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REVIEW: Coco [2017]

2017/12/042020/04/18 Jared Mobarak

Seize your moment Disney and Pixar have lately begun to tell more stories that aren’t intrinsically linked to their white male sensibilities (even if they have a tendency to push out voices that should be talking for their characters like Brenda Chapman on Brave). It’s definitely an evolutionary process—one that might actually be helped with John Lasseter‘s ouster if stories about his inability to listen to outsiders are true. It was Aladdin‘s white directors Ron Clements and John Musker who moved from Arabian nights to Princess and the Frog‘s Cajun…

REVIEW: Olaf’s Frozen Adventure [2017]

2017/12/042020/04/18 Jared Mobarak

Tell us yours and we’ll tell you if it’s special enough. A short film like Olaf’s Frozen Adventure epitomizes the law of diminishing returns: for audiences, not Disney. The studio is surely making a ton of merchandise money with little work involved considering the characters are already at their disposal. We’re talking a couple directors, a writer, and some songs proving a small price to pay in order to ensure another year goes by where children remember who Elsa (Idina Menzel), Anna (Kristen Bell), and especially Olaf (Josh Gad) are.…

REVIEW: Wonderstruck [2017]

2017/11/242020/04/18 Jared Mobarak

It’s never the right time. What do a deaf (from birth) girl in 1920s New Jersey and hearing-impaired (due to a recent accident) boy in 1970s Minnesota have in common besides their struggle to communicate? We’ll just have to wait until author/screenwriter Brian Selznick and director Todd Haynes are ready to let us know. In the meantime we’re made to follow their parallel (albeit five decades apart) paths towards a sense of freedom the adults in their lives simply cannot comprehend. They yearn for more than existing in a world…

REVIEW: Goodbye Christopher Robin [2017]

2017/11/072020/04/22 Jared Mobarak

I’ve had enough of making people laugh. I want to make them see. It begins with a letter—the kind that rips heart from chest. World War II is in full swing and the Milnes (Domhnall Gleeson‘s Alan and Margot Robbie‘s Daphne) are biding their time awaiting word from their son Christopher (Alex Lawther). They know what news arrives as soon as they see the mailwoman riding up their driveway, though. They know their son is gone. War claimed another innocent soul, an inevitability Alan experienced first-hand fighting the fight prematurely…

TIFF17 REVIEW: The Breadwinner [2017]

2017/09/102017/09/13 Jared Mobarak

“Everything changes. That’s what stories tell us.” In the Taliban-controlled Afghan city of Kabul, Nora Twomey‘s debut film as sole director (she co-helmed Oscar nominee The Secret of Kells) depicts an eleven-year old girl facing the futility her future inevitably holds. Adapted by Anita Doron from the award-winning novel by Deborah Ellis, The Breadwinner delivers a heart-wrenching coming-of-age tale within a nation that’s lost its way. The shift was virtually overnight once the Taliban took over: women forced under hoods and trapped in houses, photographs and books outlawed, and men…

REVIEW: Despicable Me 3 [2017]

2017/06/272017/06/28 Jared Mobarak

“I love the combination of Gummy Bears and meat” You have to give Illumination credit because they chose to cultivate an animated niche able to set them apart from Pixar rather than simply seek to copy their blueprint. Their path brings them closer to Dreamworks and yet we can still pick out the difference because Christopher Meledandri‘s style strips things even further down to a level of pure entertainment. So it’s no coincidence that his flagship property Despicable Me has now spawned two sequels to go along with a spinoff,…

REVIEW: Cars 3 [2017]

2017/06/152018/03/12 Jared Mobarak

“I call you my senior project” I know I’m in the critical minority when admitting my enjoyment of the Cars franchise, but I honestly do. It’s not even that I am a “car guy” either—I’ve never seen the appeal of them beyond their utility as a transportation vehicle. So my enjoyment of the first film was solely on the level of its message and humor. It dealt with the theme of ego and humility as Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) discovered you simply cannot get through life on an island alone.…

REVIEW: Lou [2017]

2017/06/152018/01/28 Jared Mobarak

The latest Pixar short from longtime animator, first-time writer/director Dave Mullins is quite the deceiving little gem. LOU—a play on the missing letters from an aging school playground’s “Lost and fOUnd” box—starts out as an irreverent yarn wherein a baseball-eyed “creature” made up of discarded items with a hoodie for a body watches the children as they play before running out to collect abandoned toys when recess is over. We laugh at the fantastical situation, at this character that could easily turn into something of nightmares if not handled in…

REVIEW: Beauty and the Beast [2017]

2017/04/042017/04/05 Jared Mobarak

“Now find it in your mind’s eye and feel it in your heart” This latest Disney epoch consisting of live action remakes/re-imaginings of their classic animated tales has the studio utilizing a few different creative motivations. The best has thus far has been their ability to find ways to create something wholly new and better from the blueprints of those that didn’t age well (The Jungle Book‘s basic sing-along and Pete’s Dragon‘s archaic values). Then there’s the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” school with Cinderella wherein the filmmakers…

REVIEW: Beauty and the Beast [1991]

2017/03/312017/04/01 Jared Mobarak

“There may be something there that wasn’t there before” The fairy tale Beauty and the Beast is so perfectly suited for the Disney princess treatment that it’s shocking they didn’t do one until 1991. Crafted to provide young girls a metaphor for the arranged marriages many of them would inevitably be a part of in 18th century France (Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve wrote the first version with Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont soon streamlining it into what we know today), its trajectory became one of the idyllic fantasy of raising one’s…

REVIEW: The Lego Batman Movie [2017]

2017/02/062017/02/09 Jared Mobarak

“‘Puter, overcompensate” It was always going to be an uphill battle. The success of The LEGO Movie was so surprising and legitimate that a sequel was going to have to work five times harder to match it. So maybe pushing the follow-up off to focus on a spin-off was the way to go. Expectations would be lowered, Will Arnett‘s Batman was a fan favorite to carry the weight, and you wouldn’t necessarily be beholden to the previous installment’s plot or ingenious use of human omniscience. Screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith could focus…