Film Features | www.jaredmobarak.com

FANTASIA17 REVIEW: Tiere [Animals] [2017]

2017/08/052017/08/05 Jared Mobarak

“Animals don’t kill themselves” Discovering that screenwriter Jörg Kalt committed suicide before bringing his script Tiere [Animals] to life adds a lot of context to how one deciphers Greg Zglinski‘s film. The director had read it the year before Kalt’s death, lauding it while on a Zurich Film Foundation committee in the hopes of helping secure its finances. Now a decade later, Zglinski’s adaptation graces cinema screens with a perplexing puzzle of emotion and time. We watch its stunningly non-linear plot move back and forth between characters real and imagined,…

FANTASIA17 REVIEW: 帝一の國 [Teiichi no kuni] [Teiichi: Battle of Supreme High] [2017]

2017/08/042017/08/07 Jared Mobarak

“Could any man dream for more?” We are defined by moments, decisions made by us or for us by another. For Teiichi Akaba (Masaki Suda) it was always the choice between love of the piano (his mother’s passion) and a desire to please his father (Kôtarô Yoshida‘s Josuke Akaba) by following a path towards political power—something he himself failed to achieve. Teiichi chooses the latter because of something his Dad said during a rant about status and control: that ascension to the height of Japan’s Prime Minister is to position…

FANTASIA17 REVIEW: Junk Head [2017]

2017/08/042017/08/07 Jared Mobarak

“And you call yourself God” After finding acclaim with stop-motion animated short Junk Head 1 in 2014, writer/director/animator Takahide Hori decided to expand its science fiction-infused world to feature length. The result is a two-hour adventure following one man’s descent through a subterranean infrastructure built by clones entitled simply Junk Head. It takes place centuries into our future and centuries more since the clone work force we created rebelled and disappeared underground. Both they and humanity have since evolved into forms neither would recognize, mutations proving to be man’s sole…

FANTASIA17 REVIEW: Sequence Break [2017]

2017/08/012017/08/03 Jared Mobarak

“Let the void look into you” Introversion and high anxiety are real and can be triggered by the tiniest of things or the lack thereof. Oz (Chase Williamson) has struggled with both his entire life, that insecurity in social situations driving him towards the world of videogames. The joy of solitude playing them and being good at them brought him into a society of like-minded individuals and ultimately a career as mechanic to dinosaurs of derelict arcades past. Was he happy? Sure. Things could always be better, but isn’t that…

FANTASIA17 REVIEW: S.U.M.1 [2017]

2017/07/302017/07/31 Jared Mobarak

“We will fight for our future. Your future.” It’s been decades since a new world order changed Earth forever, an alien invasion by creatures known as the Nonesuch forcing humanity underground. The old guard who survived remembers the war that drove them subterranean, memories of life on the surface and the beasts that present-day generations hope to never encounter. If any of them do want to risk their lives for a glimpse of the sun they’ve only heard about through stories, though, they can enlist in the military and become…

FANTASIA17 REVIEW: Tragedy Girls [2017]

2017/07/282017/07/31 Jared Mobarak

“To make an omelet you have to kill some ex-boyfriends” You’re a couple of horror obsessed high school seniors living in a boring town where the most salacious thing happening is an affair between your teacher Mrs. Kent (Nicky Whelan) and fire chief Big Al (Craig Robinson). You’re vlog/twitter account searching for gore to capture and build an online presence is frequented by one of your mothers and no one else. And you’re forced to pretend to enjoy cheerleading and prom committee if for no other reason than to stay…

FANTASIA17 REVIEW: Lowlife [2017]

2017/07/242017/07/25 Jared Mobarak

“It is my great honor to grant you your wish on such a special day” An ex-junkie, ex-convict, and luchador enter a fish taco shack … the punch line is a three-pronged adventure through Compton while engulfed by the shadow of a lunatic pimp moonlighting as a black market organ wholesaler. Director Ryan Prows and the rest of his quintet of writers (Tim Cairo, Jake Gibson, Shaye Ogbonna, and Maxwell Michael Towson) bring together a menagerie of monsters, fiends, thugs, and criminals all searching for an escape in their violently…

FANTASIA17 REVIEW: La noche del virgen [Night of the Virgin] [2016]

2017/07/232017/07/25 Jared Mobarak

“To the strangers who crossed paths” Don’t mess with a Nepali “cantara” on New Year’s—especially if you’re a virgin. Had young Nico (Javier Bódalo) only been warned, he might have avoided the worst nightmare of his life. While his virginity wasn’t for a lack of trying (or spilled drinks, vomit, and curt rebukes), somehow surviving a night in the home of the first female to ever look at him with desire (Miriam Martín‘s Medea) could force him to never want to undress again let alone wish to do so in…

FANTASIA17 REVIEW: Better Watch Out [2017]

2017/07/202017/11/30 Jared Mobarak

“U LEAVE U DIE” It’s Christmas and songs of carolers are in the air of a quaint suburban neighborhood populated by houses big enough to list four bedrooms yet safe enough to not need alarms. Perfectly imperfect families live inside them like the pulls-no-punches Deandra (Virginia Madsen) and affably self-deprecating Robert (Patrick Warburton) showing how love can take and sometimes excel with a little argumentatively sarcastic friction. They may drink and swear, but they’d do anything for twelve-going-on-thirteen year old son Luke (Levi Miller)—and he knows it. A sensitive kid…

FANTASIA17 REVIEW: The Honor Farm [2017]

2017/07/192017/07/22 Jared Mobarak

“Make a choice” If Karen Skloss‘ feature narrative debut The Honor Farm possesses anything it’s an abundance of style. This is a gorgeously shot prom night turned mushroom trip romp of millennial excess caught in the throes of dream. We meet Lucy (Olivia Grace Applegate) walking through the woods in her dress—trees covered in toilet paper and forests of white light and ribbons manifesting a border between danger and safety. The evil (assumedly) arrives in the form of a person adorned by a stag’s head (the eyes blink); her salvation…

FANTASIA17 REVIEW: Dead Shack [2017]

2017/07/162017/07/23 Jared Mobarak

“I think when the blood’s black there’s no going back” I like when a director knows what he/she wants from his/her film—even if the goal is to entertain on a level that ensures its legacy falls short of cinematic greatness. Some of my favorite movies are those that demand to be re-watched not for comprehension’s sake or to acknowledge metaphor underneath formal expertise, but because they’re fun. Horror/comedy is ripe for delivering exactly that result with its ability for work to simultaneously excel as an example of the genre’s common…