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REVIEW: The Lion King [1994]

2019/06/292020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

Remember who you are. The sun rises at the screen’s bottom as Lebo M. is heard singing in Zulu. We take a look at the wide-open expanse of an African savannah before slowly honing in on herds of animals moving towards a single spot: Pride Rock. There we find Mufasa (James Earl Jones) and Sarabi (Madge Sinclair) resting with new lion cub Simba (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) as trusted allies Zazu the hornbill (Rowan Atkinson) and Rafiki the baboon (Robert Guillaume) arrive to offer their services for what’s to be a…

REVIEW: Anastasia [1997]

2019/06/272020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

In the dark of the night she’ll be gone. In a fantasy world where royalty was adored as idyllically benevolent leaders thinking only about how to protect and serve their people, the Romanovs were betrayed by the evil Rasputin (Christopher Lloyd) who subsequently consorted with the Devil to wield dark magic powerful enough to curse their entire bloodline to death. His goal was to eradicate them and seize control, but things didn’t go quite as planned. And although the princess Anastasia (Kirsten Dunst) narrowly escaped his grasp when he fell…

REVIEW: Toy Story 4 [2019]

2019/06/212020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

She’ll be okay. It was said upon the release of Toy Story 3 that the franchise was done as far as Woody (Tom Hanks) and Buzz Lightyear’s (Tim Allen) adventures were concerned. These sentiments made sense because it ended nicely on a logical breaking point wherein the boy whose name adorned their feet grew-up and gifted them to a new owner (Bonnie) who promised a warm future of happiness and play. Because simply retiring the characters would be dumb, Pixar decided to branch out into a trio of short comedic…

REVIEW: Partysaurus Rex [2012]

2019/06/212020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

You were way scarier than the last sea monster. As the wet blanket of the group, Rex (Wallace Shawn) rarely gets to do anything more than fret and accidentally cause problems due to uncontrollable anxieties. So why not let him have some fun, albeit against his better judgment? Knowing this outcome would only be possible if he was removed from the usual Toy Story group and thus rendered “cool” by not having anyone cooler to compare, Mark A. Walsh and Dylan Brown let Bonnie isolate him in the tub with…

REVIEW: The Secret Life of Pets 2 [2019]

2019/06/042020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

Was the world always this dangerous? Illumination missed the boat on The Secret Life of Pets because the way they’ve told these stories thus far make them a lot more conducive to television than cinema. If that first film’s sprawling character list devolving into wild schemes and pratfalls barely adhering to the flimsy plot beneath wasn’t enough to prove it, composing The Secret Life of Pets 2 into three very disparate subplots forced together at the climax is. Moving to a long-form narrative format would supply breathing room to focus…

REVIEW: Missing Link [2019]

2019/04/162020/03/28 Jared Mobarak

What chicken? With Laika CEO Travis Knight branching out to live-action on Bumblebee, it was only right that Chris Butler would carry the studio’s fifth feature film after the ambitious undertaking that was Kubo and the Two Strings (which the former directed and the latter co-wrote). Missing Link also becomes Butler’s follow-up to ParaNorman—my personal favorite from the stop-motion firm—and similarly stars a character that believes in what no one else does. Whereas Norman was sympathetic in his ability to speak with ghosts, Sir Lionel Frost’s (Hugh Jackman) quest to…

REVIEW: Aladdin [1992]

2019/04/032020/03/28 Jared Mobarak

We’ve all got swords. I forgot how refreshingly simple Aladdin is. Disney and Pixar utilize such elaborate narrative set-ups today that their films don’t rely on charm and fun alone anymore. That’s not to say this one does since its ability to put its hero and heroine on equal footing rather than blindly relegating the latter into mere “love interest” status is very effective for this era. But you wouldn’t be blamed for having a good time with Robin Williams‘ manic impressions regardless of the plot his larger-than-life presence augments…

REVIEW: Dumbo [1941]

2019/03/272020/03/29 Jared Mobarak

I think you’re ears are beautiful. It’s always weird watching a movie I haven’t seen since I was a little kid only to discover how different it is from my memory. I used to watch Dumbo a lot back in the day and yet I could have sworn the entirety of the film was about the titular elephant’s struggle to find the courage to fly without his magic feather. Suffice it to say: realizing that what I thought was the whole plot only takes up the last three minutes of…

REVIEW: Ruben Brandt, Collector [2018]

2019/03/142020/03/29 Jared Mobarak

Characters from famous paintings continue to attack me. Writer/director Milorad Krstic has combined his love for painting and film into an action thriller as surreal as it is familiar. The whole uses his own unique animation style as a filter with which to recreate masterpieces of both visual mediums—each famed piece simultaneously recognizable as its real life counterpart and integrated into the over-arching aesthetic onscreen. Think Modigliani (with his elongated faces and pasted on noses) by way of Picasso (with a Cubist sensibility fracturing norms to include three eyes or…

REVIEW: The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part [2019]

2019/02/262020/03/29 Jared Mobarak

Listen to the music. A film like The LEGO Movie is a once-in-a-decade type achievement (so to see its filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller also write/produce another once-in-a-decade feat with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse only shows how inventive and original the two are). It daring to use its subject matter’s tactility and utility rather than pretend its nothing more than aesthetic was an ingenious choice, the surprise lifting of the curtain to reveal a human element behind the characters’ machinations the stuff of legend. So the inevitable demand for…

REVIEW: How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World [2019]

2019/02/192020/03/29 Jared Mobarak

There’s no better gift than love. It’s not often a studio as big as Dreamworks goes on record to say the third installment of a critically acclaimed series and box office success will be its last. Why paint yourself into a corner like that when the possibility for more is right at your fingertips? Dare I say the answer is integrity? I know. That’s not a word you hear much in Hollywood, but I have to believe it’s the reasoning behind Dean DeBlois‘ adaptation of Cressida Cowell‘s How to Train…