Jacob Vargas | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Plan B [2021]

2021/05/242021/05/25 Jared Mobarak

There are no ‘smart‘ mistakes. It was about halfway through Natalie Morales‘ Plan B (her directorial debut if you go by theatrical release date considering her festival title Language Lessons from earlier this year has yet to secure one) that Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg‘s producer credits came into focus because it was there that the parallels to Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle became undeniable. If actor-turned-director Olivia Wilde‘s Booksmart was created in the Superbad vein, Joshua Levy and Prathiksha Srinivasan‘s script was certainly drawn from that of…

REVIEW: The Public [2019]

2019/03/282020/03/29 Jared Mobarak

Books saved my life. It’s the same tragic story. Another unarmed Black man is killed by the police. Another White man takes an arsenal into a school, campus, or place of worship before opening fire on unarmed innocents. The media takes these headlines, packages them together with thoughts and prayers, and uses the ratings to continue peddling their editorializing as news until another such event inevitably occurs yet again. And what do we have to show for it all? Besides a growing anger at the political injustices and vile rhetoric…

REVIEW: The 33 [2015]

2015/11/092015/11/11 Jared Mobarak

“Aim to miss” As if being the international feel-good story of 2010 wasn’t enough, the Copiapó mining accident at the San José copper/gold mine in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile included the type of personal, human melodramatic intrigue ripe for cinematic interpretation. Sourced from Hector Tobar‘s non-fiction novel Deep Down Dark (commissioned with each miner’s help so one couldn’t benefit more than another), Patricia Riggen‘s The 33 could be fiction. Mario Sepúlveda (Antonio Banderas) was working his day off, Álex Vega (Mario Casas) was days from fatherhood, and Mario…

REVIEW: Devil [2010]

2010/09/242013/08/12 Jared Mobarak

“We are the audience for a reason” It all starts with a suicide—a death to allow easy passage of the Devil to the real world, giving him human form to make those he’s about to collect suffer a public, horrific demise. The first of a planned series in suspense horror called the Night Chronicles, M. Night Shyamalan plays on his bedtime story concept of Lady in the Water, crafting a tale of man’s capacity for evil and the weight of guilt standing in the way of accepting the consequences for…