Month: November 2019 | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Rockaway [2019]

2019/11/192020/03/23 Jared Mobarak

The smoke’s getting closer. John (Frankie J. Alvarez) puts on the television to find a replay of a 1994 NBA Championship game with John Starks draining threes. Rather than create a pang of nostalgia for the years when his hometown team was good, however, the image takes him back to a childhood full of tragedy and hope. He was just a kid back then (Maxwell Apple) with an unhealthy infatuation for the former Knicks star and his number three—one his brother Anthony (Keidrich Sellati) did all he could to foster…

REVIEW: The Irishman [2019]

2019/11/182020/10/02 Jared Mobarak

It’s what it is. Aging lead Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) is approached by two detectives towards the end of Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman (the cinematic adaptation of Charles Brandt‘s I Heard You Paint Houses as scripted by Steve Zaillian) who let him know he’s the only one left. All the other big-time mafiosos from the Bufalino family and elsewhere had met their demise either from bullet, garrote, or disease (with the rare case of natural causes thrown into the mix). The tactic was to let Frank know that there…

REVIEW: The Warrior Queen of Jhansi [2019]

2019/11/172020/03/23 Jared Mobarak

Everything’s become red. The part Rani Lakshmibai (Devika Bhise) played during the 1857 Indian mutiny against the British East India Company is massive. A great moment of perseverance and rebellion on its own, this queen became a much-needed symbol for whom her persecuted people and dwindling allies could rally behind. Widowed five years earlier with an adopted son set to inherit the throne, England presumed a moment of weakness to seize her kingdom as its own. Believing Jhansi’s allegiance to this point gave them cause to simply take over, they…

REVIEW: Daniel Isn’t Real [2019]

2019/11/162020/10/02 Jared Mobarak

Not insane. Awake! The title truly says it all: Daniel Isn’t Real. So when a little boy takes his stuffed animal down the street to escape his parents’ screams only to walk by a gruesome murder scene marked by a bloodied body lifeless on the ground, we understand the significance of his also finding a new friend. A young kid unable to process fear, rage, and death, Luke would naturally project his distressed mother’s (Mary Stuart Masterson‘s Claire) visage upon the homicide victim now haunting his memory before creating a…

REVIEW: Ford v Ferrari [2019]

2019/11/152020/03/23 Jared Mobarak

I’ll have you home for meatloaf and gravy. The man at the center of James Mangold‘s Ford v Ferrari is Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon), a former driver turned racecar designer forced into retirement by a heart condition exacerbated by the difficulties of his high-speed sport of choice. His narrative importance lies in being the connective tissue between Ken Miles (Christian Bale as his close friend and colleague) and Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts as a man who needs no introduction) once the titular war at Le Mans gets underway. His…

REVIEW: Feast of the Seven Fishes [2019]

2019/11/142020/03/23 Jared Mobarak

What the hell is nostalgia? Titled after the Southern Italian tradition that made its way across the Atlantic to become a part of many Italian-American families’ Christmas Eve celebrations, Robert Tinnell‘s adaptation of his own graphic novel/recipe book Feast of the Seven Fishes does well to center itself upon its food even if the people eating it prove the real focal point. It’s probably not a coincidence then that most of our attention is specifically spent on seven teens with a direct or peripheral connection to dinner at Grandpa Johnny’s…

REVIEW: Bisbee ’17 [2018]

2019/11/132020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

Thank you for riding the deportation express. On the surface it appears to be an illegal deportation of anti-union Americans at the hands of newly deputized company loyalists in Bisbee, Arizona. Approximately 1,200 copper mining strikers and sympathizers were rounded up at gunpoint in 1917, ushered into cattle cars, and driven over the border to New Mexico with the declaration that returning home would end in their death. Maybe the illegality of the incident was enough to keep it all a closely guarded secret, but digging further reveals another truth…

REVIEW: Mickey and the Bear [2019]

2019/11/132020/03/23 Jared Mobarak

Sometimes you just lose track of time. Set in the small Montana town of Anaconda, writer/director Annabelle Attanasio‘s feature debut Mickey and the Bear takes pride in its authenticity. She was given a grant to conduct “ethnographic and visual research” into the community there so she could better understand its veteran population and close-knit history of helping each other cope with re-assimilation under increased financial, emotional, and psychological duress. Everybody knows everybody—a fact Attanasio uses to create a complex situational bubble around her lead character Mickey Peck (Camila Morrone). This…

OIFF19 REVIEW: סיבת המוות [Cause of Death] [2019]

2019/11/122020/03/23 Jared Mobarak

I can’t stop thinking about it. Director Ramy A Katz leaves three text cards at the end of his Cause of Death to share responses to the film that were supplied by the Israeli police department, Ministry of Health, and the medical examiner of Officer Salim Barakat’s body upon his death at the scene of a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv on March 5, 2002. Each statement possesses one commonality that doesn’t make sense when read after watching Salim’s brother Jamal’s unofficial investigation into what happened a decade later. It’s…

OIFF19 REVIEW: Mafak [Screwdriver] [2019]

2019/11/112020/03/23 Jared Mobarak

I didn’t even cry. You hate to think of the United States as a warzone and yet that’s exactly what it is in many respects. Whether a for-profit prison system leaving a largely Black population disenfranchised, unemployable, and haunted or caged children who crossed the Southern border for asylum only to be scarred by the psychological torture of being indefinitely ripped from their parents, minorities across our country are being held as prisoners of war without any concrete conflict on the books. Multiply this tragedy by a thousand and you…

ANOMALY19 REVIEW: VFW [2019]

2019/11/092020/03/23 Jared Mobarak

Same mud. That co-writer Matthew McArdle remains shocked even after seeing the film he and Max Brallier wrote on the big screen shows how tough the accomplishment proves. Best friends since childhood, the two began their script for VFW with transparent intentions as far as harkening back to the no-holds-barred VHS gems they’d scour video store shelves to find. Using John Carpenter‘s Assault on Precinct 13 as inspiration, they created a group of aging vets decades-removed from service yet still thick as thieves with a drug-fueled, zombie-esque horde threatening to…