Posted by Jared Mobarak on February 28, 2018 · Leave a Comment
“I’m looking for my eyes in your eyes” For Dutch teenager Jasmine (Georgiefa Boomdijk), her homeland of Suriname (a northeastern South American country) is a footnote. She knows little about it or the mother she and her father Winston (Maurits Delchot) left behind sixteen years previously. He refuses to talk about anything pre-Netherlands so her […]
Category family, film reviews, foreign, musical/concert · Tags Amani Verwey, Dutch, Fiona van Heemstra, Floris Bosma, Georgiefa Boomdijk, Glen Faria, Jaleeza Weibolt, Maurits Delchot, Mischa Kamp, New York International Children's Film Festival, NYICFF, Sing Song, Tyra Koning
Posted by Jared Mobarak on February 27, 2018 · Leave a Comment
“And you are going to tell her story” There’s multiple ways to tell stories depending on the message you wish to instill. So when the subject you’re tackling concerns a country like Swaziland with a rampant AIDS epidemic and the resulting insanely high orphanage rate, you can choose a path towards the stark futility of […]
Posted by Jared Mobarak on February 27, 2018 · Leave a Comment
The 90th Annual Academy Awards hits airwaves Sunday, March 4th, 2018 at 8:00pm on ABC. For those handicapping at home, here are the guesses of Buffalo film fanatics Christopher Schobert, William Altreuter, and myself. Jared Mobarak: This new look Academy is really starting to pay dividends. The fight for representation might have begun with a […]
Category essays, oscars, z.slideshow · Tags Aaron Sorkin, Allison Janney, Call Me By Your Name, Christopher Nolan, Christopher Plummer, Daniel Day Lewis, Daniel Kaluuya, Darkest Hour, Dee Rees, Denzel Washington, Dunkirk, Emily V. Gordon, Frances McDormand, Gary Oldman, Get Out, Greta Gerwig, Guillermo del Toro, James Ivory, James Mangold, Jordan Peele, Kumail Nanjiani, Lady Bird, Laurie Metcalf, Lesley Manville, Margot Robbie, Martin McDonagh, Mary J. Blige, Meryl Streep, Michael Green, Michael H. Weber, Octavia Spencer, Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread, Richard Jenkins, Sally Hawkins, Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, Scott Frank, Scott Neustadter, The Post, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Timothée Chalamet, Vanessa Taylor, Virgil Williams, Willem Dafoe, Woody Harrelson
Posted by Jared Mobarak on February 26, 2018 · Leave a Comment
“In my experience it’s the white man who does the scalping” War is an interesting concept wherein life is both priceless and worthless depending upon which side you call yours. When it’s a matter of taking something that you want but do not possess, those who currently hold it are expendable. And when they fight […]
Category action/adventure, drama, film reviews · Tags Eamon Farren, Ezra Buzzington, Grady Hendrix, Ian Colletti, Jon Huber, Justin Rain, Kaniehtiio Horn, Mohawk, Noah Segan, Robert Longstreet, Ted Geoghegan
Posted by Jared Mobarak on February 22, 2018 · Leave a Comment
“Sometimes it’s beautiful” Reflections have been the subject of many fantasies whether it’s Through the Looking-Glass or Poltergeist III. The notion that a double exists in a different world conjures an unavoidable eeriness and the possibility of usurpation wherein fiction could become truth. It’s easy to therefore see the inherent duality as a good versus […]
Category action/adventure, drama, film reviews, science fiction · Tags Alex Garland, Annihilation, Benedict Wong, Gina Rodriguez, Jeff VanderMeer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Natalie Portman, Oscar Isaac, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny
Posted by Jared Mobarak on February 22, 2018 · Leave a Comment
“He’s not coming” To see the titular character (Charlotte Rampling) at the start of Andrea Pallaoro‘s Hannah is to see someone like any other. She rides public transportation to her eccentric acting class, cooks dinner, and enjoys a quiet evening beside her spouse. The film’s start is ostensibly a silent one with only the noises […]
Posted by Jared Mobarak on February 18, 2018 · Leave a Comment
“The two of you with your frozen souls” What is the point of having a soul if everyone around you doesn’t? I think that’s the central question asked by Rainer Sarnet‘s November, a bleakly told Estonian fairy tale tragedy adapted from Andrus Kivirähk‘s novel Rehepapp. At its core is romance—the kind based in unrequited love […]
Category drama, fantasy, film reviews, foreign, romance · Tags Andrus Kivirähk, Dieter Laser, Estonian, Jette Loona Hermanis, Jörgen Liik, November, Rainer Sarnet, Rea Lest, Rehepapp
Posted by Jared Mobarak on February 16, 2018 · Leave a Comment
“His ways are not our ways” The history of Carl Theodor Dreyer‘s masterwork La passion de Jeanne d’Arc [The Passion of Joan of Arc] is almost too perfectly attuned to the subject matter itself. Here was a renowned director hired to craft a movie about France’s most famous Catholic despite being neither French nor Catholic. […]
Posted by Jared Mobarak on February 16, 2018 · Leave a Comment
“I’m the prophet and you’re the messenger” The amount of zombie properties flooding the market these days has created an unavoidable sense of fatigue. As a result artists have begun turning certain aspects on their heads in order to differentiate one vision from any other. Sometimes this means crossing genres, manufacturing elaborate new mythologies, or […]
Category film reviews, horror, science fiction, suspense/thriller · Tags Black Wake, Carlos Keyes, Eric Roberts, Jeremiah Kipp, Jerry Janda, Jonny Beauchamp, Nana Gouvea, Tom Sizemore, Vincent Pastore
Posted by Jared Mobarak on February 15, 2018 · Leave a Comment
“We had to maintain the lie” It’s easy to forget how important Creed was to getting this specific Black Panther made. From Wesley Snipes wanting to get something off the ground in the 1990s to Kevin Feige courting Ava DuVernay as director post-Selma success, things could have been very different. Hiring Ryan Coogler before his […]
Category action/adventure, film reviews, science fiction, z.slideshow · Tags Andy Serkis, Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman, Danai Jekesai Gurira, Daniel Kaluuya, Forest Whitaker, Joe Robert Cole, John Kani, Kevin Feige, Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Martin Freeman, Michael B. Jordan, Michael P. Shawver, Rachel Morrison, Ryan Coogler, Winston Duke
Posted by Jared Mobarak on February 15, 2018 · Leave a Comment
“Tell me a story” While it may do a better job at depicting the nihilistic depravity of living through social media at the detriment of “real life” than Ingrid Goes West, Robert Mockler‘s Like Me still fails to capture the psychological prison this artificial life creates beyond its surface chaos. We watch Kiya (Addison Timlin) […]
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