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REVIEW: The Lion King [1994]

2019/06/292020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

Remember who you are. The sun rises at the screen’s bottom as Lebo M. is heard singing in Zulu. We take a look at the wide-open expanse of an African savannah before slowly honing in on herds of animals moving towards a single spot: Pride Rock. There we find Mufasa (James Earl Jones) and Sarabi (Madge Sinclair) resting with new lion cub Simba (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) as trusted allies Zazu the hornbill (Rowan Atkinson) and Rafiki the baboon (Robert Guillaume) arrive to offer their services for what’s to be a…

REVIEW: Phil [2019]

2019/06/282020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

I never promised you a rose garden. We meet Phil McGuire (Greg Kinnear) exiting his parked car while still in traffic to climb up a bridge railing. It’s a one hundred-plus foot drop into the water and he imagines taking the plunge before a group of teens with cellphones outstretched jolt him from the morbid sensation with excitable demands that he jump so they can enjoy the carnage. That’s a bold tonal mood on behalf of screenwriter Stephen Mazur and director Kinnear (his debut) because there’s actual dejection on their…

REVIEW: Anastasia [1997]

2019/06/272020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

In the dark of the night she’ll be gone. In a fantasy world where royalty was adored as idyllically benevolent leaders thinking only about how to protect and serve their people, the Romanovs were betrayed by the evil Rasputin (Christopher Lloyd) who subsequently consorted with the Devil to wield dark magic powerful enough to curse their entire bloodline to death. His goal was to eradicate them and seize control, but things didn’t go quite as planned. And although the princess Anastasia (Kirsten Dunst) narrowly escaped his grasp when he fell…

REVIEW: Last Night [1998]

2019/06/272020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

Would it hurt you to play along just once? The cause might be unnamed, but the fact it’s still sunny at midnight guarantees the giant star at the center of our solar system is going supernova (whether or not physics deems it possible). Because all life on Earth will cease in a predetermined instant, you can bet the entire world thought about where they’ll be and what they’ll do when it happens. Maybe a newscaster takes it upon himself to stay on-air and guide viewers while your local DJ compiles…

REVIEW: Annabelle Comes Home [2019]

2019/06/262020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

Miss me? After an excitingly popular debut during The Conjuring‘s prologue, the creepily revamped Annabelle doll (its real-life counterpart was actually a Raggedy Anne) earned the title role in the first spin-off of this ever-growing horror universe. That installment left much to be desired with screenwriter Gary Dauberman eventually redeeming himself three years later on Annabelle: Creation thanks in part to director David F. Sandberg. You might assume this demonic vessel would then be left alone since its tragic trajectory had now been fully drawn from the home of its…

REVIEW: Yesterday [2019]

2019/06/252020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

Have you got coke? Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) has dreams of singer/songwriter stardom, but this Clacton-on-Sea native is lucky if one person besides best friend/manager Ellie (Lily James) and their mates Nick (Harry Michell) and Carol (Sophia Di Martino) is actually listening to “Summer Song” let alone enjoying it at gigs. That’s the pitfall of dreams: they don’t always work out. While he would have quit years ago if not for Ellie constantly pushing him forward, his latest set-back doubling as a modest moral victory allows him to finally give…

REVIEW: Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché [2019]

2019/06/252020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

How come she got lost in the shuffle? An opening montage of images and maps briskly moving backwards from present-day to the late nineteenth century while moving from Hollywood to France foreshadows exactly what Pamela B. Green has delivered with Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché. This is a history lesson, investigative journal, and memorial for one of the great pioneers of cinema who inexplicably had been left out. With phone calls, interviews, archival footage, and Skype sessions discovering new and unknown ancestral lineages in real time, Green…

REVIEW: The Nun [2018]

2019/06/242020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

Mary points the way. There’s a scene in Corin Hardy‘s The Nun where a young postulant receives her vows inside an unholy abbey while the ashes of a dead sister smoke in the background and an unlikely alley loads a shotgun in the fore. It’s the type of moment that should conjure laughs via its absurd juxtaposition and yet anyone who follows The Conjuring franchise knows the inherent severity of its subject matter renders such comically ripe material unintentionally hilarious instead. That’s why so many of these movies find an…

REVIEW: Toy Story 4 [2019]

2019/06/212020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

She’ll be okay. It was said upon the release of Toy Story 3 that the franchise was done as far as Woody (Tom Hanks) and Buzz Lightyear’s (Tim Allen) adventures were concerned. These sentiments made sense because it ended nicely on a logical breaking point wherein the boy whose name adorned their feet grew-up and gifted them to a new owner (Bonnie) who promised a warm future of happiness and play. Because simply retiring the characters would be dumb, Pixar decided to branch out into a trio of short comedic…

REVIEW: Partysaurus Rex [2012]

2019/06/212020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

You were way scarier than the last sea monster. As the wet blanket of the group, Rex (Wallace Shawn) rarely gets to do anything more than fret and accidentally cause problems due to uncontrollable anxieties. So why not let him have some fun, albeit against his better judgment? Knowing this outcome would only be possible if he was removed from the usual Toy Story group and thus rendered “cool” by not having anyone cooler to compare, Mark A. Walsh and Dylan Brown let Bonnie isolate him in the tub with…

REVIEW: Child’s Play [2019]

2019/06/202020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

Are we having fun now? It’s not everyday a remake gets produced of a currently running franchise, but that’s exactly what’s happened with Child’s Play. While original screenwriter Don Mancini continues to advance the escapades of his version’s murderous doll possessed by a serial killer’s soul (most recently in 2017’s Cult of Chucky with a television show on Syfy arriving in 2020) thanks to the help of Universal Pictures, MGM and United Artists decided to flex their legal retention of ownership in the property by branching off anew. After Mancini…