Sean Patrick
Bio
Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.
Stories (1645/0)
Movie Review: 'Bernard and Huey'
Bernard and Huey is based on a long lost script by Jules Feiffer, the famed cartoonist and the screenwriter of 1971’s Carnal Knowledge, a film directed by Mike Nichols. If you’re someone in my profession, you could have guessed, at the very least, that Bernard and Huey's director Dan Mirvish had seen Carnal Knowledge. Much of Bernard and Huey plays like a modernized take on the same characters in a slightly different frame.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks
Movie Review 'Burning'
Burning is an American film noir dressed in modern, South Korean sensibilities and aesthetics. This mystery about a missing girl and the two men in her sphere is a fascinating meditation on obsession and sexual politics. Directed by the brilliant Lee Chang Dong, Burning doesn’t appear headed anywhere until it finally arrives at a place you could not have imagined at the start. Desire, jealousy, rage, all feelings that burn come into play by the end of this tremendous film.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks
How 'Bonnie & Clyde' Changed Acting
Bonnie & Clyde is a flashpoint in American film history in more ways than one. Arthur Penn’s seminal crime drama ushered in the American New Wave of director-driven cinema in 1967. In a smaller, less notable fashion, however, Bonnie & Clyde marks a change in the way acting was perceived in the 1960’s and going forward. In the performances of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway and their co-stars Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons, you have a perfect microcosm of the shift in acting style that was taking place at this time in American cinema.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks
Classic Movie Review 'Bonnie & Clyde'
Bonnie & Clyde, 1967, is a stunning movie of its moment. It’s chaotic and violent, a swirling cauldron of romanticized crime and Americana. The film is riddled with bullets and blood and guts and yet it’s not a horror movie. Bonnie & Clyde at once influenced the age of movies that came after it and doesn’t quite live up to the movement it presaged. For all of its reputation, Bonnie & Clyde is best remembered as the beginning of the American New Wave, the era of the superstar director and the end of the Hollywood Studio system.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks
Movie Review '55 Steps'
55 Steps is unquestionably a tearjerker—it just happens to be a high calibur tearjerker. This is a superb film that features a pair of lead performances that just work. Helena Bonham Carter and Hilary Swank are given all the room in the world to emote and overact and instead both actresses find near perfect tones for their performances that bridge a perfect gap between the broad strokes of drama and the authenticity of a based-on-a-true story movie.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks
Child's Play: Chucky at 30
How did our culture come to allow Chucky from Child’s Play become a thing? Thirty years after the film debuted Chucky remains in the darkest corners of our popular culture appealing to those with a bizarre, macabre sense of humor and a deep tolerance for stupid. Personally, I’ve never had any interest in this silly horror doll nonsense. I’ve never understood the appeal.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Horror
30 Years of Almodovar's 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown'
Pedro Almodovar is a wonderful director. His talent for insight and his strange sensibilities consistently surprise. This could not be more true of his 1988 farce, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which cobbles together elements of 50s rom-coms with the overheated dramatics of a telenovela to wonderful comic effect.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks
How Marketing Undermines Suspense in 'The Girl in the Spider's Web'
Two trailers for the new Sony action movie The Girl in the Spider’s Web illustrate something about modern Hollywood marketing that should make you more wary of movie trailers. These two trailers go a long way toward spoiling almost everything about this twisty thriller that thrives on creating suspense—suspense that is drained away almost completely if you watch the trailers.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks
Movie Review 'Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda'
For years, for me, the music of Ryuichi Sakamoto was some throwaway music reference. In the movie High Fidelity, Ialways intended to look up but never did. I took note of his work recently when I saw The Last Emperor, for the first time in more than a decade, but it wasn’t until this week when I saw the remarkable documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda that I finally came to understand his genius.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Beat
Movie Review 'Love, Gilda'
I was concerned going to into Love, Gilda that the movie wouldn't have much to tell me about Gilda Radner that I didn't already know. As a devotee of Radner for years and years, I felt I had her down pretty well. I admired her deeply and I have read her biography, It's Always Something, more than once. What could a documentary possibly tell me?
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks
Pointless Scene Reveals Fatal Falsehood of 'Bohemian Rhapsody'
There are many, many, many things wrong with Bryan Singer's Bohemian Rhapsody from the joyless portrayal of Freddie Mercury's life to the script which features Mercury spouting music producer jargon to explain the creative magic of Queen, to Mike Myers being, well, Mike Myers in a role that amounts to little more than a dimwitted meta gag.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Beat
Tyler Perry and the Failed Film Language of a Good Scene in 'Nobody's Fool'
Well, time to do that thing that everyone tells me I am not supposed to do and think about and film language. Even though I am film critic and my job calls upon me to think about movies in a way that most don't, one thing that I am told, when I am not being told how much I "hate movies" is that I think about movies too much.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks