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John Patterson
John Patterson's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
L.A. Weekly
Village Voice
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Mulholland Dr. (2001) |
A wide-open work of art, capable of eliciting infinite responses, quite fathomless, and Lynch’s masterpiece. - Guardian
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| Posted Jul 11, 2023
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The Revenant (2015) |
The Revenant offers this year's most hostile on-film environment after Aleksey German's equally snowbound (and exhausting) Hard to Be a God. - Truthdig
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| Posted Dec 29, 2015
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Spotlight (2015) |
Both a crepuscular paean to the slowly vanishing age of the metropolitan daily newspaper and a hymn to the virtues of old-school shoe-leather investigative journalism, the kind that gets results and changes lives and cities. - Truthdig
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Our Brand Is Crisis (2015) |
Their brand isn't crisis -- their brand is middlebrow, middle-of-the-road, entirely middling filmmaking of the third rank. - Truthdig
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| Posted Nov 03, 2015
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Bridge of Spies (2015) |
As a retro-Cold War thriller, Bridge of Spies is an efficient, exciting entertainment dotted with nicely executed set pieces, but it's also a Spielberg movie, which usually means trouble somewhere. - Truthdig
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| Posted Oct 15, 2015
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Black Mass (2015) |
What is so disappointing about Black Mass is its sheer timorousness in the face of other, frankly, better and more daring approaches to this material. - Truthdig
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| Posted Sep 22, 2015
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Last Vegas (2013) |
Last Vegas is a good-natured bimbo of a movie, it'll do just about anything to please you, though luckily that includes delivering the 20 big laughs you feel you're owed (unlike The Hangovers), and gently jerking a tear or two. - Guardian
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| Posted Nov 04, 2013
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SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden (2012) |
Seal Team 6 could only rate as propaganda in a toxic, Fox News-driven political environment such as obtains at this moment. - Guardian
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| Posted Nov 06, 2012
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The Girl Who Played With Fire (2009) |
Fans of the novels will eat it up, while newbies may wonder what all the fuss is about. - Village Voice
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| Posted Jul 06, 2010
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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009) |
Catch it before the inevitable U.S. remake. - Village Voice
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| Posted Mar 16, 2010
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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009) |
May be a shallower experience than the book, but it has a headlong velocity all its own. Catch it before the inevitable U.S. remake. - City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul
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| Posted Feb 27, 2009
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The Color of Pomegranates (1969) |
A madly beautiful, often straight-up-bonkers meditation on the life of its eponymous Armenian-Azeri balladeer and poet. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Feb 21, 2008
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Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964) |
Shadows was a leap in the dark like none other in Soviet film history, and a slap in the face of the officially sanctioned and artistically vacuous school of Socialist Realism. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Feb 21, 2008
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Unconscious (2006) |
Laboring in the wide shadow of Almodvar and lacking much in the way of visual distinction, Unconscious compensates with its cast's full-tilt commitment to rip-snorting farce. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Apr 12, 2007
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Fuck (2005) |
Profound and joyously silly at the same time, Steve Anderson's documentary about our most potent secular blasphemy comes at the word and subject from every conceivable angle: Its awesome power to offend the listener and to empower its utterer. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Nov 09, 2006
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Greg & Gentillon (2005) |
Sending two faux-provincial innocents into real-life situations involving levelheaded, genially imperturbable Canadians offers only the mildest kind of comedy. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Oct 26, 2006
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Vajra Sky Over Tibet (2006) |
A tonic for Buddhists, no doubt, it offers many pleasures to atheists as well. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Sep 07, 2006
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Princesas (2005) |
Aranoa's film is a small miracle of controlled empathy. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Aug 31, 2006
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Queens (2005) |
This enormously likable comedy is given an additional boost by the energetic presence of five of Spain's favorite actresses (including sleek Marisa Paredes, flighty Mercedes Sanpietro and growlin' Carmen Maura, an Almodvar regular). - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Aug 24, 2006
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Sisters in Law (2005) |
Inspirational stuff, and often hysterical to boot. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Jul 06, 2006
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RV (2006) |
In RV, the downwardly spiraling career trajectories of Robin Williams and director Barry Sonnenfeld intertwine like the ropes of a tangled parachute. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted May 02, 2006
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Stoned (2005) |
This half-forgotten '60s controversy can't sustain a whole movie, so director Steven Woolley and writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade pad things out. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Mar 23, 2006
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Firewall (2006) |
Had Loncraine done a better job of plundering his own oeuvre, Firewall might have acquired the mojo it so sorely lacks. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Feb 09, 2006
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Wolf Creek (2005) |
Consummately well-crafted, unapologetically vicious and leavened with moments of humor that merely intensify the horror. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Dec 22, 2005
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Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2005) |
