Tag: Trevor Riley

REVIEW: A Soldier’s Song [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“Can’t say” The Civil War in America was insane to comprehend in this nation historically because family members fought family members in close. This was a war waged with bayonets and bullets rather than bombs and drones. To join one side knowing someone you love was on the other meant you were willing to meet them on the battlefield and pull the trigger—not for yourself to survive, but for the cause and the man next to you. To show sympathy is to risk tragedy so the guilt of killing your…

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REVIEW: The Human Element [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“I have never been a resident” Many speak about the Allies’ pride in victory once World War II came to a close—and with good reason. Where the Holocaust is concerned, many people were saved as a result of these soldiers’ actions. Unfortunately, many more died before that liberation. It’s a real life horror story with monsters and victims, predators and prey. But what many gloss over by painting the Nazis as the truly reprehensible creatures they were is the fact that they were also human. Morality or not, they were…

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REVIEW: Track [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“I probably should have picked up your gun” There have been many iterations of the dark morality tale known most recently as “The Scorpion and the Frog”. Before its take around 1954, however, came similar fables from Aesop (“The Farmer and the Viper” and “The Snake and the Farmer”) as well as that of Arab/West African origins by the name of “The Scorpion and the Turtle”. What they all have in common is the idea that we cannot change what we are at a fundamental level. A scorpion may be…

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REVIEW: Heritage [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“Easy thing to bring someone into this wild world” Writer/director Damien Kazan is really honing his visual style these last couple of years with a string of gorgeous looking short films able to mesmerize with the sound off. Not that you should turn it off, his narration arrives with the type of resonating philosophizing we often need to hear in order to kick ourselves in the butt and move forward out of the depressive wastelands of our insecure minds. Scores by Jacob Cadmus don’t hurt either with their sweeping crescendos…

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