Category: Suspense/Thriller

FANTASIA18 REVIEW: Nommer 37 [Number 37] [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Even a one-legged beggar can lose his other leg. It was a calculated risk lock-picker Randal Hendricks (Irshaad Ally) was willing to make. Borrow twenty-five thousand dollars from a loan shark he’s known since childhood (Danny Ross‘ Emmie) and flip it to some gangsters willing to give him a deal on drugs. Sell the drugs at a mark-up and he should have enough to get himself and his girlfriend Pam (Monique Rockman) out of their rough Cape Town slum. Like Emmie warned, however, gangsters aren’t to be trusted. So when…

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FANTASIA18 REVIEW: BuyBust [2018]

Jared Mobarak

People die from following orders too. Police director Alvarez (Nonie Buencamino) and his prized team leader Dela Cruz (Lao Rodriguez) are finally making headway with their war on drugs throughout the slums of Filipino capital Manila. They’ve already cleaned sections long-thought lost to crime and currently have one of kingpin Biggie Chen’s (Arjo Atayde) mid-level operatives (Alex Calleja‘s Toban) in custody. A little “good cop/bad cop” sets the stage for how far law enforcement will go to earn their collar as well as how loyal Chen’s foot soldiers might prove.…

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FANTASIA18 REVIEW: Lifechanger [2018]

Jared Mobarak

I’m not ready to die. To take Justin McConnell‘s horror film Lifechanger at face value is a mistake. You won’t understand this truth right away, though, because it starts out being exactly what you thought. Emily Roberts (Elitsa Bako) awakens covered in blood next to an emaciated corpse as a man’s (Bill Oberst Jr.) voiceover is heard explaining the strange circumstances onscreen. He’s the character we’re seeing before us—a shape-shifter of sorts who must “take” the body (and memories) of another once his latest vessel succumbs to its slowly spreading…

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REVIEW: Skyscraper [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Got any duct tape? In an age of remakes, reboots, and rehashes, it’s suddenly become refreshing to see homage—especially the self-aware kind. If you’ve seen the alternate posters for Rawson Marshall Thurber‘s Skyscraper that crib off the designs of Die Hard and The Towering Inferno, you understand how the filmmakers have embraced comparison due to their love for those genre classics. It’s this love that allows them to take a step back and create their own story in those images, at once honoring the past, updating for the present, and…

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REVIEW: Siberia [2018]

Jared Mobarak

So sorry for the bird. The question is asked with a wry grin, but Katya (Ana Ularu) isn’t wrong to joke that the mysterious, handsome American who walked into her small Siberian town’s café is a spy. Any other film besides Matthew Ross‘ Siberia would have made Lucas Hill (Keanu Reeves) exactly that—especially now with the actor so successfully donning a suit to portray the dog-loving assassin John Wick. But that’s not who Hill is no matter how much the methodically measured beats of Scott B. Smith‘s script would have…

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REVIEW: The First Purge [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Pray Not Purge. There’s a brief loss of picture halfway through The First Purge‘s end credits that reveals a full-blown commercial for the upcoming ten-part television “event” based on its own franchise. It’s a bad look, especially for those already wondering if James DeMonaco cashed-in after writing and directing the first three installments of his surprisingly potent and prescient series before handing the reins to Gerard McMurray. He deftly balanced sci-fi horror thrills against the propulsive force of sound political commentary throughout his self-made trilogy and capped everything off with…

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REVIEW: The Killing [1956]

Jared Mobarak

Just a bad joke without a punch line. After test screenings left audiences confused and frustrated, writer/director Stanley Kubrick and producing partner James B. Harris decided to return to the edit bay and turn The Killing‘s overlapping, repetitious structure into a more linear A-to-B narrative. You can’t blame the former for wanting to do everything possible to make the film a hit since it was his first project with a real budget positioning his career forward (he’d disavowed Fear and Desire as amateurish and sophomore effort Killer’s Kiss proved almost…

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REVIEW: Mission: Impossible II [2000]

Jared Mobarak

Who wants to be decent? It shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s seen the movie to read a 2016 interview and learn how screenwriter Robert Towne came aboard John Woo‘s Mission: Impossible II after the big action sequences were already set in stone. His job was to therefore connect those choreographed behemoths into a cohesive enough story to invest audiences beyond the requisite quick-cut fisticuffs and volatile explosions. Towne was more or less set-up to fail and there’s nobody but Tom Cruise to blame, especially since the two worked together to bring…

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REVIEW: Mission: Impossible [1996]

Jared Mobarak

Hasta lasagna. Don’t get any on ya. Despite completing its successful seven-season run in 1973, it would take another twenty-three years before Bruce Geller‘s original television series received its inevitable cinematic adaptation. For a former Emmy winner starring the likes of Peter Graves, Martin Landau, and Leonard Nimoy with an action thriller premise just past science fiction to make it so new technological advancements would perpetually help increase production value, that’s a difficult hiatus to believe until you factor in Hollywood. Not only did rights owner Paramount Pictures find it…

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REVIEW: Ocean’s 8 [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Hims are noticed. Hers are ignored. The best way to reboot a franchise is via a sequel. It’s smart because of the connection whether it be setting or characters since familiarity allows us as viewers to settle in without having to relearn what the property intrinsically contains. Look at Creed—or to a lesser extent Star Wars: The Force Awakens—for the perfect example of how something like this works. Both are practically carbon copies of the original installments within their respective franchises and trade on nostalgia to place a new generation…

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REVIEW: First Reformed [2018]

Jared Mobarak

A life without despair is a life without hope. We live in a time of extremism—where our reaction dial is turned up to eleven regardless of our true interest in a cause or its true importance. Somewhere along the line civil and constructive discourse was replaced by screaming fits of unjustified rage, nuanced topics debated as pissing matches between two sides vying to stay incensed the longest. There are no winners with this line of rhetoric because facts become secondary to passion. Suddenly it’s all about who makes the most…

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