Romance | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Fifty Shades of Grey [2015]

2015/02/112015/02/13 Jared Mobarak

“I enjoy various physical pursuits” Author E.L. James should be ecstatic that the crazy fervor surrounding her trilogy of BD/SM propelled it towards a movie deal because now artists more qualified to bring her kinkiness to life can get their hands on it. I’m not saying she’s a bad writer—I’ll let the myriad commenters on the interwebs too haughty to accept someone who turned a pornographic Twilight fan-fiction into a worldwide bestseller do that. I’m also not saying she’s good—I haven’t read her novel, but have been exposed to the…

REVIEW: The Wedding Ringer [2014]

2015/01/232015/01/24 Jared Mobarak

“Sock on put” The writing team behind The Break-Up is back nine years later with their latest comedy The Wedding Ringer. While not a slog like their first feature—I found it painful at times—Jeremy Garelick (who also directs) and Jay Lavender‘s increased entertainment value unfortunately comes at the price of the whole being a complete mess. Jamming in as many comedy tropes as possible to create this genre Frankenstein’s monster, you’ll find yourself laughing at Wedding Crashers-level raunch one moment, wading through a flipped The Wedding Planner-esque plot full of…

REVIEW: Da Sweet Blood of Jesus [2015]

2015/01/112015/01/12 Jared Mobarak

“You have not because you ask not” I backed Spike Lee‘s Kickstarted Da Sweet Blood of Jesus because I was intrigued by an auteur of his stature being left to his own devices on a project as captivating as what he’d set forth. He said it was “a new kind of love story”—one about human beings addicted to blood that’s funny, sexy, and bloody. It was therefore disappointing when the adjective “new” altered into “1973 remake”. Since I haven’t seen Bill Gunn‘s Ganja & Hess, however, I kept an open…

REVIEW: Beside Still Waters [2014]

2014/12/05 Jared Mobarak

“Nothing, buddy. You keep on … sulking.” When a feature length debut bows at only 76-minutes you think two things. One: it barely contains a short film worth of content and has been pumped full of fat. Or Two: it’s a shallow piece that goes nowhere and inevitably feels incomplete. It’s a horrible thing that these became the only two options I could see in front of me when sitting down to Chris Lowell‘s (Piz for all you “Veronica Mars” fans) Beside Still Waters. I was actually excited to check…

REVIEW: The Color of Time [2014]

2014/12/012014/12/12 Jared Mobarak

“I have things I want to do” I wonder if James Franco showed his NYU class Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life because it appears the twelve students he handpicked to write and direct what became the C.K. Williams biography The Color of Time saw it and sought to remake it. Instead of musings on the world with one boy/man serving as a metaphor for the whole of existence, however, they’ve centered their love for elegiac interludes of the mundane on a series of poems serving as a metaphor for…

REVIEW: The Theory of Everything [2014]

2014/11/222014/11/25 Jared Mobarak

“The little one has done it” To me Stephen Hawking has always been synonymous with physics I will never understand and that ubiquitous computerized voice cracking snide jokes. Until I saw the trailer for James Marsh‘s The Theory of Everything I never even knew he was once able to walk. It was kind of a mind blowing revelation for an ignorant fellow such as myself—one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century bound to a wheelchair without motor function suddenly shown to have been a once vibrant young Cambridge…

REVIEW: Thou Wast Mild & Lovely [2014]

2014/11/142016/02/22 Jared Mobarak

“My lover knows how to love me” She is not kidding when she says: “To those who feel that their cruelty is too cruel, their sadness too sad, I dedicate this film: an embrace.” Writer/director Josephine Decker means every single word because she herself has laid bare her own cruelty and sadness with Thou Wast Mild & Lovely. Her characters are flawed, dangerous, and inviting—animals working the farm yet animals just the same. They each desire, take, and enjoy, suffering the psychological consequences after the fact, unregretful for what they’ve…

REVIEW: Always Woodstock [2014]

2014/11/102014/11/13 Jared Mobarak

“Don’t love anyone that makes you hate your art” The feature debut of writer/director Rita Merson is mired in convention. Think to yourself about five cinematic tropes that could be found in a romantic dramedy and I’ll bet you at least four are present in Always Woodstock. But that’s not telling you anything you wouldn’t already guess from a plot centering on a young wannabe songwriter stuck in a dead-end, soul sucking job meant to help get a foot into the music industry who finds herself escaping to the country…

REVIEW: Gone with the Wind [1939]

2014/11/012014/11/02 Jared Mobarak

“All we’ve got is cotton and slaves and … arrogance” For years I’ve thought Gone with the Wind some grand, epic romance. How else could anyone take its smoldering poster of Clark Gable ready to ravish Vivien Leigh as her dress falls helplessly from her shoulders? This advert proves as manipulative as the woman positioned at the film’s center because it’s Scarlett O’Hara’s (Leigh) tale from start to finish, complete with every tragic morsel of life’s lemons both unwitting and a result of her own doing. A spoiled brat believing…

REVIEW: God Help the Girl [2014]

2014/10/272014/10/28 Jared Mobarak

“Find the face behind the voice” Utilizing the creed “go big or go home”, Belle & Sebastian lead singer/songwriter Stuart Murdoch definitely didn’t seek to simply dabble in cinema when it came to his debut feature God Help the Girl. Beginning as a suite of songs written in the band’s downtime, he worked tirelessly to turn it into a fully formed musical dealing with the type of subject matter most probably would avoid when working with the genre. Focusing on a young woman named Eve (Emily Browning) who’s caught in…

REVIEW: Lilting [2014]

2014/09/242016/02/22 Jared Mobarak

“Kissing is kissing” There’s no better title for Hong Khaou‘s feature debut than the one given: Lilting. It describes the pacing and aesthetic as guilt and grief intertwine with memory and reality fading together within a single camera pan for a joltingly emotive effect. It also illustrates each character’s cautious trepidation amidst tragedy and their desire to find acceptance in a powerfully calm rhythm. We’re ushered into the life of a Cambodian Chinese mother (Pei-pei Cheng‘s Junn) living in London with no one but a kindly British gentleman down the…