Raffey Cassidy | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: White Noise [2022]

2022/11/172022/11/26 Jared Mobarak

Family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. I must commend Noah Baumbach for taking on Don DeLillo‘s White Noise because it is nothing like his other films. Where they are all in some way a projection of his life and that of those around him, this satirical tale of one family’s (in)ability to cope with their impending mortality is on an entirely different tonal level. Because while Baumbach’s worlds are obviously heightened realities delivered through an affected aesthetic lens, the dialogue and interactions coming from the Gladney family have…

REVIEW: The Other Lamb [2020]

2020/03/252020/03/30 Jared Mobarak

Do you accept my grace? To be born into a world with set doctrines is to have no choice—often because you don’t realize one exists. That’s the power systemic modes of oppression hold over their victims. We’re told that fighting back makes things worse. Fighting for survival makes those in positions to help facilitate that survival less interested in helping. So we’re asked to remain quiet. Accept our fate and be grateful for what we have and grateful to those who give it with “grace” and not as a salve…

REVIEW: Vox Lux [2018]

2018/12/082020/03/31 Jared Mobarak

Simply put: it was a hit. America lost its innocence on 9/11. It wasn’t an overnight thing, though. The gradual degradation of humanity on an ever-shrinking global landscape stewarded us there as school shootings and terrorist attacks grew with their weak links towards violent videogames rather than an otherwise Puritan sense of sex being worse than murder. Our repressed selves fought against growing malaise until that day provided a scapegoat to blame. We turned our internal rage onto an undeserving people suddenly reduced to their worst and smallest faction so…

REVIEW: The Killing of a Sacred Deer [2017]

2017/10/262020/04/22 Jared Mobarak

You’re too young to worry. Writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos is an artist who deals with consequences through elaborately skewed and often-uncomfortable scenarios just left of the off-putting spot that’s just left of center. He uses absurdity and humor to provoke us in order for his complex existential and social messages to hit home in a way strict realism never could. His films are thus morality plays of sorts pitting characters against one another in a puzzle that may or may not be of their own choosing. They are presented with a…

REVIEW: Tomorrowland [2015]

2015/05/192015/05/21 Jared Mobarak

“Which wolf wins?” The only constant the future holds is how today’s will look nothing like tomorrow’s. It would have been an amazing experience to see the vision Walt Disney had for his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow in Orlando, but he of course sadly passed away in 1966 and that land became the Magic Kingdom in 1971 instead. His ideas were eventually partly utilized in conjunction with a second amusement park (aptly coined EPCOT) to accompany the one capped by Cinderella’s castle, but Walt had hoped to construct a…