Month: November 2013

REVIEW: Captain Phillips [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“A little air might do him some good” Despite my affinity for director Paul Greengrass‘ entries to the Bourne Saga, his cinéma vérité style will always in my opinion be better suited for gritty, true-life tales such as the contemporary classics Bloody Sunday and United 93. (We’ll just forget Green Zone ever squeezed its way into his oeuvre.) As a result, his attachment to Richard Phillips‘ harrowing tale of getting hijacked by Somali pirates and subsequently kidnapped as a hostage for ten million dollars was a perfect marriage from the…

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REVIEW: About Time [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“Did you have trouble parking?” It will be a shame if rumors stating About Time is Richard Curtis’ last film as director are true because he’s had fantastic success with the vocation. He’ll remain in the industry either way being that he’s equally proficient with screenplays (War House and Notting Hill) and TV (“Black Adder” and “Mr. Bean”), but one has to wonder whether Love Actually or The Boat That Rocked would have been as memorable were he not at the helm. You could easily say “yes” due to the…

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REVIEW: Thor: The Dark World [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“I’ll just stay here and say ‘sea bass’ alone” There was something off with Thor in 2011 besides its horrid post-conversion 3D. While many believe Iron Man 2 was nothing but an evolutionary bridge for its hero to move closer towards what The Avengers needed, it was actually the Norse God of thunder who provided the most obvious bit of prequel exposition by introducing himself, extraterrestrial life, and that forthcoming blockbuster’s main villain, Loki. Captain America: The First Avenger also brought us a new character’s origin, but his story—like Tony…

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REVIEW: La vie d’Adèle [Blue Is the Warmest Color] [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“Tragedy is the unavoidable” While you wouldn’t usually believe something could possibly become more controversial than its own distinction of being a three-hour NC-17 film about a fifteen-year old girl searching for her sexuality and the resulting love shaping her trajectory towards adulthood, talk during La vie d’Adèle’s [Blue Is the Warmest Color] festival tour proved otherwise. Director Abdellatif Kechiche declared it to have been sullied to the extent where it shouldn’t be released while stars Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos discussed the arduous shoot in a way that made…

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REVIEW: Ender’s Game [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“The enemy’s gate is down” While speaking during a Q&A at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in April, author Orson Scott Card stated that Gavin Hood‘s adaptation of his seminal novel Ender’s Game was “the best that good people could do with a story they really cared about and believed in.” He also went on to say it was “damn good,” a sentiment with which I can’t wholly agree. The first quote, however, is a pretty spot-on description when you consider the amount of detail and political unrest…

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