Film Reviews | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: The Decline of Western Civilization [1981]

2016/07/072016/07/07 Jared Mobarak

“I don’t think of myself as a happy person, but I had fun tonight” You don’t get much more punk rock than Penelope Spheeris‘ concert documentary The Decline of Western Civilization. At least not American punk since the film details the club life in Los Angeles during the 80s rather than mid-70s Britain. We’re talking Black Flag, Germs, Catholic Discipline, Circle Jerks, X, The Bags, and Fear. Spheeris had both audience members and band members sign waivers to have their likenesses used in a movie and preceded to film multiple…

REVIEW: Fathers and Daughters [2015]

2016/07/062016/07/07 Jared Mobarak

“I have very self-destructive tendencies” The works of director Gabriele Muccino aren’t for everyone. I can’t speak on his Italian films, but the American ones are unavoidably cloying and sentimental in a way that must be accepted or ignored to find resonance. Despite being the one showered with praise, The Pursuit of Happyness didn’t quite do enough for me. I appreciated the story and performances, but felt the artifice. For Seven Pounds, however, I didn’t care. The entire film proved one giant manipulative contrivance yet it unexpectedly hit me with…

REVIEW: The Secret Life of Pets [2016]

2016/07/052016/07/07 Jared Mobarak

“Liberated forever, domesticated never” Illumination Entertainment’s latest film The Secret Life of Pets has an amazing hook: what do our pets do while we’re gone? We could obviously pay Comcast Xfinity to supply cameras and discover the answer to that question—why use product placement when you can show a commercial before the film that uses its characters as shills—but it’s more fun to imagine the possibilities ourselves. If you’ve seen any of the trailers you’ll know this is precisely what Ken Daurio, Brian Lynch, and Cinco Paul have decided. Their…

REVIEW: Mower Minions [2016]

2016/07/052016/07/11 Jared Mobarak

“Chop-ah chop-ah” The Minions used to be adorable little sidekicks—hilarious creatures ripe for slapstick in a secondary role to the film they were in (Despicable Me). And then they became bigger than the franchise that spawned them. Toys were made, companies recruited them to sell products, and their own feature length film was inevitably released in theaters. That’s all well and good because I am the first to say I enjoy those goobers as much as the next person. But why is Illumination transforming them into dead horses? Are they…

REVIEW: Stripes [1981]

2016/07/042016/07/04 Jared Mobarak

“Excuse me, stewardess. Is there a movie on this flight?” Considering it’s become such a major staple of Bill Murray‘s career, it’s crazy to think Stripes began as a prospective Cheech and Chong vehicle. Written by screenwriters Len Blum and Daniel Goldberg based on an idea from director Ivan Reitman, it may have gone in that direction if the studio was willing to give the pot-smoking duo creative control. Hardly keen on relinquishing so much power, they decided instead to pitch Harold Ramis on tweaking things so he and Murray…

REVIEW: The Trials of Muhammad Ali [2013]

2016/07/032016/07/04 Jared Mobarak

“A white man’s heaven is a black man’s hell” While the structure of Bill Siegel‘s The Trials of Muhammad Ali delivers nothing new to the language of documentary—archival footage mixed with present-day interviews working towards a specific thesis—the story at it’s back is too interesting to blindly dismiss. We all know Ali as a poet, the champion lording over Sonny Liston, and a member of the Nation of Islam. We know him as a conscientious dissenter who never ended up in jail, but do we know the details surrounding this…

REVIEW: Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle [The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser] [1974]

2016/07/022016/07/11 Jared Mobarak

“I want to be a gallant rider like my father was before me” If any true story of mystery and perhaps madness were to align itself with Werner Herzog‘s sensibilities, that of young Kaspar Hauser is it. Here was a seventeen-year old boy found standing in Nuremburg clutching a note addressed to the cavalry captain. No one knew how he got there or where he was from until he was ultimately taught to read, write, and think enough to get by in normal day-to-day life. This is when tales of…

REVIEW: Swiss Army Man [2016]

2016/07/012016/07/11 Jared Mobarak

“I don’t want to die alone” You can never be sure about a marketing campaign using a phrase like, “You’ve heard it a million times, but this time it’s true. You’ve never seen a movie like Swiss Army Man.” What type of ploy are they engaging in? We all know it’s been affectionately called (and derided as) the “farting corpse movie,” but that isn’t a mind-blowing detail to render us awestruck. That pitch causes us to wonder what the Daniels (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) actually did with their debut…

REVIEW: The Neon Demon [2016]

2016/06/302016/07/01 Jared Mobarak

“Are you food or are you sex” Fame: all that’s glittered and gold, the intrinsic “it” quality we’d kill for but never do. That aura with an expiration date; beauty, confidence, radiance, and whatever other label outsiders use to transform you into a commodity to be bought, sold, and exploited within the tiny window before someone younger takes your place. This is Nicolas Winding Refn‘s The Neon Demon, an unexplainable concept jumping person to person without definition or discernment. It consumes the souls of unwitting vessels, makes them and breaks…

REVIEW: Buddymoon [2016]

2016/06/292016/06/30 Jared Mobarak

“It will make sense in just some seconds” When Flula Borg showed up in the Pitch Perfect 2 trailer I found myself smiling at his success. It was a cameo keen to capitalize on his YouTube DJ fame and unabashedly broken English Chatty Cathy vibe, but it was studio film exposure nonetheless. This cemented the fact that I had become a fan of this crazy German and as such jumped at the chance to see how he’d do as co-lead and co-writer of his own vehicle. Just as the prospect…

REVIEW: The Purge: Election Year [2016]

2016/06/282018/07/03 Jared Mobarak

“Is murder our new religion?” The escalation of terror has dialed up a few more notches as writer/director James DeMonaco takes us further down the hole of first world genocide in The Purge: Election Year. What began behind fortified walls and a false sense of modest superiority to show how no one was safe when bloodlust, greed, and jealousy ruled mankind soon entered the outdoors to find the government blatantly enforcing its own thinly veiled mantra of “kill the poor” when the public stopped doing it for them. The only…