Category: Drama

REVIEW: Dheepan [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“Be nice. That’s all.” It was a surprise when Palme d’Or winner Dheepan wasn’t chosen as France’s Oscar pick for the 2016 Academy Awards (interestingly enough the country selected Mustang, another film whose main language isn’t French). Even more surprising is how long it’s taken to open stateside as ten months sit between its debuts in Paris and New York. I guess it shouldn’t be too much of a shock considering many Americans will want nothing to do with a Tamil movie starring Sri Lankans, but that’s their loss considering…

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REVIEW: Romance [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“Aim low and you won’t be disappointed” With the impending cinematic adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk‘s Lullaby about to swing into pre-production once its Kickstarter campaign finishes, it became time to look into its director Andy Mingo. His filmography includes one independent feature film and a few shorts—the obvious standout on paper being Romance, based upon a story by Palahniuk originating in Playboy magazine. Luckily for me backers were given access to a screener to see where Chuck and Andy’s artistic relationship began as well as anticipate what we can expect…

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REVIEW: Bulldog [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“Who does drugs in their own home?” It can get tiresome watching movie upon movie projecting supposedly authentic glimpses of life’s complexities progress towards having its troubled central character find love, clarity, or redemption with a bow on top. So tiresome in fact that we find ourselves waiting for the moment to come as a rule of inevitability. As soon as the lead starts spiraling we anticipate the epiphany that will change his/her life around once and for all. Writer/director Benjamin Tran understands this bit of Hollywood conditioning and throws…

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REVIEW: The Lobster [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“That is none of your concern” Writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos‘ English language debut The Lobster is a dystopian sci-fi romance depicting a world where Paula Abdul doesn’t exist. If these mechanical creatures devoid of emotion heard her 1988 single “Opposites Attract” their woes of the heart might be eased. I say this because while life is hazardous to your health without someone to share it, Lanthimos’ non-descript City strictly inhabited by couples is impossible to traverse without that someone also sharing your “defining characteristic”. To be a match is to be…

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REVIEW: Les demoiselles de Rochefort [The Young Girls of Rochefort] [1967]

Jared Mobarak

“The illusion of love is only love unseen” The fair is in town and love is in the air. Welcome to Rochefort—a little seaside navy town in France full of sumptuously bright colors and plenty of light-footed citizens ready to dance accompaniment for anyone willing to belt their hearts out in song. It’s a harbinger of unrequited love, lost love, and dreamers seeking an ideal they aren’t sure reality possesses. Tourists come and go, laughter is shared, and natives seem to always gravitate back after adventures abroad. The city beckoned…

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REVIEW: Dark [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“I didn’t like what I saw” It’s summer 2003 and the entire Northeast is about to go Dark. I lost seeing Radiohead as a result of that blackout—my tickets for the weekend’s Toronto show postponed a few months later to an exam night the next semester. Some people had it better with nothing going awry besides losing some perishables in the fridge; other had it worse. How much worse is up to the people who experienced it or those like screenwriter Elias and director Nick Basile seeking to use that…

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REVIEW: A Bigger Splash [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“Try not to frighten the horses” More than loosely based upon Alain Page‘s 1969 French script La Piscine, Luca Guadagnino finally follows up his magnificent I Am Love with A Bigger Splash, his first narrative fiction since. It tells the story of a rockstar legend (Tilda Swinton‘s Marianne Lane channeling Ziggy Stardust) and her long-term documentarian boyfriend (Matthias Schoenaerts‘ Paul De Smedt) as they vacation on a secluded Italian island for much needed recovery—she post-vocal surgery and he not so far removed from a violent suicide attempt spurred by alcoholism.…

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REVIEW: Careful What You Wish For [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“This guy looks like he’d hit a child” The real mystery is how Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum‘s Careful What You Wish For got itself a theatrical release in the first place—no matter how limited. I’m not surprised Starz Digital is handling distribution, though, since it feels exactly like a late night pay cable ticket sanitized to an R-rating for lustful eroticism rather than actual chemistry, nudity, or plausibility. Sometimes thrillers of the “youthful stalker hits the sexual jackpot” variety can at least be entertaining in an ironic way, but that’s unfortunately…

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REVIEW: Honeyglue [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“I meant stay” It’s a story about a dragonfly and the princess bee—a girl with terminal cancer and the boy to which she falls love with only three months left to live respectively. Their love exists in a sort of vacuum beyond time, a reality of the now regardless of future or past before them. She (Adriana Mather‘s Morgan) is but a woman unhindered by her middle class upbringing and conservative lifestyle. He (Zach Villa‘s Jordan) a sensitive soul, fluid in gender, appearance, and desires, who just so happened to…

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REVIEW: Love & Friendship [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“We don’t live. We visit.” We should all be thanking whomever recommended Jane Austen‘s Northanger Abbey to Whit Stillman because the edition he read just happened to include the author’s novella “Lady Susan”—a short epistolary romance subverted to conjure the filmmaker’s own specific tone. If we didn’t know the Austen connection we’d think Stillman created this period comedy alone, that’s how perfectly suited to his oeuvre it proves. His trademarked acerbic wit is already present atop haughty characters deluded by their own egos with dialogue colored by an almost lyrical…

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REVIEW: Approaching the Unknown [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“That planet is calling for us” While the mission is one thing, your reason for performing it could be drastically different. For Captain William Stanaforth (Mark Strong) the two barely overlap except for a common destination: Mars. He will be the first man to ever step foot on the Red Planet with another astronaut (Sanaa Lathan‘s Maddox) following closely behind his 270-day journey by about a month. He’s bringing a water generator he created that synthesizes the fluid from soil and she has supplies to ready future colonization. The endeavor…

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