Month: January 2018

REVIEW: This Giant Papier-Mâché Boulder Is Actually Really Heavy [2017]

Jared Mobarak

Water is life. Sometimes the only way to get a story off the ground is shooting it whether the finances are there or not. And if that project is a science-fiction film—a genre with historical precedent in low budget effects and shoddy production value—you can even spin your lack of money as an intentional aesthetic choice. This is the position in which Christian Nicolson found himself, one he willingly embraced rather than rejected with a fight that could have prevented his vision from ever coming to fruition. He and Andrew…

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REVIEW: Paddington 2 [2017]

Jared Mobarak

Where all your dreams come true. In true children’s book fashion, Paddington’s (Ben Whishaw) continuing adventures in London alongside the Brown family (Hugh Bonneville‘s Henry, Sally Hawkins‘ Mary, Madeleine Harris‘ Judy, Samuel Joslin‘s Jonathan, and Julie Walters‘ Mrs. Bird) would of course stem from something as seemingly innocuous as procuring a birthday present for his Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton). The activity will prove more difficult than anticipated, a villain will be introduced, and a mystery uncovered through an enjoyable series of pratfalls and error. This is exactly the stuff that…

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REVIEW: Paddington [2014]

Jared Mobarak

Does anyone know where I can find a home? I remember reading Michael Bond‘s Paddington Bear books when I was a kid and might have even had a duffle coat-wearing stuffed animal too. But I couldn’t tell you a thing about those stories if you put a gun to my head and asked. I recall a little more about The Berenstain Bears and a bit more than that about Teddy Ruxpin—apparently bears just didn’t leave a huge impression upon me. Even so, however, I worried about a live action film…

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REVIEW: The Road Movie [2018]

Jared Mobarak

“Did we record?” I’d like to know the regulations for automobile tires in Russia because Dmitrii Kalashnikov‘s dash-cam compilation documentary The Road Movie has too many violent fishtails and gravity-enforced overturns to not have its audience infer the country as being riddled with bald tires. Some incidents occur in snowy conditions, but others don’t. Speed surely plays a factor alongside a weirdly calm yet psychotic form of road rage too, but the numbers are still too high to ignore. He probably could have filled the entire 67-minute runtime with these…

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REVIEW: Marwencol [2010]

Jared Mobarak

I didn’t know who I was. A thirty-eight year old drunk leaves his local bar only to be jumped by five teenagers who proceed to beat him into a coma. This is the beginning of Mark Hogancamp‘s life as he knows it. The incident left him with brain damage to the point where he had to re-learn how to walk and talk. His memories from before were gone, his identity too. Only through home movies, photographs, and a stack of journals written while inebriated could he start to understand the…

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REVIEW: Future ’38 [2017]

Jared Mobarak

Watch this classified film strip briefing. If you ask how scientists are smart enough to invent time travel yet can’t find a way to defeat Hitler without needing time travel to augment their weapon’s power, Jamie Greenberg has succeeded. He’s succeeded if you don’t ask that question too because you’ll have given yourself fully to his unapologetically punny, “lost” film known as Future ’38. So Greenberg can’t lose. His film entertains with overt playfulness and reveals the pedants in the audience unable to simply laugh and have a good time…

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REVIEW: アンチポルノ [Anchiporuno] [Antiporno] [2017]

Jared Mobarak

Go on without me. Escape while you’re young because the longer you wait the more trapped you become. In this way we’re all lizards encased in glass bottles—a motif that runs throughout Sion Sono‘sアンチポルノ [Anchiporuno] [Antiporno], the director’s entry into Nikkatsu’s “Roman Porno” reboot forty years after giving birth to the genre. It’s during adolescence that we’re told how to act, cultural rules—no matter how archaic—gradually ingrained until they become truths we cannot combat because we don’t realize we should. Eventually we reach a point where learning ceases and being…

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