Patrick Nabarro
Patrick Nabarro is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this
publication only count toward the Tomatometer when written by the following
Tomatometer-approved critic(s):
PJ Nabarro
Rating
Title/Year
Author
1
5/5
Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
Bresson slowly transmits that it is Balthazar's example of loyalty, sustenance and grace that is noble and permanent - not the transient agendas of the people around him.
Posted Dec 19, 2018
2
4/5
A seemingly literary exercise, but one that slowly and memorably imprints itself sensorially by the final reel.
Posted Dec 19, 2018
3
4/5
First Reformed (2018)
An absolutely compelling portrait of a man of faith immersed in a fugue of existential anguish.
Posted Dec 19, 2018
4
4/5
Loveless (Nelyubov) (2018)
A coruscating parable of responsibility - one that shines an unflinching, interrogative light on the damage caused by a culture of carelessness and narcissism.
Posted Dec 19, 2018
5
5/5
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
There's two competing frames of reference throughout: the narrative itself, then a meta-narrative with the characters continually voicing the etiquette of their genre scenario
Posted Dec 16, 2018
6
3/5
The Monuments Men (2014)
Clooney is trying to push the merit of the material a touch too much; a fact betrayed by the amount of times his character ventriloquises the film's two main morals.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
7
2/5
Hitchcock (2012)
What's ironic is that Psycho was such a radical, cinematographically novel film, but Gervasi is completely unable to find a meta-referential way of honouring that.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
8
4/5
The Big Sleep (1946)
The plot's complexity and slow unravelling of its subject matter of exploitation, blackmail and murder, make it the obvious precursor to some of the great, modern noir dramas.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
9
4/5
Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
One of the most charming Hollywood screwball comedies of recent years.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
10
3/5
The Deep (2013)
There's such a broody feel to proceedings; it's not realism as such, because there are mournful sequences where the fishermen disappear into the ether of the Atlantic Ocean.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
11
4/5
Stories We Tell (2013)
A quasi-Derridan, deconstructionist enquiry by Sarah Polley into her family history.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
12
2/5
The Act Of Killing (2013)
To take Anwar's own dramatic projection of his gradual humanisation seems a much more murky and less conclusive process than Oppenheimer wants to tidily present us with.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
13
4/5
Breathe In (2014)
A beautifully realised piece of cinema, and Doremus seems to understand that storytelling on film needn't just be about dramaturgy, but also more tactile and ephemeral things.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
14
4/5
All the President's Men (1976)
A bravura piece of filmmaking to rank alongside his earlier 'paranoia' gem, The Parallax View.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
15
3/5
Syriana (2005)
I'm hard-pushed to think of a more cynical and self-critical American picture, and one that so radically and empathetically portrays the genesis of Islamic suicide bombers.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
16
3/5
Le passé (The Past) (2013)
We get a sense of the Larkin sentiment that, "They fuck you up, your mum and dad", as the by products of the parental dalliances (the kids), are left as collateral damage.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
17
4/5
Sexy Beast (2000)
An extended short film par excellence, and we're permitted to luxuriate in Glazer's skills.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
18
2/5
In the House (2013)
An unconvincing, sub-Almodóvarian twist on fantasy projection, sexual awakening, and the unreliability of storytelling.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
19
3/5
Key Largo (1948)
A classy little '40s chamber piece that is competently handled by writer-director John Huston and supremely well acted by its starry cast.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
20
4/5
Upstream Color (2013)
Carruth places us in the same radical position as his two stranded protagonists, who have been forced into a Thoreauvian journey to discover their inner "drummer".
Posted Dec 16, 2018
21
1/5
The Big Wedding (2013)
If the whole set-up wasn't so apologetically dire, you could call its politics offensive.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
22
4/5
The Royal Tenenbaums (2002)
What really stands out is how rich the story's technical canvas and narrative textures actually are.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
23
4/5
The Sixth Sense (1999)
One of Hollywood's most accomplished genre films of the last 20 years.
Posted Dec 16, 2018
24
4/5
Roma (2018)
Cuarón is dangling a cathartic hook as Cleo 'overcomes' personal tragedy with a heroic gesture. But the whiff of injustice still lingers at the film's end - to me, at least.
