Month: March 2018

REVIEW: Strong Island [2017]

Jared Mobarak

This house is made of bones. The 1992 murder of William Ford wasn’t a story when it happened. Outsiders might not even have known it occurred since the grand jury decided not to indict the man who admitted to firing the rifle that put a bullet in his chest. Anyone walking by would hear how it was a case of self-defense: scared white mechanic doing all he could to survive the scary black customer who charged into the garage with violence in his eyes. This is the version of the…

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REVIEW: I Kill Giants [2018]

Jared Mobarak

We’re stronger than we think. While the main creative force behind I Kill Giants is unquestionably screenwriter Joe Kelly (whose limited comic series of the same name alongside artist J.M. Ken Niimura is the basis for his script), director Anders Walter‘s Oscar-winning short Helium shows he’s hardly a stranger to its subject matter. These two found success through the delicately complex experience had when a child confronts his/her as yet abstract conception of death wherein the infinite expanse of one’s imagination can manifest a path towards understanding. Few people find…

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REVIEW: Gringo [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Why’s everyone talking about gorillas all of a sudden? You wouldn’t be wrong to view the trailer for Gringo and think, “I’ve seen this before.” You wouldn’t be wrong to assume it gave away the entire plot either—mild-mannered American is used by his ruthless bosses to perform a dangerous job they refuse to attempt and is kidnapped by a Mexican cartel for his trouble. Will he survive the chaos? Will his bosses save him or extricate themselves from blame? Or will the hapless victim of an increasingly escalating ordeal somehow…

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REVIEW: The Party [2017]

Jared Mobarak

Another announcement. Good God. I admire what Sally Potter is trying to do with her black comedy The Party as experiment. She’s placed a group of friends with different political, economic, and romantic views into a single room, hanging a secret(s) over their heads with the potential to destroy their individual and communal identities. They’re provided the opportunity to come clean and be true to who they are despite what it might do to those around them, each embracing a desire to let their consistently over-inflated egos decide. Unfortunately that…

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The 90th Oscars recap through tweets …

Jared Mobarak

If you thought this year’s Oscars were going to do something crazy or exciting, you haven’t been paying attention. Between the envelope-gate incident of 2017 and the fact that this was a “multiple of ten” anniversary, the 90th Annual Academy Awards was going to do everything it could to right the ship and ensure nothing overshadowed the winners’ list. And for the most part they succeeded—often at the detriment of the show itself. But that’s their fault for alway trying to make it more than what it is: an awards…

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REVIEW: La montaña sagrada [The Holy Mountain] [1973]

Jared Mobarak

You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold. To wish an art film took itself more seriously seems counterproductive considering most art films have their head so far up their backside that it would be impossible for them to do so. I love Matthew Barney‘s Cremaster series because it is so excessively pretentious and precious about its grand ideas that really don’t matter when approaching the work as a visual art wherein aesthetic is paramount. The fact that it revels in its museum sterility helps us to approach it…

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