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REVIEW: Big Trouble in Little China [1986]

2014/08/152014/08/16 Jared Mobarak

“What does that mean: ‘China is here’?” Box office returns aside, John Carpenter made the correct choice deciding to helm supernatural comedy adventure Big Trouble in Little China rather than supernatural comedy adventure The Golden Child back in the mid-80s. While both had similar twenty-five million dollar budgets, it’s hard to believe watching today that the former made back only eleven as the latter rose to almost eighty. This is what happens when your star is a bankable commodity like Eddie Murphy as opposed to an up-and-comer in Kurt Russell.…

REVIEW: The Golden Child [1986]

2014/08/092014/08/10 Jared Mobarak

“Hey Bird – Did you just see a little Hare-Krishna midget in the tree, floatin’?… Or is it me?” Only in the 80s could a film like The Golden Child be born. And that goes for the comedy it became and the supernatural drama screenwriter Dennis Feldman originally wrote it as with Mel Gibson in the lead and John Carpenter at the helm. Just look at the premise: a young Tibetan child with the power to heal the dead and save our world is kidnapped by a demon, inexplicably brought…

REVIEW: Into the Storm [2014]

2014/08/052014/08/07 Jared Mobarak

“Me and the planet go way back. So …” We need to talk about Into the Storm‘s unsung hero: Lucas. Played by Lee Whittaker, most won’t think twice about his character standing on the sidelines with camera in-hand to document this natural disaster later edited together for our enjoyment. (Can we go meta and pretend Steven Quale is the director of the film and the film?) He used to play lacrosse, he’s in it for the money, and he doesn’t get crap from boss Pete (Matt Walsh) because he’s all…

REVIEW: A Knight’s Tale [2001]

2014/08/03 Jared Mobarak

“We walk in the garden of his turbulence” There was always one reason I didn’t watch A Knight’s Tale: Heath Ledger. I eventually turned around on him as an actor after The Brothers Grimm and of course his Oscar nominated role in Brokeback Mountain, but in 2001 he was just that heartthrob all the girls loved who probably couldn’t act. Yes, I say probably because I’ll admit to never really giving the man a chance despite my enjoying him in Monster’s Ball, The Patriot, and guilty pleasure 10 Things I…

REVIEW: Wild Wild West [1999]

2014/08/022014/08/03 Jared Mobarak

“Never drum on a white lady’s boobies at a big redneck dance” Let’s just say that Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise dodged a bullet by backing out of Wild Wild West during its seven-year gestation. Its script probably wasn’t nearly as off-the-wall goofy at the start considering their clout as actors, but I highly doubt either would have been up for the parody it became. While the 90s were all about the television adaptation anyway—Gibson went on to do the lackluster Maverick and Cruise the effective Mission: Impossible—I’m not sure…

REVIEW: Guardians of the Galaxy [2014]

2014/07/242014/07/31 Jared Mobarak

“I don’t learn” It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the best Marvel film to date would be one without a single recognizable character to anyone not already a fan. Guardians of the Galaxy has been around since 1969, but it’s the 2008 iteration by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning which struck the studio’s fancy as far as opening their cinematic universe wide open. There’s still a tenuous connection to Earth with the group’s default leader being a human snatched as a child by a Ravager ship, yet this detail…

REVIEW: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes [2014]

2014/07/152014/07/17 Jared Mobarak

“Ape no kill ape” The hype is spot-on with Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. A more focused film than Rise of the Planet of the Apes—which served as an emotive origin tale possessing little unique conflict beyond a fight scene showing off computer effects more than propelling storyline—you should still acknowledge that predecessor allows it to be so. This doesn’t mean you must view it to understand the sequel, however, as a concisely informative prologue is delivered to explain the key plot point of mankind simultaneously giving apes…

REVIEW: The Purge: Anarchy [2014]

2014/07/152014/07/18 Jared Mobarak

“We’ve lost our souls to attain this peace” I enjoyed last year’s suspense horror The Purge a lot—despite high expectations for the premise actually going where it needed to prove more than another generic home invasion flick. Writer/director James DeMonaco gave us the graphic brutality its conceit promised through its claustrophobically bottled skirmish between malicious debutantes and an (not so) innocent family trying to survive while also lending the social commentary at its back a voice. I use the parentheses because it just so happened that the Sandin’s patriarch was…

REVIEW: Rise of the Planet of the Apes [2011]

2014/07/132014/07/14 Jared Mobarak

“These people invest in results. Not dreams.” How did the apes from Pierre Boulle‘s Planet of the Apes gain control of Earth? The 1968 film adaptation shows human/ape hybrids walking, talking, and living in civilizations—a great sci-fi conceit making us believe in a distant planet where evolution took a different turn than what happened here. But as anyone who saw that movie or Tim Burton‘s much-maligned remake knows, a twist arrives to show the existence of these creatures was something else all together. We discover we were watching a tale…

NYAFF14 REVIEW: 風暴 [Fung bou] [Firestorm] [2013]

2014/07/022014/07/08 Jared Mobarak

“Do you have evidence?” For fifty minutes—minus one crazy hand-to-hand combat fight on top of a fallen metal gate suspended over two adjacent buildings’ fire escapes in midair—writer/director Alan Yuen‘s 風暴 [Fung bou] [Firestorm] is a fast paced actioner that fearlessly goes to the darkest corners Hollywood never would. After it crosses that threshold of time, however, the film goes off the rails like an out of control locomotive crashing into everything along its path until it culminates in an epic street shootout with enough destruction to rival Man of…

REVIEW: 설국열차 [Snowpiercer] [2013]

2014/06/162019/12/29 Jared Mobarak

“Is it time?” When talk surrounding the US release of Kar Wai Wong‘s The Grandmaster erupted in controversy about a truncated cut from the Weinsteins, cinephiles across the nation couldn’t help but let depression set in. Even so, no one could have been surprised by the decision because Harvey Scissorhands likes to streamline story for action whenever he can to trick American audiences into seeing a foreign film they wouldn’t otherwise care about. So when the same rumors started swirling around Bong Joon-ho‘s Snowpiercer, you had to fear for the…