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REVIEW: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines [2003]

2015/06/212015/06/22 Jared Mobarak

“Anger is more useful than despair” There’s one great moment in Jonathan Mostow‘s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines: its end. I’m not being snarky in some jokey “because it was finally over” kind of way either. It is legitimately good. Half twist, half bittersweet salvation in the face of apocalyptic nightmare where a hero is finally born. The series has been working towards this revelation for two decades by this point; reaching the moment when the future we’ve seen of a world covered in skulls and metal is about…

REVIEW: La French [The Connection] [2014]

2015/06/162015/06/17 Jared Mobarak

“The true force of an untouchable is the silence he imposes on others” While everything out there talking about Cédric Jimenez’s La French [The Connection] takes special care to mention William Friedkin‘s classic The French Connection, the comparisons end at that titular focal point. I’m not talking about quality, though, as this unofficial companion is a very good piece of cinema. It’s just not an action thriller like the American rendition made in the thick of heroin’s 1970s heyday. Instead Jimenez and co-writer Audrey Diwan have crafted a straight mob…

REVIEW: The French Connection [1971]

2015/06/14 Jared Mobarak

“And I’m going to nail you for picking your feet in Poughkeepsie” You watch William Friedkin‘s The French Connection today and literally start thinking about the forty-four years of police-based action thrillers owing it a huge debt. The genre just doesn’t have the type of cultural or artistic clout these days to win the hardware it did back then: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Actor. (I don’t count The Departed because it was a blockbuster film with an all-star cast that went beyond cat…

REVIEW: Jurassic World [2015]

2015/06/092015/06/10 Jared Mobarak

“This will give parents nightmares” As all good sequels must learn, the key to success is delivering on the promise set forth by the original while also providing something fresh and improved. Just ask James Cameron, a master at the task, who injected action-packed life into both Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgment Day without negating or watering down the mythology still relevant beneath those newfound popcorn blockbuster sensibilities. Neither The Lost World nor Jurassic Park III did it. They decided to both reinvent the wheel and forget what the appeal…

REVIEW: Big Game [2015]

2015/06/062015/06/24 Jared Mobarak

“Life is just too damn short not to have a cookie when you want one” Despite being rated PG-13 in America, Jalmari Helander‘s Big Game should target audiences between 10-15 like Dan Smith’s Young Adult novelization of the film. Being a Finnish production—the most expensive in the country’s history—probably means it did just that abroad. Unfortunately Americans cringe at the sound of curse words reaching their children’s ears, forgetting how readily accessible they are at home on TV and otherwise depending on whether parents or siblings aren’t careful. The inclusion…

REVIEW: Kung Fury [2015]

2015/06/052015/06/05 Jared Mobarak

“Yeah. That’s my bicep.” After earning three times its goal on Kickstarter, the thirty-minute short Kung Fury went into production in hopes of melting minds with Heavy Metal synth ballads and gratuitous gore like only the 80s could provide. The brainchild of Swedish commercial and music video director David Sandberg, this opus to over-the-top cheesy action excess proves a brilliantly orchestrated hybrid of satirical parody and uproarious homage. Because just when you think it’s merely lambasting every single stereotype you can fathom from the overwrought stoic emotion of buddy cop…

REVIEW: Terminator 2: Judgment Day [1991]

2015/05/282015/05/29 Jared Mobarak

“You’re really real” Oh what seven years can accomplish through cinematic technological achievement. While The Terminator still looks good today, Terminator 2: Judgment Day looks amazing. Director James Cameron acknowledges his evolutionary leap by opening the follow-up with a near-replica 2029 Los Angeles prologue as the first to showcase exactly how far forward. These new sentient machines are carbon copies of the old moving with marginal hitching to physically belong next to their human adversaries. Besides the sequences inside cars with flat projections whooshing by (Hollywood still hasn’t perfected this…

REVIEW: San Andreas [2015]

2015/05/272015/05/29 Jared Mobarak

“Played a little tug-of-war with a car” Can you call a movie a disaster flick without the President of the United States declaring a state of emergency? While I ask in jest, we do expect such a sobering announcement to arrive with music soaring and heroic platitudes raining down. It never comes here, though, and its absence might be the best thing about San Andreas since it means the chaos inflicted on poor unsuspecting pixels pretending to be Californian cities doesn’t spread internationally. The shockwaves of this cataclysmic event surely…

REVIEW: The Terminator [1984]

2015/05/262015/05/27 Jared Mobarak

“It’s just him and me” Sometimes the road to success hinges on a series of happenstances and whom you know. Just ask James Cameron: on-set special effects director for Piranha II: The Spawning (former boss Roger Corman produced the first) before it became his directorial debut due to creative differences between his predecessor and producer Ovidio G. Assonitis (who subsequently took it away from Cameron after shooting wrapped). Hardly a glowing experience to warrant handing the not-yet thirty-year old six-million dollars to bring an original script to life, but Orion…

REVIEW: Roar [1981]

2015/05/232015/05/25 Jared Mobarak

“They’re not trained cats. They’re just my friends.” Disparaging Roar as a film means nothing in the grand scheme of things when no one will ever watch it as a movie above the near-deadly document of misguided, Hollywood liberal stupidity it is. Drafthouse Films knew this when they decided to rerelease the infamous action/adventure thirty-five years after an abysmal box office debut of two million on a seventeen million budget over eleven years of production. Their tagline, (“No animals were harmed in the making of this film. 70 cast and…

REVIEW: Tomorrowland [2015]

2015/05/192015/05/21 Jared Mobarak

“Which wolf wins?” The only constant the future holds is how today’s will look nothing like tomorrow’s. It would have been an amazing experience to see the vision Walt Disney had for his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow in Orlando, but he of course sadly passed away in 1966 and that land became the Magic Kingdom in 1971 instead. His ideas were eventually partly utilized in conjunction with a second amusement park (aptly coined EPCOT) to accompany the one capped by Cinderella’s castle, but Walt had hoped to construct a…