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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Movie Review: 'Greyhound' is Relentlessly Exciting
Greyhound is an exciting, fast paced, action movie written by Tom Hanks and directed by Aaron Schneider, a director not exactly known for fast paced action. Schneider directed the slow paced, not particularly well remembered Get Low, about a character played by Robert Duvall as a man struggling to plan his own death and burial. Get Low is actually a pretty good movie but it doesn’t exactly prepare you for the whipsaw action of Greyhound.
By Sean Patrick6 years ago in Serve
Documentary Review: 'Denise Ho: Becoming the Music'
What is it about American pop stars? Why is it always so awkward when they step up and attempt to say something important? I have a theory: it’s our fault. We, the audience, the consumer, the fan, demand that our pop stars be relatable, they need to have themes that resonate on the widest possible spectrum. If an artist takes a confident stand on an issue, we become uncomfortable.
By Sean Patrick6 years ago in Beat
Movie Review: 'The Tobacconist'
The Tobacconist is yet another in a long line of dreary dramas about pre-World War 2 Europe. Ostensibly a coming of age story, The Tobacconist takes us to Austria circa 1938, just before the arrival of the Germans and the coming of age of a strange young man named Franz Huchel (Simon Morze). Franz has an affinity for being underwater. Repeatedly, Franz’s mother finds him hiding underwater holding his breath, be it in a lake or in a barrel holding a dead animal. Why? Who the hell knows.
By Sean Patrick6 years ago in Geeks
Classic Movie Review: 'They Live' is John Carpenter at His Best
As a film critic one of my most reviled and despised opinions is that I don't care for John Carpenter’s 1978 horror movie Halloween. I find the film to be amateurish, if I may be frank, with an almost absurd level of over-praise for its filmmaking. Thankfully, my disdain for Halloween was not enough to sour me on the work of John Carpenter as a whole. I was lucky that I stuck with Carpenter as movies like The Fog, Escape from New York and the movie I am writing about today, 1988’s They Live, are genuinely brilliant movies, far more worthy of praise than Halloween.
By Sean Patrick6 years ago in Geeks
Movie Review: 'Slender Man' Horror in Truly Bad Taste
As soon as Slender Man cropped up in cinemas in 2018 I was told that I was mistaken for accusing the movie of utilizing the attempted homicide of a young girl to sell the movie. This was when I reviewed the movie on the radio. A fan said that it wasn't consequential by virtue of the story of the movie Slender Man not being the same as the real life tragedy. The action of the film casts the Slender Man as another in a long line vaguely ill-defined supernatural villains such as The Bye Bye Man or whatever the creature was in the Sinister franchise.
By Sean Patrick6 years ago in Horror
Growing Out of Die Hard 2
Die Hard 2 is weird. Why make a sequel to Die Hard? How is the audience expected to believe that Bruce Willis’s John McClane would find himself in the midst of yet another terrorist plot with worldwide implications. That’s not exactly a regular occurrence for someone we assume is an NYPD Detective. Right off the bat, the movie is stretching credulity. Then the movie begins and we are slapped in the face with some of the more awkward opening scenes of a major action franchise.
By Sean Patrick6 years ago in Geeks
Movie Review: 'Hamilton' Arrives on Disney Plus
I have a confession to make, I am incredibly jealous of those who get to see first run Broadway shows. Whether it is because I hate to hear of an arts conversation that I cannot be part of, or because I am jealous of the reactions of my peers who do get that first hand experience, I have, in the past, and in an immature fashion, slagged off Broadway presentations as if they weren’t important cultural moments. It was purely spiteful and I own that.
By Sean Patrick6 years ago in Geeks
Classic Movie Review: 'Night of the Living Dead'
Night of the Living Dead is a flash-point in film history, one of the most successful and influential horror movies of all time. The success of Night of the Living Dead can be credited with the horror boom that followed in the decades after it was released. For the first time, Hollywood executives, especially those in the world of film distribution, were forced to sit up and take notice of the horror genre for the first time since the heyday of the Universal monster movies of the 1930’s.
By Sean Patrick6 years ago in Horror
Classic Movie Review: The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Rocky Horror Picture Show was remarkably ahead of its time. This bizarre burlesque of science fiction and monster movie tropes, by way of the musical, anticipates an entire subculture of sexuality and entertainment. Screenwriter Richard O’Brien was a genius and an outsider whose unique vision was perhaps too far ahead of its time in 1975 when the film was released to modest acclaim.
By Sean Patrick6 years ago in Geeks
Classic Movie Review: The Mummy
Attempts to remake Universal Pictures’ iconic horror movie The Mummy fail repeatedly because they cannot come close to topping the artistry or the popcorn movie excitement of the 1932 original starring Boris Karloff. If I were a filmmaker and my assignment was to make another version of The Mummy I would probably retire and take up another profession because you’re asking me to do the impossible: there will never be another movie like Karloff's The Mummy.
By Sean Patrick6 years ago in Horror
Class Movie Review: Dawn of the Dead
I’ve long had problems with zombie movies. I had tried to couch these problems in aesthetic issues or complaints about the lack of believability in the notion of the dead rising from the grave but I was aware that that was a silly argument. The reality of my issue with zombies is quite simply knowing that I am the last person who would ever survive the zombie apocalypse. I am hopelessly, woefully unprepared for any apocalypse really, let alone one that involves the dead rising from their graves.
By Sean Patrick6 years ago in Geeks
Classic Movie Review: 'Carnival of Souls'
Carnival of Souls is one of the great anomalies in film history. For many reasons, this movie should not have happened and even if it did get made the chances of it being seen by a mass audience and remembered for 50 plus years is some kind of miracle. Carnival of Souls was conceived by a filmmaker from Lawrence, Kansas, Herk Harvey, who had a minuscule budget and zero experience in anything outside of industrial films and educational film strips.
By Sean Patrick6 years ago in Horror
