Patrick Robert Movies
- 2013
- R
The life of one of the most infamous women in early '70s America gets a dramatization in this offbeat period biopic from co-directors Jeffrey Friedman and Robert Epstein. In the Florida suburbs, circa 1970, Linda Boreman (Amanda Seyfried) is an ordinary and unremarkable young woman, who moved back in with her parents (Robert Patrick and Sharon Stone) a year or so earlier, following an unplanned pregnancy. One night on the town, she crosses paths with Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard) a local bar and restaurant owner who sees Linda as an opportunity; he soon wins her over as a girlfriend, and not long after, the two are married. Within a couple of years,Chuck shoots a private stag film of Linda performing oral sex on a partner, and decides to show it to Gerry Damiano (Hank Azaria), an up-and-coming porn director with ties to the Mafia. Damiano is so impressed by the footage that he immediately decides to cast Linda in his new picture, the hardcore comedy Deep Throat, which becomes the single most lucrative adult film of all time and turns the young woman - renamed Linda Lovelace - into a household name. The film then flashes forward to six years later, when Linda authors a shocking tell-all book about what really happened when the cameras weren't rolling; she describes the sadistic abuse that she endured at the hands of Traynor and a series of increasingly futile attempts to escape from his clutches, and claims that she was coerced to appear in the movie. The media then turns Lovelace - now a Long Island housewife, Linda Marciano - into a feminist icon and a crusader against domestic violence and the enslavement of the porn industry. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
- Starring:
- Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, (more)
An elite police squad fights to save the city of Los Angeles from a power-hungry East Coast mobster in this gritty police-detective film set in the 1940s, and based on Paul Lieberman's seven-part Los Angeles Times series "Tales From the Gangster Squad." Jewish gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) is a Brooklyn-born boxer-turned-L.A. kingpin whose brutal ambition has earned him the respect of the Italian mob. He's the kind of crime boss who dines with judges and police chiefs, but still isn't quite sure which fork to use when it comes time for the main course. Just when it begins to look like Cohen owns every cop in the city, however, LAPD Chief Parker (Nick Nolte) enlists honest cop Sgt. John O'Mara (Josh Brolin) to assemble a top-secret task force that will burn the vicious gangster's thriving criminal empire to the ground. With the help of his pregnant wife Connie (Mireille Enos), Sgt. O'Mara handpicks smooth-talking Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling), heroin-hating Officer Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie), deadeye Officer Max Kennard (Robert Patrick), and brilliant wireman Officer Conwell Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi) for the task at hand. Joined by Officer Kennard's tough sidekick Officer Navidad Ramirez (Michael Peña) as they set out for their first job, the squad strike fast and hard at the core of Cohen's operation. Meanwhile, the charming Sgt. Wooters flirts with danger by starting an affair with Cohen's smoldering paramour Grace Faraday (Emma Stone). Shortly after learning that Cohen is plotting a power play that will cement his stronghold on the city, however, the squad are unexpectedly compromised, putting the lives of all of their families in danger and leaving them with little choice but to step up their efforts and target the ruthless gangster directly. Should they live to accomplish their mission, Sgt. O'Mara and his men will prevent L.A. from becoming a hive of criminal activity like Chicago or New York. But Cohen isn't going down without a fight, and if he falls, the entire city will feel the aftershock.
~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, (more)
French director Elie Chouraqui adapts the novel of the same name into this drama, that, although set in 1991, became tragically topical in the weeks before its release due to the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Andie MacDowell stars as Sarah, a photo editor for Newsweek and the happily married wife of Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Harrison Lloyd (David Strathairn). Harrison has been reconsidering his career of covering the world's war zone "hot spots" in order to spend more time with his family, and is accused by his colleague, Kyle (Adrien Brody), of playing it too safe in his risky profession. Harrison elects to accept one more combat assignment to cover the simmering tensions in Croatia, a conflict that quickly erupts into a full-scale, genocidal Civil War. Informed that Harrison is believed to have been killed in the fighting, Sarah refuses to accept her husband's death and becomes convinced that she's seen him, alive, in a news broadcast. She travels to Croatia on a quest to find him, and is eventually aided by Kyle, as well as two of Harrison's other colleagues, Yeager (Elias Koteas) and Stevenson (Brendan Gleeson). The group, armed with cameras instead of weapons, witnesses the horrors and atrocities unfolding in the region, while tracing the elusive path of Harrison, who may well be dead already. Harrison's Flowers was distributed by Universal Focus, the art house division of Universal Pictures that previously released Mulholland Drive (2001) and Billy Elliott (2000). ~ Karl Williams, Rovi
- Starring:
- Andie MacDowell, David Strathairn, (more)
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Portions of Content Provided by Rovi Corporation. 2013 Rovi Corporation.