Romance | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: The Diary of a Teenage Girl [2015]

2015/09/012015/09/02 Jared Mobarak

“And now the making of a harlot” You don’t realize what might be missing from a film until it’s staring you in the face elsewhere. I love The Perks of Being a Wallflower for its universality, authentic emotions, and resonance, but there was something absent I could only see while watching Marielle Heller‘s adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner‘s graphic novel The Diary of a Teenage Girl. To say it is honesty would be a disservice to Perks because Stephen Chbosky‘s fictional memoir is honest as far as the subject matter and…

TIFF15 REVIEW: Never Happened [2015]

2015/08/302015/09/16 Jared Mobarak

“Where’s my other earring?” For eight minutes Mark Slutsky makes sure he has us right where he wants us. Never Happened is so precisely measured in its construction and revelations that we don’t even know its true genre until the very end. Yes there’s comedy and romance and drama in its plot concerning two business partners engaging in a sexual relationship while out of town for a meeting, but their decision to forget the encounter brings with it a much larger understanding of the world in which they live than…

TIFF15 REVIEW: o negative [2015]

2015/08/292015/09/17 Jared Mobarak

“Everything okay?” Sorry, Twilight. Your depiction of love between vampire and human pales in comparison to the uncensored drama of Steven McCarthy‘s o negative. This is the gritty truth of the type of co-dependent relationship such a union is constructed upon—one where morality and humanity is excised completely from matters of life and death. When your lover needs blood to survive you must be willing to forfeit your own existence whether it means feeding them from your vein or playing mother bird by acquiring an outside source and readying it…

REVIEW: Felt [2015]

2015/08/132015/08/14 Jared Mobarak

“I’m never safe” Today’s sexual climate needs a film like Felt to turn a mirror back. Whether it’s the long-hushed Quaalude-rape escapades of Bill Cosby finally coming to light or recent allegations pointed towards infamous party-boy and man-of-bad-decisions Patrick Kane, thinking the public can ignore society’s pervasive patriarchy and victim-blaming is dying. I won’t say it’s dead since who knows if that day will ever come. But sexual abuse is heading into the mainstream media to empower prey in seeking justice to ensure no one else gets hurt as well…

REVIEW: Pink Moon [2015]

2015/07/04 Jared Mobarak

“Nothing is permanent” It’s a shame that films like Sal Bardo‘s Pink Moon are necessary for some to realize the true value of human life, but that’s the world we live in. Even with the Supreme Court ruling for same sex marriage throughout the United States, we are a long way towards equality. Many Republicans still refuse to budge on the topic, for all intents and purposes making a return to the White House a tenuous proposition at best. And you surely know someone whose knee-jerk reaction to two women…

REVIEW: Birthday [2015]

2015/07/042015/07/04 Jared Mobarak

“Some assembly required” It’s not difficult to know what’s coming as soon as a Marine (Chris Gouchoe) and his wife (Mandy Moody) are seen discovering the discrepancy in their math counting down the days until his return home. She has it marked on her calendar as forty-two to go while he gently explains it’s actually forty-three. A lot can happen in twenty-four hours, though, so we of course must assume the worst. Depending on your mettle and strength, death can almost prove an easier result than the future many veterans…

REVIEW: Lava [2015]

2015/06/152015/06/17 Jared Mobarak

“Send me someone to lav-a” Sometimes cute is enough for an enjoyable little yarn, but I can’t help being disappointed when that’s all a new Pixar short has to offer. I do get that the studio can’t hit a homerun every single time out, however, and I don’t begrudge a catchy escapist ditty like the one director James Ford Murphy has written at the core of Lava. I guess I was simply waiting for some higher-level moment of resonance generally expected from Luxo Jr.’s team that never came. It really…

REVIEW: World Spins Madly On [2015]

2015/03/20 Jared Mobarak

“It’s right in front of you. Just go for it.” The above quote from World Spins Madly On could be the same words writer/director Jeremy Jed Hammel told himself when debating his next film project. In pops the idea of an unlikely romance sparking from thin air due to inexplicably forceful signs and onto the screen arrives Kermit (Doug Orey) and Lauren (Lauren Eicher) sharing a random moment courtesy of some higher power. Sometimes you simply have to go for it and see what happens. If it works: great. If…

REVIEW: Une Libération [2015]

2015/03/192015/03/30 Jared Mobarak

“The Americans are coming” ***Possible Spoilers*** The sheer number of different stories that have been told out of the atrocities committed during World War II never ceases to amaze me. It shouldn’t—such a large-scale assault on humanity is nothing if not complex. When you think about breadth of the countries, cultures, and languages involved, the tally of uniquely personal tales brought home in its aftermath is infinite. While Hollywood focuses its attention on epics of artillery or repurposed accounts told through the eyes of comic book superheroes, though, such a…

REVIEW: Cinderella [2015]

2015/03/102015/03/13 Jared Mobarak

“Have courage and be kind” For anyone who cannot stand singing, Disney’s latest iteration of the timeless Cinderella is catered to you. I know Chris Weitz and the other screenwriters on the project before him poured through the fairy tale’s vast lineage for every detail they could cull together into what they surely believe to be the definitive version, but what I saw onscreen is the same thing I saw as a child in cartoon form. Just without the sing-songy “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boos”. There are a couple spoken ones for…

REVIEW: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night [2014]

2015/03/042015/03/05 Jared Mobarak

“Are you a good boy or not?” The comparisons are so spot-on that I knew critics before me had made the same parallels before even looking. Ana Lily Amirpour‘s debut feature A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is Jim Jarmusch cool with Quentin Tarantino swagger—an Iranian Vampire Western calling to mind Dead Man and Ghost Dog remixed through a Pulp Fiction lens. It’s a wonder no one had done it before with the way in which her titular creature of the night glides across Bad City in her pitch-black…