Category: Film Reviews

REVIEW: The Ninth Configuration [1980]

Jared Mobarak

“You have to say, ‘Simon Says.’ Then we’ll do it.” The history behind William Peter Blatty‘s The Ninth Configuration adds a ton of insight into its ambitious yet lacking film adaptation. His original intent, for instance, was to create a comic novel. Blatty has even been quoted as saying he prefers the first version he wrote in 1966 entitled Twinkle, Twinkle, “Killer” Kane! It was only after working alongside William Friedkin on the set of The Exorcist that he chose to go back and do a rewrite. This retro-fitted evolution…

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REVIEW: Drifter [2017]

Jared Mobarak

“It’s a wasteland. There are no more rules.” You can be two things inside a post-apocalyptic wasteland devoid of morality according to writer/director Chris von Hoffmann: stoic badass on a journey of vengeance or unhinged cartoon cannibal with tongue readier to lick flesh than gun is to blow a hole in someone’s head. There’s no room for anything in between whether compassionate souls trying to survive amongst malicious wild cards or cautious, anxiety-ridden kids in way over their heads. Either way you’re going to die—not in an esoteric “we all…

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REVIEW: Logan [2017]

Jared Mobarak

“Does she remind you of anybody?” Calling any X-Men adaptation a gamble seems stupid considering the mass appeal comic book movies still hold at the box office, but Hollywood has a way of making those sentiments true when artists start bandying about the R-rated label. The standalone Wolverine films have seen what shying away from that challenge does, the first (Origins) proving a misguidedly silly throwaway and the second (The Wolverine) ending up little more than wasted potential or perhaps a casualty of studio interference. We’ve seen seventeen years of…

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REVIEW: XX [2017]

Jared Mobarak

“Well I have to eat. Don’t I?” The concept is simple: task four female directors to create and film four unrelated shorts in the horror vein—with female-led casts—to be combined into a single compilation in which to show off the talents and voices of artists Hollywood continues to ignore. Tap newcomer Jovanka Vuckovic (whose “The Box” is based on a story by Jack Ketchum), musician Annie ‘St. Vincent’ Clark with her debut behind the camera (“The Birthday Party”), the veteran leadership of V/H/S producer and Southbound helmer Roxanne Benjamin (with…

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REVIEW: Fist Fight [2017]

Jared Mobarak

“Never trash talk an English teacher” It’s hard to believe that “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” has been on the air for twelve years now, but it’s still going strong. While the show opened doors for the entire quartet of relative unknowns, Charlie Day has been the one who’s leveraged his rising star into a pretty prolific film career, generally as the confused, manic comic relief. He fills that role on the show too, albeit at a level of imbecilic illiteracy that’s hard to fathom without watching yourself. But in…

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BERLINALE17 REVIEW: Ceux qui font les révolutions à moitié n’ont fait que se creuser un tombeau [Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves] [2017]

Jared Mobarak

“People do not yet see they are miserable. We will show them!” There’s universality to Mathieu Denis and Simon Lavoie‘s Ceux qui font les révolutions à moitié n’ont fait que se creuser un tombeau [Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves] even if it is very much a Québécois film. Marking their second collaboration together (after 2011’s Laurentie), the two were desperate to tell a tale about young radicals on the cusp of disillusionment after the failed Maple Spring protests (an infamous series of student demonstrations and…

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REVIEW: John Wick: Chapter 2 [2017]

Jared Mobarak

“Are you here for the Pope?” The team behind John Wick achieved success with a formula that distilled the prototypical action film down to its main points of entertainment while leaving the fat on the cutting room floor. This is why we moved back and forth through time for some scenes (the result playing out while the road there is experienced in montage) and why the economy of script successfully conveyed a hyper-real state of danger and malice from all involved. We don’t need elaboration on what we just saw…

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REVIEW: Rocco e i suoi fratelli [Rocco and His Brothers] [1960]

Jared Mobarak

“But you mustn’t always forgive” More than a story about immigrants building a new life for themselves away from the home they wished could have been theirs forever, Luchino Visconti‘s Rocco e i suoi fratelli [Rocco and His Brothers] is an epic journey of hubris, love, and grand dreams falling short. In three hours we receive around four or five years of advancement and corruption within the Parondi family as opportunities are achieved as easily as they are squandered. We’re talking about five brothers who grew up in southern Italy’s…

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REVIEW: Ennemis intérieurs [Enemies Within] [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“Between you and me, what’s the difference?” The definitive exchange in Hidden Figures—the one that defines America then and still today—is when Kirsten Dunst‘s personnel manager tells Octavia Spencer‘s yet-to-be-given-the-title supervisor, “Despite what you may think, I have nothing against y’all.” Spencer’s Dorothy Vaughan counters without missing a beat, “I know you probably believe that.” It’s such a perfect distillation of how racism permeates the very core of who we are to the point where we don’t even understand why we are racist. It happens all the time now, white…

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REVIEW: La Femme et la TGV [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“I’ve never sent an internet and I never will” While its age-old conceit of a misunderstood curmudgeon discovering joy after being perpetually caught in a cycle of monotony is familiar, Timo von Gunten‘s cutely inspiring La femme et le TGV is in fact based on true events. The woman at its center is Elise (Jane Birkin), a baker left alone after her husband passed on, her son (Mathieu Bisson‘s Pierre) moved away, and her clientele gradually enticed by a cheap German bakery with unbeatable prices. She rides her bike to…

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REVIEW: Silent Nights [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“I live a very hard life” It’s extremely difficult for me to blindly accept a film like Aske Bang‘s Silent Nights on faith. The idea that someone can do bad things—no matter how good he/she is at heart—and continuously be rewarded is a tough sell. But that’s exactly what this look at immigration through a charitable Danish lens attempts. A man may be a saint, but that doesn’t excuse thieving, adultery, or lying with ease. I understand the message comes down to “hard living” and “impossible decisions,” but the film’s…

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