PJ Nabarro
Tomatometer-approved critic
| Publications: | Little White Lies, One Room With A View, Patrick Nabarro |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1/5 | 80% | Layer Cake (2005) |
It's mediocre, inane, superficial technique - coupled with a grossly saturated soundtrack - all for no discernible dramatic effect.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 4/5 | 86% | Donnie Darko (2001) |
It's ultimately the piece's surprisingly sincere, compassionate edge which transmits the most.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 2/5 | 84% | 22 Jump Street (2014) |
There's a slightly wearing tyranny in the film's insatiable, gurning desire to be congratulated on its postmodern 'cleverness' at nearly every stage of its duration.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 4/5 | 97% | Two Days, One Night (2014) |
The careworn Marion Cotillard is a suitable icon for this most commendable of morals on the perils of neglecting social responsibility during these hardened, austere times. ‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 2/5 | 85% | Far From the Madding Crowd (2015) |
The story gets neutered into an Austenesque romantic drama that stereotypes and fails to get beneath the pretty surface of its period costumes and landscapes.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 2/5 | 31% | Last Love (2013) |
The use of Paris is a especially lame attempt to fasttrack some pathos and twee romantce into the mix and jars with the sometime deep politicking on grief and family politics.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 5/5 | 96% | Sideways (2004) |
Where Payne's fondness for template narratives has started to become a problem, Sideways - as the title evinces - has much a more complex take on the possibility of catharsis ‐ One Room With A View
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 3/5 | 77% | Bronson (2009) |
It's actually quite an intuitive work, taking Bronson's publicity-courting profile as a base to conjure a lurid opera on the phenomenon of 'Bronson'.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 3/5 | 50% | Maleficent (2014) |
Its digressions shed a novel light on its otherwise over-familiar story, without losing the uplifting, fablistic ethos in the process.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 4/5 | 76% | Jimmy's Hall (2015) |
Ken Loach has fashioned one of his purest and most lovely films here in Jimmy's Hall.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 5/5 | 89% | Nostalgia (Nostalghia) (1984) |
Almost seemed to be anticipating Tarkovsky's own demise with its strange sensibility of apocalyptic proselytising juxtaposed with a more soothing, balming, elegiac tone.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 3/5 | 89% | Three Colors: White (Trois Couleurs: Blanc) (1994) |
Unquestionably well made, and with a clever and very concentric vein of humour and storytelling verve sustained throughout.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 3/5 | 100% | Three Colors: Red (Trois couleurs: Rouge) (1994) |
It transcends the formula of its scenario to become something altogether more powerful and resonant.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 3/5 | 56% | Dead Man's Shoes (2006) |
A very competent technical director replicating scenes of formulaic visual tableaux, all in the service of a slightly juvenile vigilante narrative.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 2/5 | 82% | Beverly Hills Cop (1984) |
Away from Murphy's iconic comic status and star quality at the time, he was a limited dramatic actor - making almost untenable the tauter moments of the plot.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 4/5 | 83% | Lilting (2014) |
Probably the quietest and least histrionic film I've seen for a long time (no mean feat when the subtext to the story is raw grief).‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 4/5 | No Score Yet | London (1994) |
London as a 'ghost town', the first post-historical city, a place that has outlived itself.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 12, 2018
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| 4/5 | 97% | Columbus (2017) |
Kogonada creates a recurring juxtaposition between the axis of the dramaturgy (where narrative cinema nominally places the audience) and a more transcendent, detached position‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 11, 2018
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| 3/5 | 92% | Slow West (2015) |
Kodi Smit-McPhee and Michael Fassbender, both physically and in the way they inhabit their roles, dovetail excellently.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 3/5 | 65% | Cosmopolis (2012) |
A distinctly gallows take on contemporary financial mores, as one absurdly rich man's limo ride across town for a haircut functions as a state-of-the-nation discourse. ‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 3/5 | 100% | Angst Essen Seele auf (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul) (1974) |
An intentional air of theatrical experimentation - almost as if Fassbinder is playing on the excesses of the representations to make clear the prejudices in German society.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 5/5 | 100% | Stalker (1979) |
A true existential parable: The Zone being a genius dramaturgical blank canvas around which Tarkovsky wraps another of his epic musings on what it means to be human.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 3/5 | 95% | Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (2015) |
A compelling documentary which doesn't need to work too hard to out the sheer absurdity and 'Emperor's New Clothes' air that hangs over the whole Scientology movement.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 2/5 | 63% | Spectre (2015) |
Betrays the series' increasingly transparent three-yearly exercise in blandly aspirational, deluxe brand management par excellence.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 4/5 | 87% | The Blair Witch Project (1999) |
Directors Sanchez and Myrick understand the lure of legend and storytelling to the horror genre, and they cleverly choose to wrap the film up in various Russian Doll layers.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 2/5 | 54% | Cemetery Junction (2010) |
