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REVIEW: Hardcore Henry [2016]

2016/04/082016/04/09 Jared Mobarak

“Don’t touch that. Emma-Jean is mine.” It’s not that it hasn’t been done before—it’s just never been done like this. Writer/director Ilya Naishuller rigged GoPro cameras to his cameraman/lead stuntman’s face and let the action fly because who needs trickery when you can literally jump into the fight? Hardcore Henry is a pedal-to-the-metal adrenaline rush adventure taken on by a half-man, half-robot mute resurrected from the dead to move hell and high water so his past life’s wife (Haley Bennett‘s Estelle) is kept safe from the financial benefactor of her…

REVIEW: The Jungle Book [1967]

2016/04/072016/04/08 Jared Mobarak

“No one explains anything to Shere Khan” It’s without a shred of nostalgia that I declare Disney’s animated The Jungle Book an entertaining romp. Having never seen it due to its absence from my stable of “classics” growing up, my affinity to the characters hailed from “TaleSpin” instead. So it was fun meeting them in their original form—bumbling, kindly creatures looking out for the young man-cub they raised to have empathy for their myriad species while man itself sought to kill similar to villainous tiger Shere Khan (George Sanders). I…

REVIEW: Hot Pursuit [2015]

2016/03/262016/03/27 Jared Mobarak

“He just wanted to sit in the front seat” Sometimes the most intriguing aspect of a film project is the “why” of its creation. This usually deals with the changing of hands or evolution of scripts as words on the page become spoken onscreen, but every once in awhile the fascination is more abstract. The “why” in these cases becomes a hypothetical question you don’t care to find an answer for because not knowing whether the reason will be acceptable or not is better than definitively knowing it won’t. So…

REVIEW: Avril et le monde truqué [April and the Extraordinary World] [2015]

2016/03/232016/03/24 Jared Mobarak

“All scientists must serve the empire!” Most writing on Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci‘s Avril et le monde truqué [April and the Extraordinary World] speaks as though they’ve adapted one of revered Frenchman Jacques Tardi‘s graphic novels. This isn’t quite the case. What they’ve actually done is bring his unique “universe” to life with help from previous collaborator Benjamin Legrand (writer of Tardi’s Tueur de cafards) instead. Legrand and Ekinci crafted this alternate steampunk version of Paris as something inspired by the artist’s work rather than born from it. Tardi…

REVIEW: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice [2016]

2016/03/222016/03/23 Jared Mobarak

“Ignorance is not the same as innocence” Director and steward of Warner Bros.’s entire DC Comic universe—for better or worse depending on your personal opinion of the man’s portfolio—Zack Snyder has spent two years telling us Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is ostensibly Man of Steel 2. It’s not. This thing is a Batman film from start to finish. It shows how Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) focuses his rage to destroy the world’s newest destroyer. It’s about a good man turning cruel as Gods threaten the sanctity of all…

REVIEW: El abrazo de la serpiente [Embrace of the Serpent] [2015]

2016/03/172016/03/18 Jared Mobarak

“Knowledge belongs to all men” It’s 1909 and the colonists have arrived in Colombia searching for rubber. They kill, enslave, and rape the land of its resources, systematically destroying a way of life at the snap of their fingers to project their own culture, religion, and greed instead. One Amazonian shaman refuses to fall victim to the physical and spiritual slaughter. Karamakate (Nilbio Torres) chooses solitude to preserve all he knows in the midst of invasion. But what of the anaconda that fell from the Milky Way speaking to him…

REVIEW: Bølgen [The Wave] [2015]

2016/03/122016/03/14 Jared Mobarak

“Can people in the area be warned in time?” I don’t love disaster films. In many cases the genre becomes a venue for explosive visual effects at the detriment of quality acting and resonate emotion. Hollywood loves including scientists for an environmentalist commentary, military personnel for a cold-hearted government angle, and the supposed little guy turned hero saving family. It’s always too much with the heroes always proving to be brawny fireman or first responders with God-complexes complementing their selfless empathy “in the moment”. We never get an actual “little…

REVIEW: Triple 9 [2016]

2016/03/102016/03/11 Jared Mobarak

“Better him than me” No matter how exciting it is to see a film with the cast John Hillcoat assembled on Triple 9, the old adage “less is more” still stands. The issue with having so many “main characters” is that they all end up becoming periphery players. And if one does rise above the rest, you wonder why so much happens that doesn’t concern him/her. This is where Matt Cook‘s 2010 Blacklist script falls into trouble: Casey Affleck‘s Chris Allen is our lead and yet he’s basically a pawn…

REVIEW: 捉妖記 [Zhuō yāo jì] [Monster Hunt] [2015]

2016/03/092016/03/10 Jared Mobarak

“You gave birth to a white radish” Even if 捉妖記 [Zhuō Yāo Jì] [Monster Hunt] were billed in America with “from Raman Hui, the supervising animator of everyone’s favorite Dreamworks player the Gingerbread Man and co-director of Shrek the Third, comes a magical adventure of man and beast” on the posters, it wouldn’t be enough. But that’s okay because Hui didn’t make it for American audiences. Instead it stemmed from a desire back in 2005 to make an animated film in China after spending so much time with Steven Spielberg‘s…

REVIEW: Zootopia [2016]

2016/02/292016/03/02 Jared Mobarak

“Where anyone can be anything” In the tradition of Happy Feet (climate change) and Monsters University (fraternity life), Disney’s Zootopia has transposed adult themes onto PG-rated family fare again. Whereas those previous two were misguided—the former shoving a political agenda down kids’ throats without warning and the latter proving a weird stamp of approval on questionable activities we hope our children will show moderation towards—this one’s worthy cause of harmony and inclusivity is age-appropriate and universal. It takes a hard left into #BlackLivesMatter jurisdiction with blatantly satirical comments confusing youngsters…

REVIEW: バケモノの子 [Bakemono no ko] [The Boy and the Beast] [2015]

2016/02/262016/03/02 Jared Mobarak

“Find the meaning on your own” Two worlds collide once young Kyuta (Shôta Sometani) and warrior Kumatetsu (Kôji Yakusho) meet in Mamoru Hosoda‘s バケモノの子 [Bakemono no ko] [The Boy and the Beast]. The former was recently orphaned after his mother’s death (she had divorced his father years ago and her family refuses to get in touch with him), currently working his way towards becoming a solitary street urchin full of dark rage aimed at the human race for causing him such pain. The latter is a candidate to replace the…