Drama | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Leave No Trace [2018]

2018/07/112020/04/04 Jared Mobarak

We can still think our own thoughts. It’s easy to depict PTSD-suffering war veterans as unstable, dangerous, and beyond help from inevitable tragedy. This depiction has sadly become the Hollywood norm to conjure volatile dramatics devoid of the empathy those struggling to combat their demons deserve. If anyone could supply the necessary humanity to portray that plight, writer/director Debra Granik is she. Never afraid to take exploitation-free narratives into the desperate yet manageable rural squalor (relatively speaking) of mid-west locales—blind spots to the narrow vantage of urban dwellers (see Winter’s…

REVIEW: Undir trénu [Under the Tree] [2017]

2018/07/042020/04/04 Jared Mobarak

See how they react. If humans weren’t always the pettiest creatures on Earth, we’ve definitely earned the title this past century. Just think about how often you find yourself asking the question, “Let’s see what they’ll do about this?” I don’t mean hypothetically either. I’m talking about truly contemplating your next smugly biting (until an inevitable escalation leads you towards unforgivably heinous) act of vengeance to counter whatever your latest opponent in life has delivered. Eventually we forget how our duel began because our desperation to achieve a win proves…

REVIEW: Who’s Watching Oliver [2018]

2018/06/292020/04/04 Jared Mobarak

I may not be pretty, but I have what you need. To think about a romantic serial killer thriller is to conjure thoughts of Natural Born Killers and its duo of equally despicable characters. It’s easy to believe two psychopaths can fall in love because they share a predilection for violence no one else would. But just because they accept each other’s monstrous desires, any potential offspring wouldn’t automatically follow suit. This son or daughter would possess the agency to fear his/her parents and pray for escape. The parents would…

REVIEW: Sicario: Day of the Soldado [2018]

2018/06/282020/04/04 Jared Mobarak

Not ‘they’. There’s a reason for Emily Blunt‘s character Kate in Sicario. She’s the last vestige of law and order on the frontlines of a war that relinquished both long ago. Her FBI Agent believed in what she was doing and felt she could make a difference in the field to combat the drugs, bodies, and weapons spilling over the US/Mexican border courtesy of the cartels. So when two “DoD consultants” came calling to recruit her for a covert mission targeting someone of value at the top of the food…

REVIEW: Hearts Beat Loud [2018]

2018/06/272020/04/04 Jared Mobarak

Whoopie pies and Spotify. It’s often at extreme times of upheaval that we find ourselves taking stock of our life, ambitions, and loves. While working hard to be successful enough to support our families, we have a tendency of leaving our dreams by the wayside and/or compartmentalizing our identities to serve the unavoidable pressures of the present rather than hopes for the future. And on the flipside we can also youthfully avoid our basic human desire for compassion and interaction in order to maintain focus on career paths we’ve yet…

REVIEW: Irma Vep [1996]

2018/06/212020/04/06 Jared Mobarak

Have you sex with girls? If you’re going to poke fun at the film industry, you might as well go for broke. Take Olivier Assayas‘ Irma Vep for example. Hot off the success of his acclaimed Cold Water, he was recruited for a project about foreigners in Paris with Claire Denis and Atom Egoyan. When this attempt at recreating Louis Feuillade‘s silent Les vampires fell through, Assayas decided to continue with that thematic idea while also adding some “meta” behind the scenes chaos that could (and probably did) occur. With…

REVIEW: The Killing [1956]

2018/06/202020/04/06 Jared Mobarak

Just a bad joke without a punch line. After test screenings left audiences confused and frustrated, writer/director Stanley Kubrick and producing partner James B. Harris decided to return to the edit bay and turn The Killing‘s overlapping, repetitious structure into a more linear A-to-B narrative. You can’t blame the former for wanting to do everything possible to make the film a hit since it was his first project with a real budget positioning his career forward (he’d disavowed Fear and Desire as amateurish and sophomore effort Killer’s Kiss proved almost…

REVIEW: Never Steady, Never Still [2018]

2018/06/192020/04/06 Jared Mobarak

I’m full of memories. I’m full of hope. I’m full of regrets. With a riveting central performance by Shirley Henderson as a woman dealing with advanced Parkinson’s, you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking Kathleen Hepburn‘s Never Steady, Never Still (adapted from her short of the same name) was simply about the tragedy of the disease. A different version of this story would probably go that route because it’s the “flashier” path towards recognition. The Vancouver native, however, decides to go further by delving beneath the surface by exposing the hardships…

REVIEW: Bao [2018]

2018/06/162020/04/06 Jared Mobarak

Watching the first half of Domee Shi‘s Bao with a quizzical expression is par for the course. How could you not react that way with this story of a Chinese-Canadian woman who begins to treat a hand-made dumpling like it is her child? It’s one thing to gasp and laugh when the tiny piece of food begins to wail as she attempts to take a bite, but another to witness as it sprout arms and legs before moving through the motions of adolescence. By the time “he” turns into a…

REVIEW: The Rider [2018]

2018/06/142020/04/06 Jared Mobarak

Don’t give up on your dreams. Whether you’ve ever rode a horse or not, you know what happens when they’re injured. It could be that you saw the black and white decision to put one down in a movie. Or maybe you heard about a bad break during one of the televised derbies people get all crazy about. This is generally what happens with all animals. If a pet is sick to the point of having its way of life decimated, euthanasia becomes the humane choice. And yet assisted suicide…

REVIEW: Hereditary [2018]

2018/06/112020/04/06 Jared Mobarak

Why are you afraid of me? If anyone has the ability to dive into the deepest, darkest secrets of an otherwise normal looking suburban family, it’s the writer/director of The Strange Thing About the Johnsons. It’s been seven years since Ari Aster‘s viral short film about incest and sexual abuse came out and yet his first feature is just hitting theaters. Whether due to a lack of funding or need for time to hone his script, Aster spent the period in-between by crafting more shorts to cut his teeth and…