Month: February 2018 | www.jaredmobarak.com

BERLINALE18 REVIEW: Les rois mongols [Cross My Heart] [2018]

2018/02/142020/04/11 Jared Mobarak

They’re good guys doing bad things. While you can debate the success of politically motivated events like 1970’s October Crisis in Quebec, Canada, you can’t question their danger removed from the cause. The media reports the carnage whether terrorist bombings or kidnappings and murder. They provide an objective account of what’s happening—in this case the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) wreaking havoc to force secession from the country and become an autonomous nation—and leave it to their viewers to understand the context. Adults can handle this because many already…

BERLINALE18 REVIEW: Cobain [2018]

2018/02/112020/04/11 Jared Mobarak

My little man. There’s a scene in Nanouk Leopold‘s Cobain where the titular fifteen year-old (Bas Keizer) tells his estranged, junkie mother Mia (Naomi Velissariou) that he wants to help. Her response is to ask whether she cares about what he does, the answer tragically understood before his mouth utters the word “No.” To watch her shrug her shoulders and say, “Why should you?” epitomizes love’s power and its strength in circumstances where you couldn’t be blamed for believing it didn’t exist at all. Mia has never been a mother…

REVIEW: Pariah [2011]

2018/02/082020/04/11 Jared Mobarak

God doesn’t make mistakes. If you can’t tell how out-of-place Alike (Adepero Oduye) feels when staring slack-jawed at a pole dancer before escaping to a seat by the wall with phone open to check the time, you will when she all but pushes her friend Laura (Pernall Walker) off of the bus home to ensure some alone time between then and her stop. What could have just been a coming of age story about a closeted teenage woman caught between public and private worlds suddenly becomes an authentic portrayal of…

REVIEW: Entanglement [2018]

2018/02/072020/04/11 Jared Mobarak

Just let go. We’ve all asked the question: “What does our life mean?” Some of us do so out of curiosity, some out of boredom, and others from a place of desperation. Ben Layten (Thomas Middleditch) falls in the latter category after the wife he loved so deeply for many years leaves him for another man. He literally cannot cope with this turn of events, a long-standing bout with psychological issues and medications exacerbating any hope to find calm. So he does the unthinkable and resorts to suicide—multiple times. You…

REVIEW: Looking Glass [2018]

2018/02/062020/04/11 Jared Mobarak

I just needed some air. I can’t stop going back to an old Variety report from 2016 that contained a Braxton Pope quote about producing Looking Glass as what was then to be music video director Dori Oskowitz‘s feature length debut. He spoke about how excited he was to partner with the artist in bringing a “remarkable story of voyeurism and grief to the screen.” I read that statement and wonder where it all could have gone wrong since the finished piece now directed by Tim Hunter from a script…

REVIEW: The Silent Child [2017]

2018/02/062020/04/13 Jared Mobarak

Orange juice. Director Chris Overton and writer Rachel Shenton pull no punches with their short on deaf awareness entitled The Silent Child. What could have been a cloying piece about parents thawing to the realities of a life they pretend they’re too busy to see with eyes open proves a rather bleak depiction of how ablest our society is. It’s one thing to realize how ill-equipped many institutions in the United States and Britain are towards the hearing impaired, but another to bluntly air the delusions of family members who…

REVIEW: The Eleven O’Clock [2017]

2018/02/052020/04/13 Jared Mobarak

I’m simply waiting patiently. I love a good wordplay gag delivered at breakneck speed, the sort “A Bit of Fry and Laurie” used to deliver when Stephen Fry went rapid-fire nonsense on Hugh Laurie without a stutter, laugh, or breath. Director Derin Seale‘s short film The Eleven O’Clock is a wonderful comedic scenario in that mold thanks to Josh Lawson‘s shrewdly surreal script wherein a psychiatrist’s new patient believes he too is a psychiatrist. By setting the stage on a day when the real doctor’s secretary hires a temp (Jessica…

REVIEW: Watu Wote [All of Us] [2017]

2018/02/052020/04/13 Jared Mobarak

You’ll have to kill us all. It’s dispiriting to constantly watch as Muslims are forced to defend themselves against the bigotry of Catholics who blindly reject their entire religion as one synonymous with terrorism. Looking back upon history (and the present) to see the horrors committed by Christians under the guise of “acts of God” highlights the hypocrisy and ultimately the racism at its back. They label other human beings evil for doing exactly what they have done for centuries. They champion immigration bans, quote inaccurate statistics, and sit back…

REVIEW: Revolting Rhymes Part One [2016]

2018/02/052020/04/13 Jared Mobarak

They’re just stories. You know … for children. Have you ever listened to a fairy tale and lamented the poor villains simply trying to survive? You hear “Little Red Riding Hood” and think about how the wolf is operating by instinct. He sees a potential meal and using cunning ingenuity does all he can to acquire it. When you really step back and look at the story objectively, he’s doing what we all would in his situation. But because we’re human, it’s assumed we will align ourselves with the human…

REVIEW: Heroin(e) [2017]

2018/02/042020/04/13 Jared Mobarak

Getting high on heroin is to you what it would be like to kiss Jesus. We too often see a problem in its worst form via “scared straight” videos that depict it in all its graphic detail for those living within its clutches. Drug use is the main culprit for this type of vehicle because the prevailing notion is to think knowing something can kill you is enough to provide you a reason to stop. But as we see with cigarettes, addiction moves our psyches beyond logic. It moves people’s…

REVIEW: Traffic Stop [2017]

2018/02/042020/10/02 Jared Mobarak

I did not trust him. Some topics deserve the time to delve underneath the surface of what we see, know, and assume. The violent arrest of Breaion King is one such incident where thirty minutes is simply not enough. But that’s what director Kate Davis has to deliver the intricacies of what occurred in the moment and historically to bring Breaion and officer Brian Richter to it. Traffic Stop does a wonderful job asking the tough questions, but it never really answers any of them. It chooses a side—the correct…