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 9, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 2, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 2, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 2, 2020
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1/5 | 62% | Proof (2005) |
An unlovely film about an unlovely group of people. - Patrick Nabarro
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| Posted Jun 2, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 2, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 2, 2020
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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
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| Posted May 31, 2020
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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
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| Posted May 29, 2020
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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
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| Posted May 25, 2020
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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
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| Posted May 23, 2020
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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
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| Posted May 23, 2020
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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
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| Posted May 23, 2020
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1/5 | 38% | Holiday in the Wild (2019) |
Beyond satire. - Patrick Nabarro
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| Posted May 23, 2020
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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
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| Posted May 23, 2020
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