Romance | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: The Age of Adaline [2015]

2016/03/272016/03/28 Jared Mobarak

“Tell me something I can hold onto forever and never let go” A high concept fantasy property such as The Age of Adaline could easily fall into trouble if it decided to put its focus on the mystery rather than the characters. J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz script deals with a woman who at twenty-nine was victim to an unexplained accident that left her unable to age. She wasn’t immortal or imperious to pain and injury; she simply would remain looking and being twenty-nine until something finally stopped her…

REVIEW: Hello, My Name Is Doris [2016]

2016/03/242016/03/25 Jared Mobarak

“I’m possible” Welcome to the world Doris Miller (Sally Field). It’s been too long—forty years to be exact—since you were free to roam unencumbered by self-imposed responsibilities and familial guilt no one was willing to spend the time to help alleviate. Yes, Doris has been fridged from social interaction for four decades as she quietly took the ferry from Staten Island each day to work at a company that gradually got younger and younger until she was past out-of-touch and just plain lost. She did this because she devoted her…

REVIEW: The Crying Game [1992]

2016/03/132016/03/14 Jared Mobarak

“He believes in the future” It’s amazing how different a film can feel when you put close to two decades behind your first viewing. When I watched Neil Jordan‘s The Crying Game as a teenager I did so to see what all the fuss was about. I already knew the “secret” and found it difficult to believe anyone couldn’t (in my defense, neither could Jaye Davidson‘s Dil inside the movie). But it was an intriguing tale just the same. The dynamic between captor (Stephen Rea‘s Fergus) and captive (Forest Whitaker‘s…

REVIEW: The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover [1989]

2016/03/042016/03/05 Jared Mobarak

“The naughty bits and the dirty bits are so close together” The above quote pretty much sums up Peter Greenaway‘s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. High society and criminal filth: seemingly disparate sectors of civilization that wouldn’t truly wish to consort together yet constantly overlap through history to almost merge into one. The surface context of the words concerns a conversation about the close proximity between genitals and anuses during dinner as only the boorishly crude gangster Albert Spita (Michael Gambon) could describe, but it also…

REVIEW: They Came Together [2014]

2016/02/202016/02/21 Jared Mobarak

“I admire your spirit” It’s one thing to satirize the romantic comedy genre and a whole other to literally break it down into its myriad tropes to build a story around them without transforming their generic designations into fully formed characters. But that’s exactly what David Wain (co-writer/director) and Michael Showalter (co-writer) did with They Came Together. It’s so transparent in its commentary that I was surprised they gave leading male Joel’s (Paul Rudd) brother (Max Greenfield‘s Jake) a name. The two men are so invested in calling each other…

REVIEW: The Unbelievable Truth [1990]

2016/02/182016/02/18 Jared Mobarak

“Are you a priest or something?” The satire in Hal Hartley‘s debut The Unbelievable Truth is so over-the-top that you almost have to read it as a straight comedy. He’s constantly repeating dialogue through straight-faced actors, breaking up scenes with unnecessary title cards delineating arbitrary time lapses, and makes his characters so over-wrought that we can’t help but find them endearing in their existential crises. It’s about love and capitalist ambition in the youth of America as the self-indulgence of the materialistic 80s transitions into the apathetic 90s with a…

REVIEW: Touched With Fire [2016]

2016/02/152016/02/16 Jared Mobarak

“Meet me on the other side” Depicting mental illness in film is hard for two reasons. One is the fact that actors are playacting. This may not be the case across the board—performances could be inferred from personal experience—but I’d say a majority comes from a place of research and mimicry. The second reason deals with audiences having preconceived notions about mental illness that are generally misguided. It’s difficult to show someone an honest portrayal when they don’t believe it’s honest. Perhaps filmmakers shouldn’t care about this subsection of viewers…

BERLINALE16 REVIEW: Ani ve snu! [In Your Dreams!] [2016]

2016/02/102016/02/15 Jared Mobarak

“I hate the ropes” The world of Parkour meets teenage coming-of-age angst in Petr Oukropec‘s Ani ve snu! [In Your Dreams!] and it’s a welcome mixture. Whereas most sports inherently breed competition to the point that American films must delineate good versus bad or favorite versus underdog because they underestimate their audience, the urban appropriation of French Special Forces training (Parcours du combattant) here deals in the communal spirit of freedom. There’s a kinship between participants—one highlighted by the Prague group that Egon Tobiás‘ script creates—wherein “pros” and “amateurs” alike…

REVIEW: Shok [2015]

2016/01/212016/01/29 Jared Mobarak

“It’s not about the bike” There’s no more poignant way to tell a tale of war than through the eyes of children. This is what writer/director Jamie Donoughue does with Shok, a short film set during the Kosovo War between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (spearheaded by the Serbians) and the Kosovo Liberation Army at the end of the twentieth century. Rather than show battlefield gunfire and nameless bodies falling before new soldiers can take their place, he enters a tiny village to meet best friends Oki (Andi Bajgora) and…

REVIEW: Tabu [2012]

2016/01/122018/08/24 Jared Mobarak

“You will not escape your heart” There are definite thematic similarities between Miguel Gomes‘ Tabu and F.W. Murnau‘s Tabu: A Story of the South Seas from its forbidden love to its descriptions of paradises lost. The structures are even identical—albeit in reverse—showing the joy of romance and the pain of losing it. If I were to compare the black and white Portuguese drama with anything else, however, its predecessor of seventy-years wouldn’t be it. No, the aesthetic my mind kept comparing Gome’s film to was Wes Anderson of all people.…

REVIEW: Tabu: A Story of the South Seas [1931]

2016/01/11 Jared Mobarak

“The island of Bora-Bora: still untouched by the hand of civilization” It’s a “Romeo and Juliet” by way of French Polynesia to be commended first and foremost for its use of island natives as cast and crew (the latter a result of cost-saving efforts not-withstanding). Conceived by F.W. Murnau and Robert J. Flaherty as a reprieve from the pressures of studio pictures, Tabu: A Story of the South Seas was born as a collaboration before an irreparable fracture gave the former full control once production got under way. Murnau chose…