Category: Film Reviews

REVIEW: Rules Don’t Apply [2016]

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…

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REVIEW: Night of the Slasher [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“I can wait until you’re dressed” You’re the sole survivor of a horror movie incident that has literally left you speechless with an ear-to-ear scar across your throat. Do you continue your life with straight-edged celibacy to ensure you never commit the genre sins that got you cut in the first place? Or do you do whatever is necessary to bring your assailant back to wreak some revenge? Well, if you’re like Jenelle (Lily Berlina) the answer is always going to be the latter. So you work out what it…

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REVIEW: Pigskin [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“Go Magpies!” Their publicists would be remiss not to mention that the same school Pigskin director Jake Hammond and co-writer Nicola Newton attend is that which graduated It Follows creator David Robert Mitchell. I personally couldn’t stop thinking about the latter while watching thanks to the horror underpinnings of a creepily deformed figure trailing high school cheerleader Laurie (Isadora Leiva) around. Mix that sense of dread with a poppy synth soundtrack a la Drive and you can get a feeling for what Hammond and Newton deliver. The vision is impeccable,…

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

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…

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

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…

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REVIEW: Dead Bullet [2016]

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…

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REVIEW: Army of One [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“They don’t call me the psychic wizard for nothing” To hear about Gary Faulkner is to know the meaning of the phrase “stranger than fiction.” This is a Chatty Cathy of a Colorado handyman who was visited by God one afternoon while receiving dialysis and given a mission. Of everyone on planet Earth, Gary was the one personally selected by his Lord and Savior to capture Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and bring him to the United States for “justice and stuff.” Not the Marines. Not mercenaries or Al-Qaeda power…

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REVIEW: Doctor Strange [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“It’s not about you” People love to complain about superhero origin story trappings and they’re correct. The need to introduce new characters in their own standalone piece forces writers and directors to focus on certain check stops as far as normal life, transformation, and the embracing of one’s power to find the courage to selflessly fight evil. But just because these things are obvious doesn’t mean they have to be boring or that they have to diminish the final product. Many Marvel Universe fans still laud Iron Man as this…

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REVIEW: The Opera Singer [2016]

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…

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REVIEW: Transience [2013]

Jared Mobarak

What is the packet that George (Timothy J. Cox) gives Tom (Joshua Michael Payne) in Tan See Yun‘s short film Transience? This question is running through my mind in desperate need of an answer because without one the whole proves too esoteric to reconcile. We know these two men are a couple—the former responsible, caring, and career-oriented with the latter younger, independent, and perhaps resentful—but we don’t know why they’ve drifted or why/if they should reignite their waning passion. There are of course obvious motivations whether it’s nondescript universal frustrations…

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REVIEW: The Ivory Game [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“You have to be prepared to shoot back” If you went to a Regal Cinema during the month prelude to The Legend of Tarzan‘s release you will know the insane statistics depicting the sharp decline of living elephants throughout the world. Alexander Skarsgård told us about the problem—although I’d be surprised if you weren’t cognizant of the issue, if not the prevalence, beforehand—and the pitch to donate money for their conservation was in full force. Well Netflix has taken the next step to ensure an even wider range of people…

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