Month: November 2018 | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Madeline’s Madeline [2018]

2018/11/162020/03/31 Jared Mobarak

This is just a metaphor. One of the worst things you can be told as a child is how brilliant you are. Parents and mentors love to throw this sort of blanket praise out with promises that everything will work out for you without thinking about the ramifications of what such a falsely optimistic indoctrination devoid of realism can wield. How do you cope when failure occurs? How do you handle a response from those you trust similar to: “They’re going to regret their mistake because you are perfect?” Oftentimes…

REVIEW: Write When You Get Work [2018]

2018/11/162020/03/31 Jared Mobarak

I’m friendly. We don’t ever discover why or when high school sweethearts Ruth Duffy (Rachel Keller) and Jonny Collins (Finn Wittrock) broke up during the course of Stacy Cochran‘s Write When You Get Work. All we know are certain circumstances and thus are left to assume the rest. Maybe they tried making things work after what happened and spent a few more years together or maybe they separated right away (read as Ruth left to take control of her life while Jonny stayed behind and apparently refused to ever grow…

REVIEW: Bohemian Rhapsody [2018]

2018/11/152020/03/31 Jared Mobarak

Good thoughts. Good words. Good deeds. There’s the story of Freddie Mercury and the story of his band Queen. One deals with complicated topics spanning fractured identity, the excess of fame, and AIDS while the other is apparently straightforward with little conflict besides creative squabbles that get ironed out before the argument is even finished. Is it weird then that Hollywood would deliver the latter? The sad truth is unfortunately no. Going the safe route to make sure all parties involved are happy about their depiction is exactly what Hollywood…

REVIEW: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald [2018]

2018/11/142020/03/31 Jared Mobarak

We mustn’t be what they say we are. Who is Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne)? This is an important question we have to ask while watching Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, one we didn’t during the entirety of Harry Potter’s adventures at Hogwarts and beyond. Back then we knew who our hero was because of the mark on his head. Potter was the child of prophecy, the fated vanquisher of the wizarding world’s greatest foe Voldemort. So we invested in him and his friends from the beginning. We willingly grew…

REVIEW: What They Had [2018]

2018/11/132020/03/31 Jared Mobarak

Is that my baby? Norbert Eberhardt (Robert Forster) is a loving, generous man who literally swept the woman of his dreams (Blythe Danner‘s Ruth) off her feet to start a decades-long romance that produced two children (Hilary Swank‘s Bridget and Michael Shannon‘s Nick), two grandkids (Taissa Farmiga‘s Emma being one), and unforgettable memories … until they’re forgotten. Ruth has Alzheimer’s and things have devolved to the point where Burt can’t handle doing everything he willingly, admirably, and compassionately does for her. But she’s “his girl” and he takes the whole…

REVIEW: Marlina Si Pembunuh dalam Empat Babak [Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts] [2017]

2018/11/112020/03/31 Jared Mobarak

This is my prisoner. Considering the seemingly endless number of Hollywood male directors tackling women empowerment films as a means to declare themselves feminists while also—wittingly or not—preserving their careers at the expense of the women they’re seemingly in solidarity with, you must give renowned Indonesian director Garin Nugroho credit for recognizing the treatment he wrote entitled “The Woman” needed a woman’s voice. This isn’t rocket science and yet men in power staying in their lane are still the exception. Nugroho told Mouly Surya about the project during a film…

REVIEW: The Clovehitch Killer [2018]

2018/11/102020/03/31 Jared Mobarak

I like bad news. Don Burnside (Dylan McDermott) is a pillar of his community. He’s the troop leader of his son’s (Charlie Plummer‘s Tyler) church-adjacent Boy Scouts, a devout man of the Lord alongside his wife Cindy (Samantha Mathis), and the type of guy to go out of his way to volunteer and make the neighborhood a better place. So we laugh when the town’s resident eccentric teen (Madisen Beaty‘s Kassi), carrying a mark of “whore” around simply because she’s an atheist among cultish worshippers needing a reason to denounce…

REVIEW: Daughters of the Dust [1991]

2018/11/082020/03/31 Jared Mobarak

I ain’t got no more dreams, cousin. The voice we hear is of the unborn child (Kai-Lynn Warren) growing inside Eula Peazant (Alva Rogers). She speaks about the events onscreen from a future that ensures her birth if not her residence—the lynchpin to the entirety of Julie Dash‘s Daughters of the Dust who metaphorically and literally serves as a bridge between old and new. A mainland white man raped Eula and thus the possibility our narrator is his child rather than Eula’s husband Eli’s (Adisa Anderson) eats away at the…

REVIEW: Monsoon [2018]

2018/11/072020/03/31 Jared Mobarak

Don’t let one tragedy cause another. The start of Miguel Duran‘s Monsoon is like its own short film. We meet John (Austin Lyon) and Sarah (Katherine Hughes) the weekend the former is supposed to be moving east for Cornell while she remains closer to home in the Arizona desert. They’re best friends and have been since childhood thanks to living next door to one another. There’s an easy rapport between them that flirts with romanticism just before they shake themselves awake to carry on a platonic camaraderie unencumbered by the…

REVIEW: 버닝 [Beoning] [Burning] [2018]

2018/11/052020/03/31 Jared Mobarak

Should I forget it ‘isn’t’ here? Jong-su (Ah-In Yoo) never tells Hae-mi (Jong-seo Jeon) what “metaphor” means. They’re standing in Ben’s (Steven Yeun) kitchen as he chops ingredients for a pasta dish and talks philosophically with a smug smile until the question comes up. He defers answering her to Jong-su since he’s the writer of the group, but he decides to ask where the bathroom is instead of supplying one. It’s ironic since the entirety of Chang-dong Lee‘s Beoning [Burning] proves one giant metaphor for the anger, uncertainty, and entitlement…

REVIEW: Jonathan [2018]

2018/11/052020/03/31 Jared Mobarak

I don’t want to take you with me. Something isn’t right. Jonathan (Ansel Elgort) is tired despite his routine bordering on monotony being the same for who knows how many years. He wakes at 7:00am without an alarm, goes for a morning run, and heads to work as a draftsman at an architecture firm run by a man he respects as a genius. He returns home, films a video message to his roommate about the details of his day and any interactions with mutual acquaintances, and goes to sleep ……