Tag: Shannon Elizabeth

REVIEW: Jay and Silent Bob Reboot [2019]

Jared Mobarak

Hollywood … Florida? A lot happens in eighteen years. Look at Kevin Smith. While his daughter was born two years prior to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, fatherhood had only begun. Then he moved away from the View Askewniverse (with varying success), started a podcasting career (spawning his weirdest movie to-date, Tusk), and suffered a heart attack that sparked weight loss and the overdue mending of burnt bridges. So while Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob’s (Smith) first journey to Hollywood wielded them as immature idiots with so little…

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REVIEW: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back [2001]

Jared Mobarak

They don’t deserve their own movie. It’s easy to forget that Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was supposed to be the View Askewniverse’s final chapter. Writer/director Kevin Smith had finally decided to grow up (a relative term) and leave the foul-mouthed, pot-dealing miscreants he and Jason Mewes brought to life in Clerks (before subsequently popping-up in every film) behind. He even capped the credits with God (Alanis Morrisette) closing the proverbial book after corralling as many familiar faces and stars he could for what proved a self-conscious and self-referential…

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REVIEW: The Opera Singer [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“I never thought I’d find myself here. Yet here I am.” I often think that my lack of feeling towards pets prevents me from truly appreciating supposedly emotionally heartwrenching works because my initial reaction is to laugh. I chuckle much like the filmmakers behind John Wick wanted me to as it hinged its entire revenge plot on the death of a dog. That example was easier to understand on a practical level, though, because the titular character’s wife had died and left him this friend posthumously. The puppy was an…

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REVIEW: American Pie 2 [2001]

Jared Mobarak

“That’s a lot of flutes” Right when you thought Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) learned his lesson about manipulating the lives of his friends to compensate for his own insecurities, he does it again. Scared to go to college before becoming a man, American Pie followed his misguided pact to ensure his best friends would lose their virginity before graduation. One year later, American Pie 2 brings the whole gang back for a summer break meant to show their success in taking ‘the next step’ having since gotten sex out of…

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REVIEW: American Pie [1999]

Jared Mobarak

“Suck me, beautiful” I’ll admit now that my love for American Pie is rooted heavily in nostalgia. Having first seen it in theatres as I was entering my own senior year of high school, the comradery of its band of brothers cautiously walking together towards graduation and manhood doesn’t quite resonate as much today at age thirty. My seventeen-year old self remembers the performances being a bit more honed and the scripting a tad crisper, but the one thing that didn’t change with an older and maybe wiser perspective is…

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