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REVIEW: The Hero [2017]

2017/07/22 Jared Mobarak

“You can’t outrun destiny, amigo” Death is the great equalizer and one true certainty in life. That doesn’t mean we’re prepared for its sudden or prolonged arrival, though. If anything it forces us to take stock of achievements and mistakes, knowing that the time we believed we had to fix the latter was about to disappear. As we deal with an unavoidable internal existential crisis, we also seek to reignite external relationships long since disintegrated. This is the journey Lee Hayden (Sam Elliott) takes in Brett Haley‘s The Hero. He’s…

REVIEW: Bless Their Little Hearts [1984]

2017/07/202017/07/21 Jared Mobarak

“I’m tired, tired, tired. Start trying to be a man.” There’s no getting around the connection that binds Billy Woodberry‘s Bless Their Little Hearts to Charles Burnett‘s Killer of Sheep. Both were written by Burnett, shot in Watts, and entries in the movement known as the “LA Rebellion”. They both deal with the struggle to survive as a family on the poverty line with little wiggle room as far as an escape. But even as they share cast/crew members barely five years apart, the two are also as different from…

REVIEW: Killer of Sheep [1978]

2017/07/182017/07/19 Jared Mobarak

“Now that ain’t me … and damn sure won’t be” It’s not everyday that a masters thesis film is declared a national treasure by the Library of Congress and placed on the National Film Registry, but films like Charles Burnett‘s Killer of Sheep don’t come along everyday either. Shot on weekends over a year in the Watts ghetto of Los Angeles, Burnett’s debut feature was made for less than ten thousand dollars, never received a theatrical run until three decades after its 1977 completion date, and remained largely unseen due…

REVIEW: Dunkirk [2017]

2017/07/172017/07/18 Jared Mobarak

“He may never be himself again” War is often depicted as a quantifiable number of those who survived and those who did not. Many films choose this route, picking a battle to show the firefight’s chaos and cost. We remember the Battle of Gettysburg and D-Day as turning points, insane offensives that wrought heavy casualties just as they provided a newfound and tangible hope for victory. It’s glory or despair that’s highlighted depending on whose perspective the story adheres because we want to witness the emotional gray areas of melancholy…

FANTASIA17 REVIEW: 악녀 [Ak-Nyeo] [The Villainess] [2017]

2017/07/142017/07/15 Jared Mobarak

“You came alone?” Writer/director Byung-gil Jung sure knows how to open an action flick. Think Oldboy‘s hallway scene from the first-person perspective of Hardcore Henry spilling over through a non-descript doorway into a wide-open setting for a one-on-twenty bloodbath a la Kill Bill‘s House of Blue Leaves sequence. Only when the orchestrator of this carnage is picked up and shoved headfirst into a mirror does the camera stumble backwards to show Sook-hee’s (Ok-bin Kim) bloodied face and grimace for more. It’s the type of over-the-top, out-of-control set piece most films…

REVIEW: War for the Planet of the Apes [2017]

2017/07/132017/07/14 Jared Mobarak

“We are the beginning and the end” I’ve never seen the original Planet of the Apes films, but the little I know has always presented the titular apes as antagonists. You don’t cast Charlton Heston as your lead circa 1968 unless you want him to be the central figure with which to align. He’s a man trapped on a foreign world ruled by a species his scientists long held as inferior—prototypes for his own advanced existence. How it ends is hardly a spoiler anymore, its subversion of the entire premise…

FANTASIA17 REVIEW: Savage Dog [2017]

2017/07/112017/07/31 Jared Mobarak

“The human is the hardest animal to kill” When a film opens with Scott Adkins rising from the mud with a scream in Indochina circa 1959, you begin cultivating expectations. You forgive the ham-fisted voiceover narration and the quick slow motion cuts disorienting place and time. You forgive the lack of context as to why this man (and a woman too) was trapped under mud in the first place because you’re re-situating yourself in your seat to brace for the impact of the actor’s fists against the flesh of whomever…

REVIEW: The Beguiled [2017]

2017/06/292017/06/30 Jared Mobarak

“I didn’t want you to be misled” There’s a lot to like about Don Siegel‘s 1971 adaptation of Thomas Cullinan‘s A Painted Devil. Unfortunately, there’s just as much left wanting. It built towards a tense finale of malicious intent, the kind that’s able to turn what was a simple wartime drama into a metaphorical representation of fear and paranoia pitting man against woman in a battle of physical strength opposite will. Where it goes wrong, however, is in the decision to draw its lead character as the unequivocal bad guy.…

REVIEW: The Beguiled [1971]

2017/06/28 Jared Mobarak

“Old enough for kisses” If you’ve ever wondered what would happen inside a Confederate girls seminary (boarding school) unwittingly thrust into the position of harboring a wounded Union soldier during the Civil War, Don Siegel‘s The Beguiled seeks to provide some dark answers. Based on Thomas Cullinan‘s novel A Painted Devil and adapted by Albert Maltz and Irene Kamp (despite the use of pseudonyms after Claude Traverse‘s uncredited rewrite), the film focuses on Corporal John McBurney’s (Clint Eastwood) precarious situation. He’s the enemy—a man two students would let die for…

REVIEW: The Book of Henry [2017]

2017/06/202017/06/21 Jared Mobarak

“I want to see the sky” There’s a lot of backlash against director Colin Trevorrow for reasons he didn’t necessarily earn. Most of the vitriol stems from his being scooped up by the Hollywood studio machine after helming just one indie film. That debut was the Sundance award-winning Safety Not Guaranteed, a small-scale sci-fi written by Derek Connolly. Suddenly Trevorrow was vaulted to A-list status—again something he didn’t quite earn—to helm Jurassic World and to takeover Star Wars: Episode IX from another festival darling turned tent-pole director Josh Trank (whose…

REVIEW: Lucky [2017]

2017/06/152017/06/16 Jared Mobarak

“You do something out of need and it becomes a habit along the way” It’s taken five years for Lucky (Bari Kang) to save the money and find the footing—no matter how much illegal activity both pursuits warranted—necessary to acquire a bride believable enough to fool INS and earn his green card. He has a legit job as a mechanic with his “brother” Ricky’s (Daniel Jordano) garage during the day, helps “lose” customers’ taxis at night to earn extra cash from a fence while they receive insurance checks, and even…