Month: February 2019

BERLINALE19 REVIEW: Ringside [2019]

Jared Mobarak

You can hit people and you can’t get in trouble. Boxing became the way two fathers in Chicago could keep their sons off the streets. Kenneth Sims Sr. was a brawler back in the day before turning his passion into a career as a coach. Destyne Butler Sr. was a pugilist aficionado who succumbed to the allure of drug dealing before getting out of the game. They therefore knew how easy it was to fall into a hole that seemed impossible to climb and what it took to do exactly…

Read More

REVIEW: My Bloody Valentine [1981]

Jared Mobarak

It can’t be happening again. Only Canada would let a holiday slasher film like My Bloody Valentine—known for having its most disturbing bits of gore chopped away for the ratings board—end with a folk ballad that gives its murderous psychopath Harry Warden an almost nostalgic lilt. With John McDermott‘s voice lending it credence, we’re pretty much given a full recap of the legend that George Mihalka reignites twenty years after those first deaths ravaged Valentine Bluffs’ sleepy little mining town. It was the community’s namesake party on February 14th, 1960…

Read More

BERLINALE19 REVIEW: MS Slavic 7 [2019]

Jared Mobarak

You’ll have to use this pencil. Director Sofia Bohdanowicz found a series of letters written between 1957 and 1964 by her great-grandmother Zofia Bohdanowiczowa (a poet) to the Nobel Prize nominated author Józef Wittlin at Harvard’s Houghton Library. Both literary figures were forced to leave Poland during World War II with the former heading to Wales and the latter New York City. Zofia would eventually cross the Atlantic into Toronto, the newfound proximity allowing them to finally meet after so much correspondence. You truly get an insight into their minds…

Read More

REVIEW: The Kid Who Would Be King [2019]

Jared Mobarak

Quick. Lift up the flaps. Another King Arthur retread? This was my first thought watching the trailer for Joe Cornish‘s The Kid Who Would Be King and probably a main contributor to why its box office was so poor (alongside an American aversion to thick British accents—albeit not nearly as thick as the writer/director’s brilliant debut Attack the Block). We’re barely two years removed from Guy Ritchie‘s acquired taste of a revision and not much further from the gritty magic-less one starring Clive Owen, so mustering enthusiasm isn’t guaranteed. What…

Read More

REVIEW: Serenity [2019]

Jared Mobarak

Go catch that fish, Dill. **Spoilers** I was rooting for Steven Knight‘s Serenity long before sitting down at the theater. Why wouldn’t I? The trailer had it looking like one of my favorite types of films—namely the sort wherein what we see and experience ultimately proves to be the inner-workings of a troubled, delusional mind. I clung to this belief that there would be more than meets the eye even tighter upon hearing how stars Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway got angry at Aviron Pictures for canceling their planned press…

Read More

REVIEW: Zama [2017]

Jared Mobarak

Europe is best remembered by those who were never there. A man speaks about a fish rejected by the water it needs to breathe, swimming back and forth to fight that current of repulsion and stay alive in the hopes of earning an opportunity to be desired, valued, and worthy of the life God has given to it. He could very well be talking about the titular put-upon protagonist of Lucrecia Martel‘s Zama. The character’s name is Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) and he’s desperate for validation whether…

Read More

REVIEW: Sombra City [2019]

Jared Mobarak

I said I don’t trust you, but— It’s 2037 and the world looks similar to ours but for certain societal changes. The main alteration at the center of Elias Plagianos‘ Sombra City is the legality of murder if done with a bounty hunting purpose. Think a duel, but farmed out to trained assassins. As long as you’re licensed, hired by a third party with just cause, and provide the potential victim with enough clarity to mount a chance at self-defense before engaging within a private setting (and therefore making it…

Read More

REVIEW: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Well don’t let my white duds and pleasant demeanor fool ya. You know the whole enterprise will be a bit cheeky just by directors’ Joel and Ethan Coen‘s statement of intent. While explaining that their love for anthology movies stems from the format’s ability to unite multiple directors with a common theme, they admit their hopes of doing the same with a sextet of Western tales written and adapted over the years. Instead of lamenting the fact they couldn’t make it happen before deciding to direct everything themselves, the duo…

Read More

BERLINALE19 REVIEW: Breve historia del planeta verde [Brief Story From the Green Planet] [2019]

Jared Mobarak

Don’t be scared of what you’re about to see. I have no idea what’s happening inside Santiago Loza‘s Breve historia del planeta verde [Brief Story from the Green Planet]. This quest on behalf of three outcast best friends since childhood to deliver an ailing alien to the place where one’s grandmother found it is disorienting and obtuse, but above all else beautiful. There are parallels running through every scene whether the sense of “other,” the desire to feel included and at-home, or the notion of embracing one’s origins no matter…

Read More

REVIEW: Lords of Chaos [2019]

Jared Mobarak

One shot to the head and it’s all over. Talk to “true” Norwegian black metal fans and they’ll tell you Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind‘s book about the scene’s origins and criminality is a bunch of baloney (but in much harsher words). It’s interesting because the facts behind a series of church burnings, the suicide of a lead singer, and two subsequently high profile murders are indisputable. Those who were tried and found guilty before serving their time in prison don’t dispute the acts themselves, but merely the way in…

Read More

REVIEW: The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot [2019]

Jared Mobarak

I’ll thank you to look after the dog. A title like The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot is making very specific promises and writer/director Robert D. Krzykowski doesn’t disappoint. Calvin Barr (Aidan Turner in flashback) did kill Adolf Hitler and Calvin Barr (Sam Elliott in present day) will be recruited to hunt down and eventually kill The Bigfoot. These imperatives are present and plain as day with the type of verbosity that gets you smiling before you even see how crazy this hero’s life proves to accomplish…

Read More