Posted Dec 15, 2018
25
4/5
My Friend Dahmer (2017)
What's impressive is despite the film's huge subtextual residue (Dahmer's future serial killer status), Meyers still wraps it all up in a cogent dramatic and visual framework.
Posted Dec 15, 2018
26
3/5
Hereditary (2018)
It's pure aesthetic the whole way through, and, certainly, for the first 30-40 minutes the genuinely unsettling atmosphere is brilliantly sustained.
Posted Dec 15, 2018
27
4/5
Far From Heaven (2003)
Haynes was miraculously able to provide a commentary on class, gender and race relations that not only dissected the utopian fallacy of '50s America but made it resonate today
Posted Dec 15, 2018
28
3/5
A satirical snapshot of the maxim that finding love is the true route to self-realisation, and how this tyranny enslaves people who fall outside its nuclear ideal.
Posted Dec 10, 2018
29
3/5
Training Day (2001)
Training Day is not a completely unnuanced parable on policing and a nice disavowal of the movie-perpetuated cliché of smug, streetwise copdom.
Posted Dec 9, 2018
30
1/5
Changeling (2008)
Changeling is such a dead weight of poor, blandly prestigious Hollywood genre cinema
Posted Dec 9, 2018
31
2/5
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
Garfield's turn as Peter Parker is unbearably mannered and close to unwatchable at times. It's almost as if he's over-demonstrating the awkward, underdog charm of Parker.
Posted Dec 9, 2018
32
2/5
Paris (2008)
Most of the time, Klapisch's dramaturgy cannot match the ambition of his premise, and he particularly fails in trying to push the cutesy, rom-com leanings of the scenario.
Posted Dec 9, 2018
33
4/5
Breathless (1961)
Godard is, in a sense, flaunting how he can make a film so vibrant, out of raw materials so flighty, so airy (the 'Breathless' of the title).
Posted Dec 9, 2018
34
3/5
Sightseers (2013)
35
3/5
Frances Ha (2013)
36
2/5
37
2/5
The Whistleblower (2011)
All the players in The Whistleblower are broad ciphers, in service of the simplistic, didactic intentions of the plot.
Posted Dec 8, 2018
38
4/5
The World's End (2013)
A brilliant, apocalyptic genre pastiche while also a fiendishly clever commentary on the numbing homogeneity of middle England living.
Posted Dec 8, 2018
39
3/5
Down Terrace (2010)
A film that is compelling in its own right, while also functioning meta-referentially - as a commentary on the gangster and kitchen sink genres it so mercilessly distorts.
Posted Dec 8, 2018
40
3/5
Nowhere Boy (2010)
41
4/5
Bukowski: Born into This (2003)
42
1/5
It's All Gone Pete Tong (2004)
90 minutes of absolute mindless drivel.
Posted Dec 8, 2018
43
3/5
Ali (2001)
Will Smith takes the wise and sensible option of not trying to impersonate Ali per se, but rather tonally build an impression of Ali from his own natural register.
Posted Dec 8, 2018
44
1/5
Only God Forgives (2013)
There's a vainglorious gratuity to the gory scenes in Only God Forgives that makes them, whisper it quietly...a touch boring.
Posted Dec 8, 2018
45
4/5
Trainspotting (1996)
Like the work of some sort of maverick theatre troupe, it's all carried off with a real concentric, anarchic verve.
Posted Dec 8, 2018
46
2/5
Le Week-End (2014)
47
3/5
A story told as much through mood, sentiment and image than through a writer's more conventional tool of dramaturgy.
Posted Dec 8, 2018
48
3/5
Celebrity (1998)
Indicative of a time when Allen had a degree of vivacity and ingenuity in his work before it went increasingly down the turgid, tourist-porn route in Europe.
Posted Dec 8, 2018
49
2/5
Captain Phillips (2013)
Works as a reasonably effective thriller, although, in retrospect, that seems more down to the inherent strengths of the scenario than any brio in the storytelling itself.
Posted Dec 8, 2018
50
3/5
Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku) (2018)