Foreign | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Life Overtakes Me [2019]

2020/01/202020/10/02 Jared Mobarak

We hadn’t told them. Directors John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson‘s documentary Life Overtakes Me is a call to action. Where many films revolving around ailments seek to provide answers, this one hopes for recognition and subsequent research necessary to find solutions. The reason is simple: nobody knows the underlying truths behind Resignation syndrome. All we know for certain is that it’s real, occurs at an extremely high rate in Sweden, and is growing internationally. The latter comes as no surprise considering our world has been growing more and more insular…

REVIEW: In the Absence [2019]

2020/01/182020/03/21 Jared Mobarak

I should have told her to escape quickly. This is what happens when your government leaders are inept, indifferent, and opportunistic. This is what happens when people are given jobs well above their abilities and thus become expected to make decisions rather than follow them. Not only was everyone holding a seat of power in the South Korean Coast Guard unwilling to act as they reported situations to bosses in the hopes of passing the buck, those paid to be heroes when called upon weren’t experienced enough to fulfill that…

REVIEW: Synonymes [Synonyms] [2019]

2020/01/072020/03/21 Jared Mobarak

Do not look up. Israel has no future in Yaov’s (Tom Mercier) mind. It’s dead and he refuses to die with it even if he just risked dying for it to earn a silver star in the military. Why? Because his country won’t admit its failures or mistakes. They are victors. That’s it. They are owners of their land and the righteous keepers of their religion against any so-called “terrorists” displaced as though they were animals running wild to be shooed away. One could say Israel is therefore a destroyer…

REVIEW: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu [Portrait of a Lady on Fire] [2019]

2019/12/142020/03/22 Jared Mobarak

Don’t regret. Remember. An eighteenth century Italian countess (Valeria Golino) still residing at the French estate of her late husband has decided she’d like to return home. The best way to accomplish this is marrying off one of her daughters to an affluent Milanese suitor since doing so would secure both their futures while also providing an excuse to travel east along the Mediterranean. Rather than hear what the young woman has to say about this fate set before her, however, it’s discovered through her actions instead. One untimely death…

REVIEW: プロメア [Puromea] [Promare] [2019]

2019/12/132020/03/22 Jared Mobarak

Oil and water as one! Its mechs vs. monsters storyline starts pretty straightforward. The latter are born from a mysterious mutation that gives a select percentage of the Earth’s population combustion powers that they simply couldn’t control at the time of the “Great World Blaze” en route to causing a mass genocide it’s taken three decades to overcome. The former are the creation of a new scientific law enforcement entity that goes by the name Foundation. With popular billionaire Kray Foresight (Masato Sakai) as its CEO, newly crafted high-tech resources…

REVIEW: Atlantique [Atlantics] [2019]

2019/12/122020/10/02 Jared Mobarak

The spirits are scared of me. French writer/director Mati Diop made a documentary short ten years ago about a group of Senegalese friends who risk their lives to sail along the coast of Africa into Spain with the hope of better lives upon their arrival. It almost seems natural then that her first feature length fictional narrative would piggyback off that story in a bid to shine light on the dangers of illegal immigration, the rampant greed of the rich in Third World countries (a third of Senegal’s population lives…

REVIEW: J’ai perdu mon corps [I Lost My Body] [2019]

2019/12/112020/10/02 Jared Mobarak

You can’t always win. I think Netflix is doing J’ai perdu mon corps [I Lost My Body] a disservice by using the word “romance” to describe it wherever I look. Jérémy Clapin‘s animated film is most definitely not that. While Guillaume Laurant‘s novel Happy Hand—which he and Clapin adapted—might have been (I haven’t read it), this cinematic version of a young man’s (Dev Patel‘s Naoufel) lustful intrigue, sparked by loneliness, for a young woman (Alia Shawkat‘s Gabrielle) he delivered a pizza to once is very intentionally not handled as a…

REVIEW: For Sama [2019]

2019/12/052020/03/23 Jared Mobarak

I don’t regret anything. After five years of footage depicting the rapid decline in Aleppo as college protests turn to rebellion with a dictatorial regime finding friends in Russia to decimate innocent civilians it intentionally refuses to differentiate from soldiers and extremists, Waad al-Kateab realizes that the snippets she’s uploaded to expose these atrocities to the world on YouTube are just as important for Syrians to remember what was and what happened. It’s about the uncertainty of whether you’ll see another day. The futility of watching friends and loved ones…

OIFF19 REVIEW: סיבת המוות [Cause of Death] [2019]

2019/11/122020/03/23 Jared Mobarak

I can’t stop thinking about it. Director Ramy A Katz leaves three text cards at the end of his Cause of Death to share responses to the film that were supplied by the Israeli police department, Ministry of Health, and the medical examiner of Officer Salim Barakat’s body upon his death at the scene of a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv on March 5, 2002. Each statement possesses one commonality that doesn’t make sense when read after watching Salim’s brother Jamal’s unofficial investigation into what happened a decade later. It’s…

OIFF19 REVIEW: Mafak [Screwdriver] [2019]

2019/11/112020/03/23 Jared Mobarak

I didn’t even cry. You hate to think of the United States as a warzone and yet that’s exactly what it is in many respects. Whether a for-profit prison system leaving a largely Black population disenfranchised, unemployable, and haunted or caged children who crossed the Southern border for asylum only to be scarred by the psychological torture of being indefinitely ripped from their parents, minorities across our country are being held as prisoners of war without any concrete conflict on the books. Multiply this tragedy by a thousand and you…

ANOMALY19 REVIEW: Bacurau [2019]

2019/11/092020/03/23 Jared Mobarak

A feast of fear and terror. It’s been awhile since Teresa (Bárbara Colen) last stepped foot in Bacurau, the small Brazilian village where she was born. Escape has proven the only way to become known outside of one’s neighbors since those who remain entrenched by choice (or necessity) are more or less the sole providers of their own survival. This notion might have begun in the abstract with the obvious contrast between a big city like São Paulo and their humble abode, but it’s been made overtly true with food…