Comedy | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Brian and Charles [2017]

2022/06/162022/06/16 Jared Mobarak

I was very low. Brian Gittins (David Earl) lives in a cottage well off the beaten path—proud that the nearest shop is about seven miles away. We assume this is his choice. That he enjoys the solitude. But even introverts need human interaction at some point. So, when the inevitable depression set in, Brian decided to build a friend. With a found head and some cogs to go with the levers he “knew were lying about,” Charles (Chris Hayward) is born. What starts as a one-sided dynamic wherein the latter…

REVIEW: Good Luck to You, Leo Grande [2022]

2022/06/122022/06/13 Jared Mobarak

So, what is your fantasy? Nancy Stokes (Emma Thompson) anxiously awaits her guest, fussing about her clothes and drinking champagne to ease her nerves. Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack) finishes his coffee, smiling at the baristas as he waves goodbye before heading to the hotel. He knocks at the door. She startles, walking to it before lingering so long at the peep hole that he begins to bend to try and look back. Beyond their obvious age difference, this disparity of emotional and psychological calm is what’s most present when they…

TRIBECA22 REVIEW: Natten har øjne [Attachment] [2022]

2022/06/082022/06/13 Jared Mobarak

Was that somehow my fault? Leah’s (Ellie Kendrick) reasons for being in Denmark are purely academic. At least, that’s what she tells former actress Maja (Josephine Park) upon meeting by accident at a bookshop. It’s a cutely fateful collision, the former with a stack of research and the latter dressed as an elf while running to an engagement to read to a bunch of school children. Maja’s haste causes a mix-up in their attempt to pick everything up, ensuring they must come together once more in calmer circumstances. A mug…

REVIEW: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 [2022]

2022/05/292022/05/29 Jared Mobarak

Dot, dot, dot. The first Sonic the Hedgehog movie ended with an apparent happy ending for Sonic (Ben Schwartz) and his new adopted family (James Marsden‘s Tom and Tika Sumpter‘s Maddie Wachowski). Not only had the little “blue devil” found a way to focus his speed force and send unhinged government spook Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) through a portal to the uninhabited “Mushroom Planet,” his heroism also endeared him to the town of Green Hills enough to invite him in as a covert member of their citizenship. Between a visit…

REVIEW: Dashcam [2022]

2022/05/232022/06/03 Jared Mobarak

He’s got a butt buffet. Annie Hardy (played by Annie Hardy, of indie rock Giant Drag fame) is sick of COVID. Who isn’t, right? While most are sick of the nonsense perpetrated by bad faith politicians and partisan, anti-vax cultists who ensured the pandemic’s longevity via multiple mutated variants and an ever-increasing contentiousness pitting “prevention” versus “restriction,” however, she is one of those bad faith, partisan, anti-vax cultists. And that’s fine if there’s a reason for her to be one. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take more than five minutes to realize…

REVIEW: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner [1967]

2022/05/212022/06/04 Jared Mobarak

You may be in for the greatest shock of your young life. Just because Stanley Kramer‘s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is a product of its time doesn’t mean it’s any less relevant fifty years later. It was only four or so years ago that a friend and his wife were looking to sell their home when their real estate agent took a phone call and said how she was touring a “nice interracial couple” as if the descriptor was somehow crucial to an act that she completes multiple times…

REVIEW: Dinner in America [2022]

2022/05/202022/05/23 Jared Mobarak

You better tame that tone. Born from the decision to combine two sketches written in the aughts that weren’t quite working on their own, filmed in 2018 (stewarded with the help of Danny Leiner, who passed during production), and debuted in 2020 at Sundance, writer/director Adam Rehmeier would be forgiven for just being happy Dinner in America is finally hitting the public. The result is more than the culmination of a lengthy artistic gestation, though, because its content, humor, and heart all merge to deliver a piece with the potential…

REVIEW: Les amours d’Anaïs [Anaïs in Love] [2021]

2022/04/282022/04/28 Jared Mobarak

Everything is possible if you want it. There’s nothing discreet about thirty-year old Anaïs (Anaïs Demoustier). We meet her as she’s running to greet her landlady. Anaïs is two months late on rent and her live-in boyfriend has moved out, yet she’s unafraid to let the woman graciously allowing her to stay despite no real evidence that she won’t have to throw her out in a week know this agreed upon conversation is cutting into a party for which she’s also late attending. Candid to a fault, this graduate student…

REVIEW: Everything Everywhere All at Once [2022]

2022/04/202022/04/20 Jared Mobarak

How can we get back? The nihilistic notion that life is meaningless and “nothing matters” doesn’t necessarily need to put you into a depressive malaise. It could also provide you the room to take chances and live without regret. That’s not to say that a cautious life is destined for sorrow, though. The path of least resistance doesn’t always mean that it’s a path to obsolescence. Look at Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) and Waymond Wang (Ke Huy Quan) as an example. They chose a textbook “boring” life together, one that demands…

REVIEW: Marvelous and the Black Hole [2022]

2022/04/192022/04/19 Jared Mobarak

Thrive in the uncomfort zone. Things aren’t going well for Sammy (Miya Cech). Her mother recently passed, her father (Leonardo Nam‘s Angus) is dating (Paulina Lule‘s Marianne), and the resulting anger has fully consumed her. Where her older sister Patricia (Kannon) loses herself in an immersive videogame world to absorb her time as therapeutic distraction, Sammy finds peace only in destruction. And why not? Dad’s always working, homelife has replaced her mother with Marianne, and the only time she believes she’s even noticed or heard is when she does something…

REVIEW: Stanleyville [2022]

2022/04/182022/04/21 Jared Mobarak

The true value is the challenge. Maria (Susanne Wuest) is jolted awake by a hawk flying straight into the window of her corner office. Only she seems to notice while the rest of her drone-like coworkers type away at their keyboards. Where some might have laughed out of shock or disregarded the event as one more example of man’s intellectual superiority over the animal kingdom, however, Maria sees aspiration. That bird cracked its skull because it was free. It believed itself able to fly anywhere that appeared open and was…