Day: January 21, 2016

REVIEW: Day One [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“This is my first job” It’s just too much: too manipulative, too familiar, and too convenient. The trouble with Henry Hughes‘ Day One all stems from one line when his American military unit’s new interpreter Feda (Layla Alizada) meets her predecessor Naz (Shari Vasseghi). They speak about being away from home and family in the context of their being wives—a legitimate concern with the Muslim religion holding a woman akin to property with which to serve her husband, but overly “feminine” as only a male writer could write (despite the…

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REVIEW: Shok [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“It’s not about the bike” There’s no more poignant way to tell a tale of war than through the eyes of children. This is what writer/director Jamie Donoughue does with Shok, a short film set during the Kosovo War between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (spearheaded by the Serbians) and the Kosovo Liberation Army at the end of the twentieth century. Rather than show battlefield gunfire and nameless bodies falling before new soldiers can take their place, he enters a tiny village to meet best friends Oki (Andi Bajgora) and…

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REVIEW: Stutterer [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“I’m calling about my bill” We all have something about us to be embarrassed about. Some have more than one. While most see it as a major distraction no one could ever endure, however, this is rarely the case. Or at least with those you’d want to be around anyway. Few things in this arena are worse than stuttering—some might even say deafness and blindness are easier to cope with because they are definitive. You cannot speak or you cannot see; there’s no sense of deficiency. To stutter is the…

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REVIEW: Ave Maria [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“Jews have violated the Virgin!” Director Basil Khalil and co-writer Daniel Yáñez have come up with a cutely comic conceit for their short film Ave Maria. It’s the West Bank—miles from civilization—and a car carrying a Jewish man, his wife, and his mother crashes into a Catholic church run by five Arab nuns who have taken a vow of silence. If everyone follows the rites of their religion, the women able to help the family mustn’t talk and the family, who realize that it’s now the Shabbat, can’t operate any…

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