Tag: Alicia Silverstone

REVIEW: The Lodge [2020]

Jared Mobarak

She can’t go to Heaven! It’s almost too perfect. After reading Sergio Casci‘s spec script and wondering who’d be best to steward it towards its next stage, Hammer Films saw Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala as easy marks. Their debut Goodnight Mommy dealt with the psychological strife that occurs when two young children are trapped inside a house with a woman they cannot trust and it does so with ample deflection, half truths, and narrative manipulation. Casci’s The Lodge is so similar that I’m surprised Franz and Fiala chose to…

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REVIEW: Clueless [1995]

Jared Mobarak

I totally paused! I’m not sure why we picked Amy Heckerling‘s Clueless five days after it opened (I save my ticket stubs), but I do remember enjoying it. Not in spite of assumptions either—unless we went because it was the only PG-13 film out (I became a teenage six months earlier). Maybe my love of cinema as more than superficially reductive genres with targeted demographics existed even then since that two-week span also included Apollo 13 and Nine Months. And because I wouldn’t have known about Jane Austen or Heckerling’s…

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REVIEW: Book Club [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Sex must not be taken off the table. Besides the numerous raunchy one-liners spoken by the central quartet of aging stars for easy laughs, there’s one short passage from Fifty Shades of Grey that’s actually read onscreen. It comes courtesy of Candice Bergen‘s Sharon and deals with the inexplicable decision to arouse Anastasia Steele with the “friction” of Christian Grey’s zipper. The line is a perfect barometer for whether you’re the target audience of E.L. James‘ trilogy or Bill Holderman and Erin Simms‘ romantic comedy utilizing it as a catalyst…

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TIFF16 REVIEW: Catfight [2017]

Jared Mobarak

“Raise a glass to trash” With a title like Catfight and the only available image showing a bloodied and battered chokehold between Anne Heche and Sandra Oh, our expectations are forced into conjuring hope for a wild, frenzied ride. Well writer/director Onur Tukel doesn’t disappoint with this broad satire of American politics and wealth disparity. It only takes Craig Bierko‘s rendition of a late night television host doing his smarmy best to poke fun at our broken system before introducing a fat, shirtless man as the “fart machine” to understand…

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