Tag: Chris Sparling

TIFF21 REVIEW: The Desperate Hour [2022]

Jared Mobarak

I want this to end. Screenwriter Chris Sparling takes us back to the script that put him on the Hollywood map with The Desperate Hour (formerly Lakewood). Much like his isolated one-man show Buried, this latest focuses on a single character caught in a high-pressure situation with seemingly no way out. Unlike it, however, the real danger is far away from the screen. You see, Amy Carr (Naomi Watts) is safe. She woke up, texted work that she’d be taking a personal day, told the kids to go to school,…

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REVIEW: Greenland [2020]

Jared Mobarak

Where are the flashes? John Garrity (Gerard Butler) dreads going home at the start of director Ric Roman Waugh and screenwriter Chris Sparling‘s disaster film Greenland, but it’s not because a giant comet from an unknown solar system is flying closer to Earth than expected. He’s not some scientist who’s been studying the trajectory or a military man with the expertise to stop it. He’s a structural engineer pretending his foreman can’t finish up because he’s unsure of what to expect upon opening his front door. The fact Allison (Morena…

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BIFF16 REVIEW: Mercy [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“Why would you let her suffer?” It’s practically impossible to talk about what’s happening in Chris Sparling‘s latest thriller Mercy without spoiling it. The writer/director knows, splitting it into three pieces as a result: the first third completely shrouded in mystery, the next a replay from alternative perspectives, and the last the truth of the pursuers’ identities and the lies their victims have been spinning from the start. The only other Sparling film I’ve seen is his most popular one, Buried (he wrote with Rodrigo Cortés directing), but the similarities…

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Posterized Propaganda April 2012: Where Art and Commerce Meet

Jared Mobarak

“Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” is a proverb whose simple existence proves the fact impressionable souls will do so without fail. This monthly column focuses on the film industry’s willingness to capitalize on this truth, releasing one-sheets to serve as not representations of what audiences are to expect, but as propaganda to fill seats. Oftentimes they fail miserably. There’s a good mix of work coming out in April and the posters do well to mirror such. I’m not quite sure how Chris Sparling could have his script for…

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REVIEW: Buried [2010]

Jared Mobarak

“Or else he’ll take me to SeaWorld” Oh, what lies we are willing to tell in order to selfishly make ourselves feel safe and guiltless while those we fool have their lives destroyed or to guard them from the stark realities of truth for a short time more. Thinking he’s about to die, what does a husband say to his wife when she asks him to promise he’ll come home safe? If he’s being held hostage and asks the man tasked with finding him how many saves he’s made, does…

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