Category: Shorts

REVIEW: Borrowed Time [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“What do I do?” It’s been a dark year for animated films—dark with a subtle slice of hope for the future. My Life as a Zucchini leads the way on that front, but Borrowed Time is hardly an exception. Andrew Coats and Lou Hamou-Lhadj‘s stylized computer-animated short focuses on an aged Sheriff yet to forgive himself for an accident he was involved with years before as a boy. Everything that’s happened since hasn’t shaken the guilt, a life as a lawman upholding justice and order unable to even the scales.…

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REVIEW: Pearl [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“There’s no wrong way home” It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the director of Pearl is also the man behind Oscar-winning Disney short Feast. Patrick Osborne for all intents and purposes has merely updated that previous look at a dog experiencing the tumultuousness of humanity around him to one capturing the bond between a father and a daughter as time turns love into a struggle before ultimately coming back full circle post-adolescence. The camera is again virtually set in one place, but it’s affixed to a locale rather than…

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REVIEW: 4.1 Miles [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“Did Dad get on the boat?” While Trump’s administration unconstitutionally discriminates against Muslims from countries he doesn’t do business with, heroes are risking their lives to protect those who need protecting. One of these is Kyriakos Papadopoulos, a Greek Coast Guard captain from the island of Lebos who goes out into the choppy waters of the Aegean Sea to rescue refugees braving the four-mile distance from Turkey. He says that they go out every hour to pull in about two hundred innocent survivors of war, the numbers adding up to…

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REVIEW: Joe’s Violin [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“How long can you live with memories?” You never know when a potential story will come your way. For Kahane Cooperman it was on her drive to work around New York City while listening to WQXR. The station was calling for used instruments to be donated for children and schools in need, a story about how they already received one from a ninety-one year old Holocaust survivor piquing Cooperman’s interest. An adventure to discover who this man was and how he acquired the violin began that ultimately led her to…

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REVIEW: Timmy II [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“I’m human now. But the wrong kind, I guess.” Writer/director Imran J. Khan‘s short comedy Timmy II is absurd in more ways than one. There’s the ham-fisted sci-fi aspect of a father putting his deceased son’s heart into a robot and watching it come to life on the story front and an overuse of obvious green screen work on the production end. But it all adds to the infectious charm of this quirky metaphor for our world’s knee-jerk prejudices. It allows Khan’s and Christopher Vennemeyer‘s script to comment not only…

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REVIEW: A Soldier’s Song [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“Can’t say” The Civil War in America was insane to comprehend in this nation historically because family members fought family members in close. This was a war waged with bayonets and bullets rather than bombs and drones. To join one side knowing someone you love was on the other meant you were willing to meet them on the battlefield and pull the trigger—not for yourself to survive, but for the cause and the man next to you. To show sympathy is to risk tragedy so the guilt of killing your…

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REVIEW: The Story of 90 Coins [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“I will prove my love and determination to you” Here’s an interesting film that’s beautiful to look at and well acted, but built on a story steeped in a notion the twenty first century doesn’t and shouldn’t accept. It could be a lost in translation situation wherein gender roles and patriarchal ideals remain stuck in an archaic past within China, but I have a fundamental issue with how Bai Xuedan‘s script The Story of 90 Coins presents its central conflict. Liwei Jian shoots it with skill, Michael Wong directs with…

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REVIEW: Gary From Accounting [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“I think I left my oven on so I’m going to …” Drinking problems are a serious matter. Alcoholics neglect their families, careers, and their own health as they walk through life in a haze towards their next glass. It’s hard to reach someone suffering from this disease without the cold hard truth. So you stage an intervention to facilitate your laying everything out. “This is how your actions affect me—him, her, and you.” The hope is that this bombardment of emotions and love can jolt someone out of his/her…

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REVIEW: Pickup [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“I’m waiting for you” Self-destruction is hardly a new concept. It’s simply more accessible now. Before the internet you had to feed your addictive nature in the physical world with monetary compensation rather than moral. Now, however, anything you want is a button push away. Social media and numerous applications meant to connect us in ways we never dreamed aren’t always altruistic and those using them are hardly one hundred percent above board. You can pretend you’re someone you’re not before you even meet someone new. You can construct a…

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REVIEW: Inner Workings [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“Boring, Boring & Glum” When the title of the film is Inner Workings and its conceit is to personify a human character’s internal physiology, comparisons to Inside Out are unavoidable. Not even the delineation that Leonardo Matsuda‘s short deals with organs rather than emotions can help if you have your mind set on an ill-advised idea of plagiarism. What does allow you to hope for the best, however, is that both are under the Disney umbrella (I include Pixar) so no nefarious intent is at play. Luckily it doesn’t take…

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REVIEW: Numb [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“See you at the next meeting?” Story construction becomes crucial when you only have ten minutes to move from start to finish and oftentimes a linear progression is best. I use Penelope Lawson‘s Numb as an example because the bones of its plot are good despite its unorthodox orchestration ruining its potential to resonate. Set against New York City’s Chinatown, a devastated woman seeks solace between the legs of any willing suitor that comes along. Our job is to understand her suffering as more than a punch line to her…

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