Day: July 11, 2016

REVIEW: Tickled [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“All of this over some tickling” When a journalist known for delving into the weird side of pop culture and society stumbles across an online video depicting a young man tied to a table as four other young men tickle him in a “sport” dubbed “Competitive Tickling,” there’s no way he closes that window to continue his search elsewhere. That is the story—it’s like the Holy Grail of stories when it comes to David Farrier even before the real craziness begins. Because the simple premise of this athletic endurance challenge…

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REVIEW: Inspired [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“Don’t be late” For a student film, Maggie Kaszuba‘s Inspired is an effective cinematic effort. Depicting the life of a teenage girl dealing with ambivalence at home and tough love at school, the short has a wealth of earned emotion once relationships flesh out and motivation is revealed. Samantha Higgins (Tyler Kipp) is an underachiever not by choice, but circumstance. She’s depressed, sleepwalking through a tired existence that Coach Stafford (Ariane M. Reinhart) makes worse via a refusal to listen to the real causes of her basketball player’s struggles. Only…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: Crimson Dance [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“Welcome to the Bloody Burlesque Freak Show” Letting American burlesque dancer Tonya Kay perform an interpretive, sensual dance with blood isn’t necessarily the first thing that comes to my mind when thinking about ways to raise public consciousness about donating this crucial fluid, yet here we are. Writer/director Patricia Chica not only thought it, she filmed it as the 4-minute short Crimson Dance—a document of the performance as it is staged with the addition of a surreally aroused crowd bloodthirsty enough to probably lick the substance off Kay’s skin if…

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REVIEW: Bir Uyku Vakti [In a Time for Sleep] [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“They are all the same except for their names” Writer/director Tofiq Rzayev‘s latest short Bir Uyku Vakti [In a Time for Sleep] appears to have a lot to say beneath its melodramatic plot. I’m just not sure exactly what it is. This could be a “lost in translation” case, but I found it difficult to fully grasp the underlying themes besides an obvious sense of girl power in its characters freeing themselves from the domineeringly despicable man in their lives. I almost want to say that the result of what…

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