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FANTASIA19 REVIEW: 우상 [Woo-sang] [Idol] [2019]

2019/07/262020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

You take the fault. Two fathers and two sons are embroiled in the aftermath of a cover-up wherein one boy winds up dead and the other imprisoned. Su-jin Lee could have spun his tale with little else since the perpetrator’s (Jo Byeong-gyu‘s Yo-han was behind the wheel, drunk and speeding down a quiet service street) father (Han Suk-kyu‘s Koo Myung-hui) is a political messiah running for governor while the victim’s dad (Sol Kyung-gu‘s Yoo Joong-sik) possesses just enough desperation and desire for retribution to go to court and make certain…

FANTASIA19 REVIEW: DreadOut [2019]

2019/07/152020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

Don’t you dare say those words. Malignant forces within Catholic tales of evil generally seek to create Hell on Earth by finding a host willing to read the ancient words serving as their key. It’s therefore rare to receive scenes of demonic possession wherein a writhing body with black fluid spewing from its mouth screams for a portal not to be opened. But that’s exactly how writer/director Kimo Stamboel opens his cinematic adaptation of DreadOut—an indie survival horror videogame from Indonesia. He introduces a group of men holding the demon…

FANTASIA19 REVIEW: 메기 [Maggie] [2019]

2019/07/132020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

Let’s believe in people from now on. How would a movie narrated by a catfish feel? While the animal probably has a good view of what’s going on, would it understand? And when people use it as a stand-in for their conscience—knowing (yet not wanting to accept) the voice responding was still his/her own—would it retain the context of what it had heard? This fish would be an objective third party observer trying to parse the world around it through those few kind souls that pay it the time of…

FANTASIA19 REVIEW: Sadako [2019]

2019/07/082020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

That new girl is creepy. Director Hideo Nakata brought novelist Kôji Suzuki‘s Ring series to the big screen two decades ago and spawned a laundry list of sequels, American remakes (one of which he helmed), comics, and television remakes that each put their own unique spin on central “monster” Sadako Yamamura’s history until fluidity of mythology became a veritable franchise hallmark. Things got muddled fast too as the initial follow-up to Ringu fared so poorly (with a different creative team at the lead to release the same year) that it…

REVIEW: สุดเสน่หา [Sud sanaeha] [Blissfully Yours] [2002]

2019/06/192020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

I feel like hitting someone. After witnessing the arrest of two young Burmese women while shooting his previous film in Bangkok, Apichatpong Weerasethakul decided to create a new work depicting the political injustice caused by growing tensions between Thailand’s government and illegal immigrants. Because those familiar with his oeuvre know he’s built his career upon glacially paced narratives that do more to conjure mood than advance plot, the declaration that the aforementioned incident inspired him to “cast the sun as [his] main character” in สุดเสน่หา [Sud sanaeha] [Blissfully Yours] proves…

REVIEW: Hagazussa [2018]

2019/06/172020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

We don’t have to be afraid here. What creates a witch? An evil that takes hold of willing vessels yearning to do his/her demonic master’s bidding or a populace’s mass fear that turns mankind’s own evil against those who are different than them and therefore a threat to the status quo? If you’re a believer in the occult, some version of the former is probably at the forefront of your philosophies on supernatural powers in the real world. And if you aren’t, the latter’s perspective provides clarity as to the…

REVIEW: Leto [2018]

2019/06/032020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

Laziness has kept me out of trouble many times. We only recognize it through hindsight, but Americans are spoiled by cultural freedom. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s meant having the opportunity to listen to radio stations, records, and cassettes of music spanning multiple genres and eras. It was all at our fingertips and we didn’t have to do much to acquire it unless we lived in a conservatively oppressive household with parents who thought rock-n-roll was a gateway drug for Satanism. From new wave to grunge with blues…

REVIEW: Doubles vies [Non-Fiction] [2019]

2019/05/292020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

An infinite minority. You know when you go to a get-together and the conversation inevitably turns to current affairs for which everyone has a fringe understanding? So rather than provide true opinions, they simply start regurgitating what they’ve read on the subject. Most times their content doesn’t even come from a primary source because we’ve conditioned ourselves to blindly trust media outlets that paraphrase, parse, and filter through their own personalized political agenda. Fact therefore becomes a stepping-stone towards editorial and that editorial suddenly becomes a stand-in for the facts.…

REVIEW: La battaglia di Algeri [The Battle of Algiers] [1966]

2019/05/162020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

You never know. It’s almost impossible to receive an objective depiction of war considering how easy it is to skew art towards propaganda through the dissemination of a political agenda. And it’s only been getting harder as new technology keeps costs down when making movies that serve one side of things no matter the veracity of claims held within. A film like Gillo Pontecorvo‘s La battaglia di Algeri [The Battle of Algiers] therefore stands as a vision of what once was with a documentary-like vérité style refusing to pull punches…

REVIEW: Fuga [Fugue] [2018]

2019/05/112020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

Prison would be better. Stories dealing with amnesia generally gravitate towards a heartwarming conclusion wherein a character regains his/her bearings to live happily ever after within the life they lost. This reality is due to the fact that the afflicted is often found soon after the incident that’s left them unfamiliar with their former self. They wake up without knowing who they are, quickly become confronted with people who do, and ultimately work towards bridging the gap. What happens, though, if the time separating disappearance and reunion is much longer?…

REVIEW: Napszállta [Sunset] [2018]

2019/05/032020/03/28 Jared Mobarak

It’s starting all over again. I felt as though I was running circles throughout László Nemes‘ sophomore effort Napszállta [Sunset]. It doesn’t help that we’re often inches from Írisz Leiter’s (Juli Jakab) face—if not looking through her very eyes—as she winds her way through an unfamiliar and just out of focus Budapest, Hungary. I speak more of the narrative propulsion and metaphorical implications of the whole, though. Here’s a young woman stubbornly interjecting her way into the lives of strangers and yet constantly walking off to chase a clue about…