Tag: Tetro

REVIEW: Beautiful Creatures [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“You can either run or shoot” Just like clockwork the Twilight series has found a successor. Trading vampires and werewolves for witches, authors Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl‘s Caster Chronicles‘ has hit theatres with much less fanfare but perhaps more intrigue. Gatlin, South Carolina’s secrets are a mixture of Hogwart’s affinity for the Muggle world and Bella’s supernatural-heavy Seattle backyard—the casters possessing a division of light and dark like Voldemort’s Death Eaters and Dumbledore’s students as well as rites of passage similar to those of Jacob’s pack and Edward’s ‘vegetarian’…

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REVIEW: Essential Killing [2010]

Jared Mobarak

“Wrong way. Turn left for main route, then turn right.” Being from Buffalo generally has a way of making people forgive Renaissance man Vincent Gallo’s abrasive nature and constant ability to put his foot firmly in mouth. His feature length works—Buffalo ‘66 and The Brown Bunny—are generally seen as love it/hate it types and his acting work has never been within films possessing wide appeal, save perhaps Tetro. In 2010, however, Gallo was finally awarded some of the praise hometown folks have been lauding for years. Performing a veritable one-man…

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TIFF11 REVIEW: Twixt [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“Keeping track of time around here is pointless” After a stellar career directing some of cinema’s greats—The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation—you can’t blame Francis Ford Coppola for deciding to film smaller passion projects in his twilight. After the self-financed Tetro and Youth Without Youth, he returns with a story from an unusual origin. With an alcohol-induced dream in Istanbul, a vivid conversation with Edgar Allen Poe while a murder mystery happens as a backdrop, the impetus behind Twixt was born. Awoken before its end, Coppola scribbled down what he…

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REVIEW: Tetro [2009]

Jared Mobarak

“You can’t look into the light” I had heard that Francis Ford Coppola’s first film in a decade, 2007’s Youth Without Youth, skewed more toward the arthouse, experimental spectrum of cinema. After his early masterpieces, including the bloated budget of Apocalypse Now, his career went the way of minor Hollywood-fare, like Jack and The Rainmaker. One might have assumed he’d retired from the director’s chair until the success of his daughter, and son, (come on Roman, stop being assistant to your family members and make that sophomore film), showed what…

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