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 (1969)
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Classic Movie Review: 'Space Jam'
Space Jam has become a part of popular culture nostalgia in recent years. I can’t call it a critical reappraisal as critics are more likely to walk intentionally into traffic than actually sit down to assess Space Jam in any critical fashion after 25 years of its release, but a reappraisal has occurred nevertheless. The generations that came after Generation X have come to embrace the cheesy nostalgia and soundtrack of Space Jam regardless of the actual quality of Space Jam.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks
Movie Review: 'Broken Diamonds'
Things in movies are more than just things. If a writer or director calls attention to a specific thing, that thing gains meaning from that attention beyond its mere function. In the case of the new mental health drama, Broken Diamonds starring Ben Platt and Lola Kirke, it’s a house that takes on a great deal more meaning than being merely a place where someone lives. The house in question belonged to the main characters’ father and the added layer of meaning deepens as the story unfolds.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks
Movie Review: 'How it Ends'
How it Ends is like an indie pop song, it appeals to some very specific sensibilities and will not be for all audiences. This end of the world comedy finds a nonplussed millennial mildly struggling with her identity and past as she makes plans for the destruction of the planet at the end of this day. What stands out about Eliza (Zoe Lister-Jones), beyond her existential crisis, is that she’s followed everywhere she goes by a projection of her younger self, Young Eliza (Cailee Spenny).
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks
Movie Review: 'The Tomorrow War'
The Tomorrow War stars Chris Pratt as a High School science teacher and military veteran who gets drafted into a very unique war. While watching the World Cup at a party, Chris and the rest of the world are shocked to find the famed tournament interrupted by the arrival of soldiers from the future. As these soldiers will eventually explain, they’ve developed time travel technology specifically so that they can go back in time to recruit soldiers to fight in a future war against alien beasties.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Futurism
Movie Review: 'Pig' Starring Nicolas Cage
Pig is a very simple movie about loving something more than you love yourself. While it can be hard to take Nicolas Cage seriously these days given his full transformation into a meme in human form Pig shows that there are still times when the actor emerges from the shadow of the icon. Pig is a great example of Nicolas Cage the actor emerging and showing the delicacy and talent that is so often forgotten behind the bugged intensity and meme-worthy posing.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks
Movie Review: 'Downeast'
Downeast is a rarity in this modern movie world. It’s a tiny, independent, gritty crime thriller that doesn’t feel as if it is recycling every crime movie cliche. Sure, the characters and the situation are familiar but the setting is new and the characters are authentic and charismatic. Written and directed by Joe Raffa, Downeast is a smart crime drama pitched at a perfect moderate pace that allows the characters to breathe and lets the story to settle into a lovely rise and fall.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Criminal
Movie Review: 'Dachra' Tunisia's First Horror Movie
Dachra is said to be Tunisia’s first horror movie. If that’s indeed true then they’ve learned a lot from the horror traditions of America. The film is about three journalism students who are chasing an exclusive story in order to get a good grade in their class. They are tasked with doing an original, exclusive, investigative news story and one of the three happens to have an idea that involves a legendary mental patient and the strange village near where the patient was found having survived having her throat cut and other such horrors.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Horror
Classic Movie Review: 'Bad Lieutenant'
Abel Ferrara is one of the most daring, fascinating, and unique voices in film. Though he’s made his fair share of duds in his nearly 50 years behind the camera, he’s also made some truly iconic movies. Ms. 45 was a recent revelation for me, a film about Me Too decades before Me Too became a movement demanding change in the way women are treated by men in our American society. Ms. 45 is, for me, a true classic but for most it is not a movie they’ve even heard of, let alone experienced.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks
Movie Review: 'Black Widow'
The legendary pop song American Pie has a small role to play in Black Widow. The song features early in the movie acting as comfort for a little girl who grows up to be Black Widow’s little sister Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh). It reprises later in the movie as a reminder of a more innocent time in Yelena’s life. It’s a bit on the nose but I appreciated it nonetheless, an all time great pop song about America’s loss of innocence reflecting the loss of innocence for one of Marvel’s great heroes.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks
Classic Movie Review: 'Speed'
Speed is a near perfect action movie. Starring Keanu Reeves as Jack Traven, a member of the LAPD bomb squad, Speed crafts a nearly non-stop thrill ride while delivering characters we find easy to care about and root for. Co-starring with Reeves was Sandra Bullock in the role that would make her a superstar. Annie is a plucky every-woman and Bullock radiates star power and charisma in the role. Bullock is so good in Speed that she makes the previously wooden Reeves look like the movie star Hollywood claimed he was in 1994.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks
Movie Review: 'The God Commitee' The Heart is Just a Muscle
“You fail to remember that the heart is just a muscle.” I have to give Kelsey Grammer credit for being able to deliver that line above without breaking into a giggle fit. The context is that Grammer is portraying a world renowned heart surgeon who is demeaning another heart surgeon for getting too emotionally involved with her patients. Grammer is called upon to deliver lines like this one more than once in the new movie, The God Committee, a deeply flawed and earnest melodrama about a heart transplant.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Geeks
Documentary Review: 'Summer of Soul' and the Empathy of Shared Memories
Summer of Soul is one of the most emotional documentaries I have ever experienced. Watching this more than 50 years after it had seemingly disappeared, the music at the heart of Summer of Soul is more powerful than ever. Time has given Summer of Soul a power that it did not have when it happened. Don’t misunderstand, as you watch this remarkable footage, the moment captured had power in the moment it happened. I mean that time and incident have given the footage even greater impact.
By Sean Patrick5 years ago in Beat
