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REVIEW: Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk [2016]

2016/11/222016/11/23 Jared Mobarak

“What else is there?” Here’s an Oscar-winning director doing something no one else has—shoot an entire film at 120 frames per second (standard is 24, the previous high 48 with The Hobbit)—and movie theaters couldn’t accommodate. At a time when it’s difficult to get butts in seats with Netflix and VOD, an opportunity for a legitimate must-see theatrical event is squandered. Venues dropped the ball. Buffalo, NY isn’t the biggest of cities, but you’d think sustaining six-plus movie houses earns a chance to see Ang Lee‘s vision as intended. Sorry,…

REVIEW: Arrival [2016]

2016/11/192016/11/20 Jared Mobarak

“A desire for more cows” While Arrival is very much a Denis Villeneuve film right down to the similarities between his lead Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams)—thrust into an overwhelming military-run situation and doing her best to hold it accountable—with that of Sicario‘s Kate Macer as well as a visually surreal callback to the much-talked about and deciphered conclusion of Enemy, you cannot deny its expert plotting courtesy of screenwriter Eric Heisserer. This is the guy responsible for B-level genre remakes A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Thing inexplicably…

REVIEW: The Edge of Seventeen [2016]

2016/11/172016/11/18 Jared Mobarak

“You should look out for run-on sentences” If you ever wondered what a John Hughes movie would look like without the cutesy cliché and overblown 1980s caricatured comedic appeal, Kelly Fremon Craig‘s The Edge of Seventeen is it. So don’t treat the talk about it being a “twenty-first century Hughes” film as hyperbole or a slight because the shoe fits its depiction of angst-fueled, hilarious embarrassment. What it lacks is the need to feed into stereotype, sentiment, and melodrama that weigh reality down into fairy tale. This is the life…

REVIEW: 20th Century Women [2016]

2016/11/172017/01/19 Jared Mobarak

“You wish you were crazy” There’s a lot to unpack in 20th Century Women, Mike Mills‘ look at lost souls adrift on paths towards happiness (if happiness even exists). For one he’s a man writing progressive feminists who in turn earnestly educate the two men in their lives how to be men. That alone takes you down corridors of psychological profundity that may actually be profound or simply a mask for the filmmaker’s own explanation that all men aren’t stereotypically single-minded. Because despite the title including the word “women,” this…

REVIEW: Numb [2016]

2016/11/16 Jared Mobarak

“See you at the next meeting?” Story construction becomes crucial when you only have ten minutes to move from start to finish and oftentimes a linear progression is best. I use Penelope Lawson‘s Numb as an example because the bones of its plot are good despite its unorthodox orchestration ruining its potential to resonate. Set against New York City’s Chinatown, a devastated woman seeks solace between the legs of any willing suitor that comes along. Our job is to understand her suffering as more than a punch line to her…

REVIEW: Prêt-à-Porter [Ready to Wear] [1994]

2016/11/112016/11/12 Jared Mobarak

“Taking advantage of others’ insecurities” I didn’t love The Player as much as I thought I would. Sometimes Robert Altman utilizes too many characters within a story that cannot sustain them as perfectly as we’d hope. It often works best in one-locale work like A Wedding and Gosford Park where the satirized theme is cohesive and everyone interacts with everyone else. The reason his Hollywood roast did succeed enough for me to enjoy, however, is that it had a lead. We followed Griffin Mill around the studio lot as the…

REVIEW: Rules Don’t Apply [2016]

2016/11/102016/11/11 Jared Mobarak

“You’re an exception” Eighteen years after Bulworth and fifteen after Town & Country (his last time directing and acting for a feature film respectively), Warren Beatty returns to the big screen with a fictionalized biography of Howard Hughes forty years in the making. It’s a passion project and vanity project: two endeavors worthy of an auspicious return to the spotlight even if the latter isn’t always the best decision for retaining a renowned legacy. Will Rules Don’t Apply taint peoples’ image of him? No. It’s not going to mark any…

REVIEW: 百日紅 [Sarusuberi: Miss Hokusai] [Miss Hokusai] [2015]

2016/11/082016/11/09 Jared Mobarak

“That nutty old man is my father” Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai‘s “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” series is one of my favorite works of art with “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” being its unforgettable cornerstone. Even so, I never thought to myself, “Why hasn’t anyone made a movie about his life?” If you’ve seen one tortured artist biography you’ve seen them all and if the subject at hand doesn’t fit that angst-fueled mold, what’s the point? There needs to be a hook because seeing a painter paint within a cramped…

REVIEW: 아가씨 [Ah-ga-ssi] [The Handmaiden] [2016]

2016/11/082016/11/16 Jared Mobarak

“The snake marks the bounds of knowledge” As soon as I began walking out of the theater after 아가씨 [Ah-ga-ssi] [The Handmaiden], a friend and fellow critic asked if I was the one laughing. I said, “Yes.” Parts Two and Three (of three) were legitimately funny—I’d say intentionally so. All of Chan-wook Park‘s films are out of necessity considering how dark, twisted, and violent his subject matter proves. I’d argue Korean cinema on the whole has an inherently unavoidable humor if only because the acting always seems to possess a…

REVIEW: Dead Bullet [2016]

2016/11/062016/11/08 Jared Mobarak

“I wanted to give you everything” If you’ve seen writer/director Erik Reese‘s debut Train to Stockholm—a personal, introspective drama—the thought of him helming a down and dirty Nevadan desert revenger doesn’t necessarily come to mind. But that’s exactly what he’s done with Dead Bullet, the successful genre jump as good a calling card as any for his talents. Starting closer to his adopted home of Finland, Reese reworked a Scandinavian-set script that didn’t quite come together as he’d like for the sweltering heat and casino bells of his hometown in…

REVIEW: The Opera Singer [2016]

2016/11/03 Jared Mobarak

“I never thought I’d find myself here. Yet here I am.” I often think that my lack of feeling towards pets prevents me from truly appreciating supposedly emotionally heartwrenching works because my initial reaction is to laugh. I chuckle much like the filmmakers behind John Wick wanted me to as it hinged its entire revenge plot on the death of a dog. That example was easier to understand on a practical level, though, because the titular character’s wife had died and left him this friend posthumously. The puppy was an…