Month: August 2018 | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Crazy Rich Asians [2018]

2018/08/132020/04/03 Jared Mobarak

Family never says thank you. While I haven’t read Kevin Kwan‘s novel Crazy Rich Asians, I can definitely see why producers would have approached him with the note: “Where’s your white character?” It has all the usual romantic comedy beats from stranger in a stranger land antics, memorable supporting characters readying the “commoner” for an extravagant gala, and an airplane-set admission of undying love. Kwan utilized the Hollywood template and they of course salivated over it knowing they could throw money at him and white-wash the lead role so as…

REVIEW: Pappy’s World [2018]

2018/08/132020/04/03 Jared Mobarak

Come on. Tickle me. A self-proclaimed “socially responsible Blaxpoitation” horror short from director Matt Wisniewski and co-writer Fred Polone, Pappy’s World arrives as though a music video for Buffalo-based art-rock project Smokin’ Black Tar with an opening guitar-led track against the silent movements of a young girl (Jaz Frazier) around Christmastime. While she eyeballs a stack of presents and wonders how to get the top-most package down without waking her grandfather (Polone in lo-fi elderly make-up), the camera highlights her deliberate, silent-era over-exaggerations to tell this tale with expressive gestures.…

BIFF18 REVIEW: Age Out [Friday’s Child] [2019]

2018/08/122020/04/03 Jared Mobarak

I don’t hurt people. The only thing worse than never getting your happy ending is having it within grasp and realizing you cannot accept it. To see salvation and turn around knowing it would be a lie is the type of heartbreaking choice we often have to make in order to keep on going. It’s the decision that separates man from monster: an admission of remorse, guilt, and regret. Our actions cause ripples that affect countless others we haven’t met yet or never will and while that truth allows some…

REVIEW: Arizona [2018]

2018/08/112020/04/03 Jared Mobarak

Nothing but possibility. You should know going in that Jonathan Watson‘s Arizona is a comedy. It’s billed that way. Former “30 Rock” and current “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” writer Luke Del Tredici is responsible for the script. And Danny McBride has had his face plastered on all the marketing materials. But you wouldn’t be wrong for thinking otherwise at the very start considering the lead role is played by Rosemarie DeWitt. She’s a real estate agent named Cassie who’s shown spinning her sales speak with a couple just as the housing bubble…

REVIEW: Searching for Fortune [2018]

2018/08/102020/04/03 Jared Mobarak

I didn’t know we could do that. Whether you’re a proponent of nature over nurture or vice versa, you cannot deny the impact both have on our lives regardless of the other. Yes we all have the potential to be President of the United States on paper, but we don’t all have the tools at our disposal to turn such blanket statements of opportunity into reality. Oftentimes we don’t even realize this fact because our identities are forged by those tools we do have. For example: growing up in a…

REVIEW: BlacKkKlansman [2018]

2018/08/092020/04/03 Jared Mobarak

Did you just use your real name? The fact that Spike Lee‘s BlacKkKlansman is based on a true story is absolutely crazy. A black rookie cop in Colorado calls the Ku Klux Klan, wins them over with racist rhetoric, and talks his precinct chief into approving an investigation wherein a white officer would pretend to be him in-person before ultimately coming face-to-face with Grand Wizard David Duke? You literally cannot write a more scathing commentary on the hubris of white supremacists or the courage of those fighting the good fight…

REVIEW: Univitellin [2016]

2018/08/092020/04/03 Jared Mobarak

All of that for nothing. Writer/director Terence Nance describes his short film Univitellin as “an improvised prequel about the past lives of one person—about the two people they were before they karmically merged.” It’s important to know this because that’s not what you’d assume upon watching its tale of fated and tragic romance between Aminata (Aminata M’Bathie) and Badara (Badara Ngom). On the surface we’re merely watching as this couple meets on the train to work, sitting across from the other in silence. It shows the possible ways that could…

REVIEW: The Meg [2018]

2018/08/082020/04/03 Jared Mobarak

Discover and then destroy. An adaptation of Steve Alten‘s Navy deep-sea diver/paleobiologist Jonas Taylor-led series of novels has been in the works pretty much since the first installment was published back in 1997. There have been six literary sequels written since then as the property changed hands from Disney to Warner Bros. and directors from Jan de Bont to Eli Roth to Jon Turteltaub. That second name is interesting because Alten’s book is described as a science-fiction horror. So to read that Roth left over “creative differences” can’t help but…

REVIEW: C’est La Vie [2016]

2018/08/082020/04/03 Jared Mobarak

You don’t choose to be me. In the perfect complement to Basically, writer/director Ari Aster uses the same format of pitting his lead character against the camera for an incendiary diatribe about life, freedom, and oppression with C’est La Vie. Where the former centered upon a young, aspiring actress who proved a product of affluence and privilege, the latter focuses upon an irately aggressive homeless man named Chester Crummings (Bradley Fisher). What’s interesting is that he too had a life of excess before unforeseen circumstances (and a later revealed psychological…

REVIEW: The Turtle’s Head [2014]

2018/08/082020/04/03 Jared Mobarak

She didn’t get the pun. What appeared an early misstep of juvenile comedic intent with TDF Really Works actually seems to be a glaring blind spot for writer/director Ari Aster after watching his short film The Turtle’s Head. There are few better than him today where using humor to augment the subversions of darker genres is concerned. But his attempts to go broad without any underlying message or social motivation have thus far proven lackluster. A few chuckles are earned here en route to a very repetitive exercise in gross-out…

REVIEW: Basically [2014]

2018/08/082020/04/03 Jared Mobarak

That’s just the rejection talking. Even the most vain and vapid have moments of clarity. Whether they prove to be intentional or not is the question. So is it because Shandy (Rachel Brosnahan) has more to her than what appearances reveal that she’s able to turn colorfully vindictive soliloquies into philosophical quandaries worth contemplating beyond the laughter of her visual juxtapositions? Or is it merely because everyone has the agency to hit a home run if they simply talk in circles long enough to break free towards territory they never…