Alfre Woodard | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Clemency [2019]

2019/12/082020/03/23 Jared Mobarak

I am alone and no one can fix it. Stories about death row inmates are so often shown from the convict’s perspective and his/her question of guilt that it’s easy to look past certain details concerning the other side. I don’t mean the prosecution, though. I mean those whose careers force them to carry out the execution itself. An example: most films of this sort have protestors screaming outside the prison’s walls for someone to intervene and erase the death penalty from American law books and it seems natural because…

REVIEW: Annabelle [2014]

2017/08/03 Jared Mobarak

“Crazy people do crazy things, ma’am” The story of Annabelle—a possessed Raggedy Ann doll from the 1970s—is a part of Lorraine and Ed Warren’s lore as experts in the occult. It along with the Amityville house are what the couple are most known for “combating” and thus easy fodder to provide audiences an entry point into understanding what these demonologists do. That’s why James Wan and company used them as prologues to his The Conjuring series, the former with Part 1 and the latter Part 2. Whereas Amityville already came…

REVIEW: Mississippi Grind [2015]

2015/09/172015/10/26 Jared Mobarak

“It’s Machu Picchu time” Filmmaking duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck‘s latest Mississippi Grind is an interesting creature. It has no ulterior motives whatsoever and that’s a unique attribute for a movie about gambling. You can’t watch loudmouth storyteller Curtis (Ryan Reynolds) happen upon the same poker table as down on his luck sad sack Gerry (Ben Mendelsohn) without knowing he’s in the midst of a con. We don’t know what he could want from a guy who is joining sixty-dollar buy-in tournaments to pray he’ll be able to pay-off…

REVIEW: Scrooged [1988]

2013/12/132014/05/19 Jared Mobarak

“Cupid’s arrow, right between the eyes” While there have been countless iterations of Charles Dickens‘ seminal novel A Christmas Carol—with the 1951 Alastair Sim starrer proving the best and modernized retreads like Ghosts of Girlfriends Past supplying the worst—one sometimes overlooked comedic gem from 1988 has always been this writer’s personal favorite. Titled Scrooged, screenwriters Mitch Glazer and Michael O’Donoghue went meta with the concept of its ubiquity by telling us a tale of a man who is quite literally “scrooged” while producing a legitimate adaptation of the real story…

REVIEW: 12 Years a Slave [2013]

2013/11/122014/04/10 Jared Mobarak

“Stay safely” A label such as hero has lost its meaning of late. So ubiquitous today, it’s been rendered empty by being placed upon men and women who—while just, compassionate, and selfless—don’t quite reach the level of endured suffering for the word to earn its full weight. With America’s history possessing so much cowardice and hate, even some of its greatest legends can’t shake the damning facts which prove they’re less than the pristine pillars our books would like to tell. Yet in our darkest time—an era of unforgivable crimes…