robert patrick triple feature in which he sees maybe ten minutes of screen time, all told

All the Pretty Horses: (2000. dir: Billy Bob Thornton) The rule is: you don't make great movies out of great books. The art forms are weirdly incompatible, refusing to transition smoothly except in the hands of a genius. You make great movies out of schlock potboilers: M*A*S*H, Jaws, the Godfather, the Exorcist. The reasons for it are probably more complicated than I'm allowing, but my best guess is that it's because schlock potboilers are heavy on story and sensation and devoid of all things more delicately ineffable and high-falutin', whereas great books are usually great not primarily because of story but because they're beautifully written. And All the Pretty Horses is one of those.

That said, I read the book so long ago and so quickly (the only thing I remember clearly is "Scared money can't win, and a worried man can't love") that watching the movie was almost like going in fresh. I recall a Matt Damon interview talking about meeting Paul Newman when he was just cast as John Grady Cole; Newman looked at him intently and said, "That's a big responsibility, you know," or something daunting like that. No pressure, right? As it is, both Damon and Henry Thomas as Lacey comport themselves very well, as does a young Lucas Black as the star-crossed outlaw boy Blevins.

Thornton brings a whimsical sensibility and a relaxed timing to the piece, both of which are necessary to conjure up some of the book's magic. There's a moment late on when Cole is making a desperate, last-ditch phone call to the woman he loves, a woman he may easily never see again, and when she relents, the cowpoke waiting in line to use the phone grins a silly grin and does a little jig, bringing to mind the dancing soul in Herzog's Bad Lieutenant, or possibly something out of David Lynch's playbook.

Alas, the story is shaped wrong for a movie. It trails off toward the end, although its meanderings are certainly engaging, and convincing love stories, tragic or not, are hard as hell to communicate on film. What we get are the trappings, without the numinosity, without the awkward radiance.

Robert Patrick plays Cole's dad in a single scene (everyone wanted to be in this: Sam Shepard and Bruce Dern also have single scene roles, lending an air of gravitas to this 20th-century, fading, "Old" West), and, between the makeup and the mastery of the actor, this is one of those wasting, etiolated characters who, when he pulls on the cigarette, looks alarmingly like the cigarette is pulling on him.

Balls of Fury: (2007. dir: Robert Ben Garant) Irreverent, madcap zany-fest about a washed-up ping pong prodigy hired by the FBI to infiltrate the inner circle of a criminal mastermind (Christopher Walken, donning the Yellow Peril drag).

Robert Patrick's character is dead within the first five minutes. Did I watch the rest of the movie? are you crazy, asking me a thing like that? I fast-forwarded to Christopher Walken, pausing for anything else I thought might be vaguely entertaining, and was generally disappointed in the hope.

We Are Marshall: (2006. dir: McG) This is Sentimental Hogwash, no question, unabashedly so, but well-meaning, and remarkably well-handled hogwash. In a nutshell: a West Virginia college's entire football team dies in a plane wreck, and both school and town have to find a way to recover from the devastating blow. A bumbling but good-hearted school president, an enthusiastic new coach, and a player who stayed behind due to injury join forces to create a miracle.

The editing is dynamic enough, the music well enough chosen, and the acting good enough that this is better than most entries into the Sentimental Hogwash genre. Also, there's more actual "sportsing" in it than in most "sports films", always a great frustration to me in my search for the perfect football movie (football in the true sense of the word). This one is about American Tackleball, and it doesn't shy away from the ugliness of the game, but the footage itself is well filmed and edited.

It's also filmed using the Teal-and-Orange palette, but it's a boldly warm version which evokes memories of Super 8, which in turn evokes the '70s.

Robert Patrick plays the tough old coach, and, again, is dead by five minutes in.

robert patrick double feature: bridge to terabithia and black waters of echo's pond

Bridge to Terabithia: (2007. dir: Gabor Csupo) Let's take a new look at the Disney Dad. Not the absent father who overcompensates with material generosity during his brief stints with the kids, and not the Dean Jones/Fred MacMurray characters, who are honestly more overgrown kids than adults.

This is the dad who is honest and hard-working, fairly successful in his field, well-meaning and genial, whose paternal flaws are generally momentary and rise from existing under the pressure of providing for a family, a responsibility the Disney Dad takes very seriously in his amiable way. His mistake will come in siding with a malicious teacher or authority figure against his son out of temporary blindness, or in discouraging the kid from following his dreams out of the old fear the kid will lose his grip on reality and never be able to hold a decent job. His flaw is superficial, or passing, and, by the end, we see that he really is a stand-up guy, proved by his willingness and ability to learn from his own children.

Disney Dads exist solely to buffer and guide the stories of the kids. That is, they exist exclusively in relation to their own children, and there is a chilling argument to be made that the modern American exaltation of youth may have risen partly from the Disney Dad and his perfect, housekeeping mate existing so centrally in the subconscious of these several generations.

All that is preface to say that Robert Patrick is now my favorite Disney Dad. This movie is flawed; the fantasy part of the story, I think, is not carried off, but it finds success in examining unusual areas of growing up, and so is worthwhile. The paternal scene near the end in which Patrick's dad arrives in the nick of time, not to save his son, but to provide the needed comfort and wisdom, is a lovely one.

I love Patrick in this. His subtlety of expression and what I'm calling his "communicative stoicism" have reached an acme of perfection here.

Black Waters of Echo's Pond: (2009. dir: Gabriel Bologna) In the olden days, actors used to learn their chops on soap operas. Nowadays, and probably following a tradition inspired by the unique and beguiling Roger Corman (who, by the way, gave Robert Patrick his start in the business), the kids learn to act by taking part in this kind of horror film: the kind where there's an intent to party in a secluded place, the outward supernatural plays on the inward human weakness, and various stripes of mayhem ensue.

This is a bad movie, but certainly not the worst of its kind, because about half of the kids are decent actors, and some care went into things like the dark, velvety color scheme. The violence gets pretty gross, and the plot is ridiculous. We start with the opening of a Turkish tomb in the 1920s, -- I guess it's supposed to be reminiscent of Howard Carter and the folks who originally looked in on King Tut. This bunch, though, are hoity-toity English idiots who find an ancient "map" with instructions to build a board-game (you heard me) through which Pandaemonium, the Realm of Pan, will manifest. These are fully grown adults, you understand; probably archeologists, considering the context. Let's build the game! they cry. We must build it! and, by the time the Lord Carnarvon figure, who financed the whole shebang, enters onto the scene (somehow it's all transported to a private island off Maine now), everyone is murdered, but the "game" has been hidden, so that NO ONE WILL EVER FIND IT!

You know what that means. Anyway, the kids play the game, la la la, it summons the devil not through possession but by poking into annoyed wakefulness the personal devils carried within each of them. Bloodshed, mayhem, carnal lusts. When they're really lost, the eyes turn big and black. When did that become the accepted norm in horror films? I think it was in From Hell that I first saw it, but maybe it started earlier than that.

In any case, as usual, Robert Patrick is the great thing about this movie. He is the curmudgeonly caretaker who totes a shotgun and spends his time killing deer and dragging lobsters up out of the sea. He swills his vodka straight from the bottle and has a twinkle in his eye while he tells sanguinary histories of the island to creep the kids out.

And, like so many Robert Patrick movies, the only compelling reason to watch this is if you're looking to experience his entire oeuvre.