Even more problematic is the script's clumsy, sprawling architecture, Sheridan's clubfooted sense of pacing and his grubby, indistinct visuals. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Nov 10, 2005
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Winter Soldier (1972) |
A harrowing and often nauseating compendium of battle-zone confessions that was cast into obscurity almost immediately upon release in 1972. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Nov 03, 2005
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Elizabethtown (2005) |
Crowe's undeniable gifts -- his well-crafted individual scenes and his love for his characters -- are more evident here than his flaws. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Oct 13, 2005
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Into the Blue (2005) |
Some narrative economy could have shaved 20 minutes off the film's slackly paced two hours and brought us sooner to its memorably frenetic underwater climax -- a payoff that's finally too little, too late to save the movie. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Sep 29, 2005
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Flightplan (2005) |
The vanished child one really misses here is that adorably sparky, wised-up kid from Bugsy Malone and Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Sep 24, 2005
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The Man (2005) |
When a movie's comedic zenith is Levy farting in an elevator full of nuns, or nerdily intoning the salutations 'homie' and 'bitch,' you know it's time to storm the box office to demand restitution. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Sep 08, 2005
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Ferpect Crime (2004) |
The colors are lurid, the camera prowls relentlessly, and the lead performers are exuberant. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Aug 25, 2005
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Chaos (2005) |
A prefatory title-card-cum-alibi suggests that the film's extreme brutality is intended 'to educate and, perhaps, save lives,' but that's little more than a nauseating rationalization. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Aug 18, 2005
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Must Love Dogs (2005) |
At once over- and under-written, and peppered with tiresome coincidences and misunderstandings, Goldberg's mechanical, joke-one, joke-two, joke-three approach to ensemble screenwriting soon betrays his TV-sitcom roots. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Jul 28, 2005
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Union Square (2004) |
Without a well-delineated political or social framework, Union Square offers little that we didn't already know from, say, The Panic in Needle Park or Christiane F. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Jun 23, 2004
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Grand Theft Parsons (2003) |
Irish director David Caffrey and English screenwriter Jeremy Drysdale have, respectively, zero sense of pace and a tin-eared grasp of period speech, and together fail either to let us care about their characters or to create any sense of a living era. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Jun 17, 2004
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Stateside (2004) |
[Anselmo's] sure-footed handling of emotional tone enables his endearing young leads to function in a sympathetic and coherent realm. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted May 20, 2004
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Carandiru (2003) |
One of the richest prison movies in years. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted May 12, 2004
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Breakin' All the Rules (2004) |
Yet another unfunny buppie sex comedy. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted May 12, 2004
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Envy (2004) |
What's frustrating about the half-cocked comedy that follows is that it contains so many inspired moments and offers plenty of laughs, yet suffers from the lack of a unifying directorial intelligence. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Apr 29, 2004
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Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius (2004) |
Relaxed, leisurely and unforced, exactly the way a pleasant round of golf ought to be. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Apr 29, 2004
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Man on Fire (2004) |
A movie of two unreconcilable halves. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Apr 22, 2004
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Shaolin Soccer (2001) |
The movie has a rambunctious and likable energy that compensates for its unsteady, only intermittently amusing narrative. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Mar 31, 2004
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Hellboy (2004) |
One of the sturdier superhero movies of the last couple of years, with monsters and effects and diabolical baddies to spare, a heart as big as a house and a love story that actually gets its hooks in you. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Mar 31, 2004
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Eurotrip (2004) |
While Eurotrip scarcely amounts to a considered examination of transatlantic cultural differences, it sure comes through on the belly-laugh front. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Feb 26, 2004
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50 First Dates (2004) |
The memory-loss device dimly recalls Groundhog Day, though the film's low laugh rate, occasional lachrymosity and flaccid pacing assuredly do not. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Feb 11, 2004
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Touching the Void (2003) |
Breathtaking stuff that freezes the toes, harrows the soul and turns the viewer's seat into a foot-wide ledge over a yawning chasm. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Feb 05, 2004
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Barbershop 2: Back in Business (2004) |
Hysterically funny, historically aware, politically nuanced, culturally sophisticated and productively self-critical all at the same time -- and you'll need a second viewing just to catch all the jokes. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Feb 05, 2004
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The Perfect Score (2004) |
This undercooked high school heist movie is disfigured by flabby dialogue ... unfunny pratfalls and criminally slack pacing. - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Jan 28, 2004
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Bad Boys II (2003) |
Bay's world is basically Miami Vice squared, cubed and updated to THX and Dolby SurroundSound noise levels, and it must have cost the earth to outstrip every other action-bozo currently labouring in the same field. - Guardian
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| Posted Jan 15, 2004
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Peter Pan (2003) |
For the first time in ages, a film makes one grateful for special effects: Indeed, it feels as if this is the very story such innovations were invented to enhance. You do, you do, you DO believe in fairies! - L.A. Weekly
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| Posted Dec 18, 2003
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