Category: Anomaly Film Festival

ANOMALY20 REVIEW: The Last Blockbuster [2020]

Jared Mobarak

I miss it like crazy. We were a Blockbuster family. I don’t mean that because we had the gold membership card allowing us to rent any old DVD for free with the purchase of a new release or that we’d go at least once a week while working a drop-box drive-by into our regular schedule. No, that label was earned back when VHS was king and the best way to not have to constantly buy new VCRs was acquiring a rewinding machine instead. We’d watch our rentals, pop them in…

Read More

ANOMALY20 REVIEW: Gremlins: A Puppet Story [2020]

Jared Mobarak

Ha! Forgetting about the man-hours that go into a film production before the cameras start rolling is something many of us do. People do so where it concerns art and labor in most fields because it’s easier to reduce finished products to the “genius” or “talent” of a creator than fathom the work that actually goes into making those indelible traits possible. So watching an Oscar-winning make-up/special effects artist like Chris Walas go through the process of advancing from reading a script that seemed impossible to bring to fruition to…

Read More

ANOMALY20 REVIEW: Schlaf [Sleep] [2020]

Jared Mobarak

Am I awake? The nightmares are never-ending for Marlene (Sandra Hüller). One second she’s watching television with her daughter Mona (Gro Swantje Kohlhof) and the next finds her screaming in the dark, desperate to grab hold of a bedside journal with which to draw what she’s seen. It’s a house she can’t recall visiting. It’s a suicide by hanging, a suicide by rifle, and a suicide by blade. Over and over the images flicker upon her eyelids because the drugs offer little reprieve. If not for leafing through an on-board…

Read More

ANOMALY20 REVIEW: De kuthoer [The Columnist] [2019]

Jared Mobarak

Here’s to life. Never read the comments—a universal rule for all writers who publish, share, or create on the internet. No matter what you say or how you say it, there will always be a troll ready to disparage your work or you personally. They don’t need a reason beyond their ability to do so. They don’t need a salient point either. And it’s precisely because they possess neither that they ultimately live rent-free inside the minds of everyone they attack with artificial anonymity. One doesn’t even have to read…

Read More

ANOMALY20 REVIEW: The Legend of Baron To’a [2020]

Jared Mobarak

Welcome to the ‘sac. More than just a wrestling hero for young Polynesians the world over, Baron To’a (John Tui) was a bona fide hero in his neighborhood. He always had time for the kids. He made sure the streets were clean. And he wasn’t afraid to take off a sandal to hit someone risking the community’s wellbeing over the head … sometimes after beating them senseless first. Did Baron want to fight? No. He sought peace through words. It was only when they failed that he was left no…

Read More

ANOMALY19 REVIEW: VFW [2019]

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…

Read More

ANOMALY19 REVIEW: Bacurau [2019]

Jared Mobarak

A feast of fear and terror. It’s been awhile since Teresa (Bárbara Colen) last stepped foot in Bacurau, the small Brazilian village where she was born. Escape has proven the only way to become known outside of one’s neighbors since those who remain entrenched by choice (or necessity) are more or less the sole providers of their own survival. This notion might have begun in the abstract with the obvious contrast between a big city like São Paulo and their humble abode, but it’s been made overtly true with food…

Read More