An uncomfortable compromise between the evident comic talents that brought Gervais to the fore in the first place, and the commercial apparatus that his popularity has invited‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 2/5 | 63% | The Mission (1986) |
The film is an exposé of a time when Western cinema was struggling to film stories of indigenous peoples in modes other than unintentionally stereotypical and condescending.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 2/5 | 54% | Disney's A Christmas Carol (2009) |
This computerised version of A Christmas Carol automatically loses something in becoming very homogenised and, dare I say it, Americanised.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 2/5 | 17% | Christmas Carol - The Movie (2001) |
This strange hotch-potch of an animation falls between all stools: failing to honour the seasonal elements to this most famous of Christmas fables while not doing anything new‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 4/5 | 98% | Badlands (1974) |
A masterly exercise in ironic narration, and of a director so wholly in command of the rhetoric of his medium.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 4/5 | 90% | The Wicker Man (1973) |
A genius conflation of the on-screen pagan versus Christian (and provincial versus federal) dichotomies into an equally combustible cinematographic battle of the sensibilities‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 2/5 | 94% | Carol (2015) |
The main problem is that the social tapestry is far, far less interesting than in Far from Heaven.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 4/5 | 85% | A Christmas Carol (1951) |
Inarguably the definitive and best adaptation of Charles Dickens' seminal Christmas fable.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 4/5 | 76% | The Prestige (2006) |
Nolan's most perfect commentary on his favourite auteur theme of mise en abyme, as both magicians in their own ways make near Faustian pacts for their climactic 'prestige'.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 2/5 | 94% | The Crying Game (1992) |
With 20 years' perspective, it really does seem an irretrievably ropey and dated melodrama, hamstrung by any number of strange elements.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 4/5 | 86% | Trading Places (1983) |
What really resonates about this comedy, some 30 years after its release, is how it was able to intuitively crystallise the whole socio-political landscape of the era.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 2/5 | 93% | It's a Wonderful Life (1946) |
One problem with the film is that it's only in the acquisition of money and the community subjugating their own savings and needs for George, that his rebirth can be complete.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 3/5 | 94% | Widows (2018) |
More often than not, the neatness of McQueen's rhetoric stifles the potential of the scenario. ‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 2/5 | 88% | Mommy (2015) |
Dolan's weakness is that beneath the razzamatazz, he's saddled himself with a straightforward narrative, thus his artillery merely serves the purpose of hammering home subtext‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 3/5 | 93% | Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015) |
Having the presence and dramatic lineage of three characters the Prequels weren't afforded the luxury of accessing (Han, Leia and Luke) adds some gravitas to proceedings.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 3/5 | 31% | The Cannonball Run (1981) |
Cannonball Run exists somewhere in between being a last bastion of an 'old boys' Hollywood comedy, versus offering a wry send-up of those values. ‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 3/5 | 88% | What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015) |
Structurally and content-wise it's near perfect: the film cleverly opens on a thematising visual anecdote before taking us back to the beginning of Simone's life.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 2/5 | 86% | Still Alice (2015) |
It's in the Hamptons setting, the clichéd Super 8 family flashbacks and the demonstrative piano score that the film's pretensions to overly sermonise and molly-coddle is outed‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 4/5 | 98% | Timbuktu (2015) |
A work of staggering dramatic and ethnographic lucidity: a crystal-clear ode to life in a harsh outpost of Mali, namely the northerly, desert-laden city of Timbuktu.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 4/5 | 90% | Clouds of Sils Maria (2015) |
A fantastic commentary on modern celebrity, PR, image politics and the struggle to retain personal integrity amid the sheer swirl of the internet and digital media culture.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 5/5 | 100% | Citizen Kane (1941) |
Welles almost creates a mise en abyme throughout Citizen Kane, inviting but ultimately refuting the tendency to want to reduce everything to one core sentimental genesis. ‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 2/5 | 51% | Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) |
Rickman's casualness is the unwitting emblem of this silly, but enjoyable, Hollywood romp from yesteryear. ‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 4/5 | No Score Yet | Adam & Paul (2004) |
What Abrahamson gets so right is the tricky blend of quite remarkable comedy - mining an air both farcical and of the bleakly gallows variety - with a wider social critique.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 3/5 | 91% | What Richard Did (2013) |
Where Abrahamson is beyond reproach, and, in fact quite masterly, is in the film's forensic dissection of its middle-class milieu.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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| 4/5 | 84% | Spider (2002) |
An engrossing work by Cronenberg, and you have to admire his steadfastness and sense of austerity in committing to such a quiet, pungent story on the legacy of mental trauma.‐ Patrick Nabarro
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2018
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