War | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: The Eagle [2011]

2011/06/192014/06/05 Jared Mobarak

“Please help me regain my father’s honor” The case of Kevin Macdonald’s The Eagle is one of preconceptions and a desire to sound important on behalf of critics. With below average notes across the board and an almost universal slamming of lead actor Channing Tatum, the biggest surprise to me watching was how much I enjoyed not only the stunning cinematography in dream sequences tinted amber and the kinetic masses of muscle, blood, and swords in frenetic fight sequences, but also the central performances of a Roman soldier and the…

REVIEW: Battle: Los Angeles [2011]

2011/03/102014/06/07 Jared Mobarak

“You got a silver star and my brother came home in a body bag. I get it.” Stock up on Dramamine, brush up on your Hooked on Phonics, dust off the ol’ Stars and Stripes, and prepare for some Marine Corps action as alien invaders decimate all but one platoon—Oorah! I can just picture the first meeting for Battle: Los Angeles—I’ll use the colon since it’s everywhere except the opening credits—where the Yes-Men, so enraptured in their Red Bulls and cellphones, start speaking the brilliant idea, amidst ‘dudes’ and ‘mans’,…

REVIEW: Le roi de coeur [King of Hearts] [1966]

2011/02/112014/07/24 Jared Mobarak

“The mackerel likes frying” When you have a war film that doesn’t actually show battle or that makes light of the whole concept altogether, it generally means the filmmakers have some underlying commentary to report. The best way to push such motives is through comedy/satire, playing on the tropes of morality and mortality with humor. Philippe de Broca’s Le roi de coeur [King of Hearts], written by Daniel Boulanger from an idea of Maurice Bessy, definitely has enough laughs to go around, but I’m not quite certain there is much…

REVIEW: Край [Kray] [The Edge] [2010]

2011/01/312014/07/24 Jared Mobarak

“I’ve never seen you smile. It suits you.” World War II is over and Siberia still holds its Russian prisoners with nowhere to go. They have stayed in a prison camp without guards, living the best way they can in a logging community that survives on its single train. Ignat (Vladimir Mashkov) is a war hero for Russia, but an accident put a hole in his head and a tendency for blackout seizures, banning him from driving the locomotives as he always had, sending them to their tipping point in…

REVIEW: לבנון [Lebanon] [2009]

2011/01/292014/07/24 Jared Mobarak

“Man is steel. The tank is only iron.” The First Lebanon War began in June 1982 when the Government of Israel launched a military operation against the PLO and their Syrian and Muslim Lebanese allies. Rather than tell that story in a broad, war epic way, writer director Samuel Maoz decided to encapsulate the fear, horror, and chaos by creating a story around an Israeli foursome on a simple mission, the tank support for a platoon dispatched to search a hostile town. לבנון [Lebanon] ends up being the Rear Window…

REVIEW: The Way Back [2010]

2011/01/272014/07/24 Jared Mobarak

“Nature is your jailer and she has no mercy” I have never seen classic, 70s Peter Weir such as Picnic at Hanging Rock. I haven’t even seen 80s Weir for that matter. The few I have had the opportunity to catch, however—The Truman Show, Dead Poets Society, Master and Commander—all enthralled, making me realize this director wasn’t one to take lightly. So, amidst all the praise going around this year for the young upstarts and the youngish stalwarts, it’s easy to forget the 66-year old is not only still working,…

REVIEW: Restrepo [2010]

2010/12/102013/07/10 Jared Mobarak

“You look up, you say your prayers, and you move on” It may be the label of the outpost built while under heavy fire in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, but Restrepo still stands for the man from which it was named. A young soldier enjoying life, Juan Restrepo is seen in the opening minutes as a self-proclaimed ‘beast that can’t be tamed’ and a man the others look to for a smile. Many tell their stories of him later, on the anniversary of his death—tales of hardened, long fingernails to play…

REVIEW: Joyeux Noël [Merry Christmas] [2005]

2010/11/152013/07/11 Jared Mobarak

“No, you’re just not living the same war as me” Back in 1914, war wasn’t fought through technology and computers, missiles being sent to destroy lives as though a video game victory—no, it was battled in the trenches, feet away from the enemy, watching for the glimpse of an eye to shoot. Military leaders and propaganda brainwash young men into vilifying those on opposite sides, turning them to monsters without souls, without compassion, without humanity. But that’s an over simplification; just as you have a wife, children, and family back…

FILM MARATHON: Terrence Malick #4 – The New World [2005]

2010/09/182016/01/09 Jared Mobarak

“At the moment I was to die, she threw herself upon me” There is no way to mistake a Terrence Malick film for anything but. His use of score as a character rather than background, the hitch cuts in scenes as though only a few frames are removed, ultra short vignettes right out of a nature documentary spliced in perfectly, and, my favorite, scenes of people talking where the words are drowned out and made almost inaudible, allowing for the visuals to trump all, are just some of the unforgettable…

FILM MARATHON: Terrence Malick #3 – The Thin Red Line [1998]

2010/09/032016/01/09 Jared Mobarak

“The only things that are permanent is dying and the Lord” Pure, unfiltered, raw emotion. That is what’s front and center in Terrence Malick’s adaptation of James Jones’s autobiographical novel The Thin Red Line. The term itself may describe a thinly spread line of defense holding position in war, but I think the metaphor towards a man’s tenuous grasp on humanity is also apt. It’s a battle for Guadalcanal during World War II, an island being used as an airstrip by the Japanese and a crucial piece of property for…

REVIEW: Centurion [2010]

2010/08/232011/08/24 Jared Mobarak

“A man without his word is no better than a beast” Writer/director Neil Marshall has style and hopefully will continue to bring it forth on cinema screens for years to come, if he decides to travel back to America or not. Many lesser auteurs would have taken that Hollywood payday and looked for another to follow. Marshall, however, hot on the success of his spelunking horror/thriller The Descent, made Doomsday with US money only to see it falter out of the starting gate. Perhaps he had deals to remain stateside,…