Science Fiction | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Gemini Man [2019]

2019/10/212020/03/23 Jared Mobarak

I just want some peace. It took twenty years, multiple rewrites, and a who’s who list of directors and stars, but Gemini Man finally made it to the big screen. And original scribe Darren Lemke kept his story and screenplay credits through everything. That says something considering these development hell miracles too often become abominations so far removed from their auspicious beginnings that there’s no sign of what got studios excited in the first place. David Benioff and Billy Ray earned their place beside him with Ang Lee putting his…

REVIEW: Ad Astra [2019]

2019/09/262020/03/23 Jared Mobarak

Most of us spend our entire life in hiding. In our quests for more, many of us forget that which we already have. This is true on a micro (sacrificing family for career) and macro (domination no matter the collateral damage) level. Space exploration can often become a rather direct example of this as a common reason for advancement in interstellar travel stems from our desire to find a new home to replace the one we’ve destroyed. We latch onto those things that we can only hope to achieve while…

TIFF19 REVIEW: Synchronic [2020]

2019/09/082020/03/24 Jared Mobarak

The present is a miracle. When two paramedic best friends in New Orleans discovered the first unexplainable injury on their route, they didn’t really think much about it. The second? Well, it was a body. They shouldn’t have even been called. What about the third, though? A snake bite in a hotel room without a snake alongside a disappeared boyfriend? That’s when you start looking for the connective tissue holding everything together besides Steve (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan) having the bad luck to catch them all. That’s when…

TIFF19 REVIEW: Sea Fever [2019]

2019/09/072020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

Don’t think. Just jump. Ever the scientist too enthralled with work to bother making friends, Siobhán (Hermoine Corfield) will stop at nothing to gaze upon a school of fish whose swim pattern might be crucial to her research. This means bumming onto a trawler owned by Gerard (Dougray Scott) and Freya (Connie Nielsen) thanks to an acquaintance with a crush (Jack Hickey). The fishing couple are short on cash (late payroll the reason Ardalan Esmaili‘s engineer Ahmed is about to quit), so they take her money, agree to one scuba…

REVIEW: Riot Girls [2019]

2019/08/052020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

You feel me, bro? Following her success helming a segment in the well-received, woman-directed horror anthology XX, former Rue Morgue editor Jovanka Vuckovic delivers her feature film debut with the high concept, post-apocalyptic teen actioner Riot Girls. Obviously borrowing from the underground feminist punk movement Riot grrrl for its title (with an appropriate aesthetic and love for Joan Jett), screenwriter Katherine Collins‘ tale of rival gangs also takes many cues from “The Walking Dead” by applying that 90s-era subculture to its social commentary separating humans into two categories: those who…

FANTASIA19 REVIEW: Jesus shows you the way to the Highway [2019]

2019/07/172020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

Duty calls for the last time. All Agent D.T. Gagano (Daniel Tadesse) wants is to retire from the CIA and help his love Malin (Gerda-Annette Allikas) open the best kickboxing joint the world has ever seen. Maybe he’ll hone his pizza-making skills and put a pizzeria next door too if all pans out. Before that dream can come to fruition, however, he’ll need to complete his most dangerous mission yet: securing the so-called “substance” from a computer virus known as “Stalin” (Guillermo Llansó) who’s using it to take control of…

REVIEW: Spider-Man: Far From Home [2019]

2019/07/022020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

Please stop saying tingle. **There will obviously be Endgame spoilers.** It’s a post-“blip” world (the word humanity has agreed upon as a stand-in for the five-year period where half of world’s population disappeared at the snap of Thanos’ fingers) and the usual faces are gone. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) can no longer rely on Steve Rogers’ idealism, Natasha Romanoff’s loyalty, or Tony Stark’s genius as a last line of defense when Earth is challenged with a force the boots on the ground simply cannot handle. Captain Marvel is off…

REVIEW: Dark Phoenix [2019]

2019/06/112020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

What did you do to her? Hollywood franchise filmmaking really is a frustrating system insofar as allowing good source material room to breathe. That’s not to say it doesn’t sometimes work too, though. Look at Twentieth Century Fox’s cinematic X-Men saga for instance. After hitting a comic book high with X2, the desire for more bombast coupled by a much blunter director (Brett Ratner replaced Bryan Singer, who jumped ship from Marvel to DC) saw X-Men: The Last Stand seemingly destroy all hope of ever seeing this iteration of these…

REVIEW: Fast Color [2019]

2019/05/272020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

I want us to try again. It’s a gift that has been carried down through generations, always from mother to daughter. It can break apart any object they can physically see into its core molecules, swirling them around in the air until ready to reform as whatever it was beforehand. A bowl, cigarette, and even a door if need be can get dematerialized through sheer will of spirit—a parlor trick on its surface with the potential for more. But what if “more” means corruption? What if “more” means harming outsiders…

REVIEW: Chopping Mall [1986]

2019/05/212020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

Absolutely nothing can go wrong. Only a 1980s horror could have a killer robot plot and intentionally gloss over artificial intelligence themes for lightning. Who wants a ton of exposition talking about hubristic irony when you can let Mother Nature provide a malfunction? Rather than show humanity as its own worst enemy flying too close to the sun, supernaturally sci-fi-inspired sentries wreak havoc with little more than a bolt of electricity flipping the switch that transforms these programmed protectors into autonomous predators. Now all you need is a few sex-crazed…

REVIEW: High Life [2019]

2019/04/302020/03/28 Jared Mobarak

What do you know about cruelty? Redemption can be an illusion to so many people. They try so hard to make up for past misdeeds that they often fall prey to even more along the way. That’s what happens when you give your quest a tangible goal—achieving it becomes paramount, the process a means to an ends. If you tell a murderer that they will be forgiven upon saving their victim’s family, who’s to say they wouldn’t simply kill another to do so? If you tell someone that saving humanity’s…