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REVIEW: Dog Eat Dog [2016]

2016/10/152016/11/02 Jared Mobarak

“It’s death or victory” After forty odd years as a career criminal in-and-out of jail, Edward Bunker changed his life by writing fictionalized accounts of his experiences for a lucrative career as novelist, screenwriter, and eventually actor. He got Danny Trejo a part on a project he wrote entitled Runaway Train after spending time with him in prison and eventually found himself playing Mr. Blue in Quentin Tarantino‘s debut Reservoir Dogs. It’s been a while since the last movie based on his writing (2000’s Animal Factory) and almost as long…

REVIEW: Jack Goes Home [2016]

2016/10/112016/10/12 Jared Mobarak

“Artists write poetry. Assholes just complain.” There’s no question that Thomas Dekker‘s sophomore effort as writer/director is a head-scratcher. What you as a viewer must decide is whether or not to keep scratching. I don’t think anyone outside of Dekker himself can truly unpack the type of psychological chaos occurring within Jack Goes Home and I like that notion. This is an artist using his medium as an outlet to exorcise demons without necessarily factoring in audience expectations. It doesn’t supply easy answers, leaves a ton of loose ends as…

BIFF16 REVIEW: Mercy [2016]

2016/10/102016/10/11 Jared Mobarak

“Why would you let her suffer?” It’s practically impossible to talk about what’s happening in Chris Sparling‘s latest thriller Mercy without spoiling it. The writer/director knows, splitting it into three pieces as a result: the first third completely shrouded in mystery, the next a replay from alternative perspectives, and the last the truth of the pursuers’ identities and the lies their victims have been spinning from the start. The only other Sparling film I’ve seen is his most popular one, Buried (he wrote with Rodrigo Cortés directing), but the similarities…

REVIEW: The Girl on the Train [2016]

2016/10/042016/10/05 Jared Mobarak

“I’m not the girl I used to be” I like unreliable narrators because it’s fun to witness actions unfolding without knowing whether anything onscreen is real. The person could be a liar, schizophrenic, a secondary source ignorant to pertinent facts, or simply mistaken. So I got excited upon learning of Paula Hawkins‘ The Girl on the Train and its lead Rachel (Emily Blunt). Here was a character who literally knew nothing but what she was told. A raging alcoholic prone to nightly blackouts, her reality becomes the stories told in…

REVIEW: Don’t Breathe [2016]

2016/09/222016/09/23 Jared Mobarak

“If we do this right we never have to do this again” The best thing you can do to distance yourself from the big budget remake of a cult classic that serves as your feature directorial debut is to pare things down and deliver an original gem of your own. Fede Alvarez took the criticisms of his Evil Dead—gore for gore sake (something many of its proponents surely use to also explain its greatness)—and decided to utilize them during the writing process on Don’t Breathe. The supernatural aspect is gone…

TIFF16 REVIEW: Goldstone [2016]

2016/09/212016/09/21 Jared Mobarak

“This land ain’t no place for a young girl” Another missing girl has Detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen) on the move while the world continues to turn a blind eye. This time it isn’t an aboriginal, though, the aftermath of his work in Mystery Road culminating in a shootout with everyone dead but he a distant memory. The case that has him traveling to Goldstone concerns a young Chinese girl, her place in the desert a curiosity Jay cannot ignore. Haunted by demons that go much farther back than anything…

TIFF16 REVIEW: Colossal [2017]

2016/09/172017/05/01 Jared Mobarak

“I’m sorry. It was a mistake. It won’t happen again.” Whether the existence of time travel or an alien invasion, writer/director Nacho Vigalondo has proven king at dealing with large-scale concepts affecting small-scale characters. Always looking to portray how genre catastrophes are handled by nobodies on the ground without government credentials or scientific degrees, he continues this trend again with his latest monster movie Colossal … for the most part. After certain truths are revealed, it’s easy to discover how two former classmates in a sleepy city with one watering…

TIFF16 REVIEW: The Limehouse Golem [2017]

2016/09/112017/05/10 Jared Mobarak

“Here we go again” It took fifteen years of perseverance—acquiring the rights, losing them, and reacquiring them at the behest of screenwriter Jane Goldman stoking the fire—but producer Stephen Woolley finally got Peter Ackroyd‘s 1994 novel on the big screen as The Limehouse Golem. There were some big names attached from Merchant Ivory originating plans to Woolley hoping for Neil Jordan years before developing it with Terry Gilliam. Don’t let this taint your opinion when peering upon Juan Carlos Medina‘s name on the director’s chair, though. Despite being only his…

TIFF16 REVIEW: Interchange [2016]

2016/09/102016/09/20 Jared Mobarak

“This is not your story” Something’s happening in Kuala Lampur—something that cannot be explained. Deaths in the vein of Bryan Fuller‘s gorgeously ornate displays of murder from “Hannibal” have arrived without any leads or earthly reason. Detective Man (Shaheizy Sam) jokes that his forensic photographer needs to see a witch doctor after collapsing at the scene of the first body, but he may not be far off the truth. Adam’s (Iedil Putra) spell was odd, conjured by the light or power of a glass negative found underneath the suspended cadaver…

TIFF16 REVIEW: Snowden [2016]

2016/09/102016/09/20 Jared Mobarak

“Secrecy is security and security is victory” Remakes repackaging foreign films for American audiences are justifiable if done correctly. I’d hope our movie-going public would willingly read subtitles and experience the original artist’s vision, but we don’t live in a utopia. Dramatizing non-fiction work is equally acceptable in specific circumstances because a narrative built from talking head interviews is sometimes easier to parse and appreciate than those disparate accounts alone. Where I take umbrage with this trend is when Hollywood uses a documentary—an Oscar-winning documentary no less—and literally re-enacts it…

REVIEW: 부산행 [Busanhaeng] [Train to Busan] [2016]

2016/08/282016/08/30 Jared Mobarak

“Until we meet again” There’s an abundance of sentimentality in Sang-ho Yeon‘s 부산행 [Busanhaeng] [Train to Busan], a trait you don’t necessarily attribute to a zombie action thriller. That’s not to say “The Walking Dead” doesn’t touch upon familial relationships and catharsis too, but the level of personal and emotional growth on display in these two-hours is somewhat astounding. Zombies wreaking havoc hardly prove the main impetus to the story as they originate in the fringes. Our focus is instead a broken home led by Seok-woo’s (Yoo Gong) fund manager,…