Month: June 2013

REVIEW: Before Sunrise [1995]

Jared Mobarak

“How do you speak such good English?” While Slacker put Richard Linklater on the map and Dazed and Confused shot him into mainstream consciousness, Before Sunrise was the film that cemented him as an auteur of note. An intimate portrait of love depicting one assumedly solitary night for two complete strangers that becomes a romantic evening neither expected, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) take a chance on the other after candid conversation evolves into a mutual desire to not say goodbye. His flight from Vienna to America looms…

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REVIEW: Tiger Eyes [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“I wonder what it’s like to be dead?” Venerable young adult fiction novelist Judy Blume published her first book in 1969 and despite iconic titles like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, only a failed television series based on her character Fudge found its way to the visual medium. A constant source of controversy as she continuously pushed the envelope on “age-appropriateness” for her readers, it isn’t a surprise Tiger Eyes has prevailed to become her first cinematic adaptation. Admittedly self-censored on…

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REVIEW: Nancy, Please [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“I want you to be on my side” We know we’ve reached the crucial moment of Andrew Semans’ Nancy, Please when a distraught Paul (Will Rogers) finds himself at ex-roommate Nancy’s (Eleonore Hendricks) door in the hope his copy of Charles Dickens’ Little Dorsitt is on the other side. Panicked, paranoid, and needy in an emotionally damaged way, he has begun to believe two years of labor have been rendered moot at the eleventh hour because he forgot the book—who’s annotations are key to writing his graduate thesis—while moving out.…

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INTERVIEW: Geoffrey Fletcher, writer/director of Violet & Daisy

Jared Mobarak

Oscar winning screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher has kept busy post-Precious as a Columbia University and NY Tisch School adjunct professor, the driving creative force behind Bombay Sapphire’s Imagination Series, and collaborating with Doug Liman on a new film entitled Attica about the 1971 prison rebellion. Despite all this, however, it’s his directorial debut Violet & Daisy that has him in the spotlight once again. I had pleasure of speaking with the soft-spoken and introspective artist about the film’s genesis, its journey to the big screen, and the essence of cinematic storytelling.…

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REVIEW: Model/Photographer [2009]

Jared Mobarak

“Let’s keep going” Writer/director Zak Forsman appears as though he can do no wrong when it comes to emotional heartbreak and the romantic connections we all form in our lives. Unlike his first short I Fucking Hate You’s glimpse into the impossibility of remaining close with one another post break-up, however, the six-minute Model/Photographer seeks to portray the inherent confusion of trying just that. While some are able to carefully adhere to a foreign delineation of boundaries—removing the romance to otherwise retain what was platonically—not everyone has the strength, desire,…

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REVIEW: I Fucking Hate You [2008]

Jared Mobarak

“I didn’t hide it very well, did I?” It isn’t easy to let someone go. The pain, guilt, anger, regret, and lingering love mixes together into a pool of emotion you cannot simply move on from without introspection and time. For some a final meeting can go a long way towards tying loose ends and saying a real goodbye far from the open wound of that initial parting of ways containing little but hatred in your heart. It’s hard to remember good times once they’re over because the heartbreak overshadows…

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Posterized Propaganda June 2013: The Apocalypse is Nigh With ‘Man of Steel,’ ‘World War Z,’ ‘This is the End’ & More

Jared Mobarak

“Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” is a proverb whose simple existence proves the fact impressionable souls will do so without fail. This monthly column focuses on the film industry’s willingness to capitalize on this truth, releasing one-sheets to serve as not representations of what audiences are to expect, but as propaganda to fill seats. Oftentimes they fail miserably. Summer continues chugging along with the America and/or Earth threatened by destruction at every turn. Whether comic book adaptations, zombie wars, terrorist assaults or a giant pit opening up to…

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REVIEW: The Battery [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“Like rain on a tin roof” It’s hard to give any new film about zombies the benefit of the doubt. What started as a politically charged venue to comment on society has pretty much been warped into an entertainment franchise providing viewers copious amounts of guilt-free blood and gore in the name of survival. Every once in a while something fresh arrives—a comedic romp like Shaun of the Dead, the small screen writing clinic of “The Walking Dead”, enhanced mythology for more authentic thrills a la 28 Days Later, or…

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