Tag: American Teen

REVIEW: Prom [2011]

Jared Mobarak

“What are you, his peer counselor or something?” Please Disney, give me overwrought angst, earnest adolescents, and a stereotypical high school melting pot of checked sexuality within a PG world. Moviegoers have been clamoring for it, haven’t they? Why give us gimmicks like High School Musical when you can lay it all out in an overly dramatic rendition worthy of after school special timeslots? Please help make stressed out seniors everywhere stop biting their nails over lame music and a disco ball. Thank you Joe Nussbaum and Katie Wech for…

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REVIEW: Going the Distance [2010]

Jared Mobarak

“Dan, take me to Berlin” Acclaimed director—and Buffalo, NY native—Nanette Burstein has finally made her way to the world of fictional film. After helming the documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture about producer Robert Evans, one could say she took a step towards narrative with American Teen, a real-life look into today’s high schools and just how close John Hughes got The Breakfast Club. I remember some talk about staging and scripting reactions to make it all more cinematically interesting, but whether true or not, the film was a…

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REVIEW: The Breakfast Club [1985]

Jared Mobarak

“You’ll get the horns” It may not be the funniest film that John Hughes crafted, but The Breakfast Club is the one that I think made the biggest impression on me. Revisiting it—so many years after its creation, as well as many since I last sat down to watch its entirety—gave me an interesting experience. How the three friends with me had never seen it is beyond me, but that fact caused something I never expected. Each moment of weight, those moments when the kids explain the pressures of each…

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REVIEW: American Teen [2008]

Jared Mobarak

“A lonely sock” Documentaries have never been my genre of choice. I go to the movies to escape from reality and embed myself into a world unlike my own, or at least skewed enough to make me look upon my life and see what can be improved from the new experiences and ideas culled from the viewing. However, with American Teen I could not have been more engrossed in the trials and tribulations of senior year of high school. Watching this film, you will find a piece of yourself in…

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