Tag: Alan Alda

REVIEW: Marriage Story [2019]

Jared Mobarak

The pie was just a pie. It’s crazy how love changes the way we see things. Ambition can look like genius when we’re there as a supportive cheerleader and narcissism when we begin to recognize our sacrifices in seeing it get fulfilled. Success can be construed as a mutually beneficial byproduct of a union when one is strong and fertile, but also evidence of what we personally brought to the equation despite the other when we’re picking through the past to dissect what went wrong and who’s to blame. We…

Read More

REVIEW: Itzhak [2018]

Jared Mobarak

The more you have in your heart, the more you have to give. Documentarian Alison Chernick has made a career of profiling artists from Jeff Koons and Matthew Barney in features to Roy Lichtenstein and Rick Rubin in shorts. Her latest subject is renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman—a victim of polio as a child in Israel who found himself at Julliard before earning Grammys, Emmys, and countless international awards. He overcame a disability (walking on crutches when not in his wheelchair) that never impaired his playing, but constantly hung over his…

Read More

REVIEW: Canadian Bacon [1995]

Jared Mobarak

“We have ways of making you pronounce the letter ‘o’” Can you fathom a world where Michael Moore didn’t make documentaries? How would the liberal slant be passed on from generation to generation without his exploitation of poor Americans caught inside scripted “exposés” of corrupt governments and every Constitutional Right besides the one giving him freedom to make a living? Yes, I know I’m being hyperbolic—although also pretty much spot-on—but such a world was a possibility had his second film Canadian Bacon been a success. Fresh off the acclaim garnered…

Read More

REVIEW: Tower Heist [2011]

Jared Mobarak

“It seems like there’s a gauntlet of lesbians” Josh Kovacs takes care of his own—it’s his job as the manager of a luxury apartment complex in the heart of New York City. With company policy refusing employees from accepting tips, his workers must treat every resident with the utmost care, compassion, and patience. Josh knows every bellhop, cleaning lady, bankrupt squatter, billionaire Wall Street mogul, and septuagenarian lothario within this glass palace and he treats all as family. Just a guy from Astoria, there is something kind and generous to…

Read More