Film Festival | www.jaredmobarak.com

VENICE22 REVIEW: Goliath [2022]

2022/08/292022/11/26 Jared Mobarak

I totally understand you. If a local village warlord discovers he’s in a movie titled Goliath, he better watch his back. It doesn’t matter what his origin story is—and Poshaev (Daniyar Alshinov) has a bloody one—since power is never absolute. Yes, the villagers hail him as a hero for using his formidable presence to extort jobs for the community at a foreign investment firm’s tungsten mine. Yes, he works to keep drugs out of his domain by ruthlessly gunning down any rival gangs who dare to bring it across his…

VENICE22 REVIEW: Dogborn [2023]

2022/08/262022/11/26 Jared Mobarak

You’ll cope. The twins (Silvana Imam‘s Sister and Philip Oros‘ Brother) have nothing since their mother passed away. No house. No jobs. No money. Brother doesn’t even have a voice—not since they left Syria long ago. It’s therefore up to Sister to manage for them both. Finding places to squat, talking their way into odd jobs to get paid, and making connections that she can hopefully lean on when things get even tougher than they already are. That’s why it’s nice to have someone like their cousin Petri (Lukas Malinauskas)…

TIFF22 REVIEW: A Gaza Weekend [2022]

2022/08/252022/09/11 Jared Mobarak

We’re here. It’s the ‘promised’ land. Director Basil Khalil and co-writer Daniel Ka-Chun Chan waste no time setting the tone for their Middle Eastern comedy A Gaza Weekend. Conceived over a decade ago (and thus not a COVID film despite adding a couple COVID “jokes” into the script), its purpose is to satirize the very real conflict between Palestinians and Israelis to its most absurd extremes while also finding the common ground of humanity hiding beneath—much like Khalil’s enjoyable, Oscar-nominated short Ave Maria. As such, watching a scientist carelessly mill…

FANTASIA22 REVIEW: 大怪獣のあとしまつ [Daikaijyu no Atoshimatsu] What to Do with the Dead Kaiju?] [2022]

2022/08/022022/08/04 Jared Mobarak

We’re protecting people’s right not to know. The easiest way to describe the tone of Satoshi Miki‘s realization of an objectively ingenious concept (What happens to the rotting carcass of a defeated kaiju?), is to mention the question to which every journalist demands an answer after a blister filled with the gaseous byproduct of the monster’s decomposition bursts: Does it smell like poo or puke? If that sounds like your idea of a good time for two hours, Daikaijū no Atoshimatsu [What to do with the Dead Kaiju?] is for…

FANTASIA22 REVIEW: Da-eum-so-hee [Next Sohee] [2022]

2022/08/012022/08/04 Jared Mobarak

Let’s do this. And here I thought capitalism’s hold on the American education system by way of unpaid internships was bad. As documented in July Jung‘s extern drama Da-eum-so-hee [Next Sohee], what’s happening in South Korea is even worse. It all comes down to incentives—not for the children, but the institutions profiting off their labor. When big companies with huge executive payrolls (since managers need managers who also need managers while hourly employees become statistical cogs in the slave machine) need cheap and naïve workers to fill call center desks…

FANTASIA22 REVIEW: Incroyable mais vrai [Incredible But True] [2022]

2022/07/302022/07/31 Jared Mobarak

There’s a jewel? We all get older. It’s a part of life. Some do so gracefully. Others racked with fear. What’s interesting, and a major component of Quentin Dupieux‘s latest absurdist comedy Incroyable mais vrai [Incredible But True], is that few know which they are until they confront a potential avenue to cheat aging altogether. That’s the case with Alain (Alain Chabat) and Marie Duval (Léa Drucker). If we asked them how they felt about the subject at the start of the film, they’d probably say they hadn’t really thought…

FANTASIA22 REVIEW: Country Gold [2023]

2022/07/302022/11/26 Jared Mobarak

I make nothing but hit records and baby boys. The cost of fame sits in the living room wondering aloud whether dad will be home for Christmas. Why these two young boys’ voices have been deepened to sound like they’re forty-year-old drunks slurring through a bender is beyond me (an assumption of it being a dream or game is squashed once mom enters without the effect being called out), but their words have meaning. Troyal’s (Mickey Reece channeling Garth Brooks) star has risen to unimaginable heights, and he’s embraced it…

FANTASIA22 REVIEW: さがす [Sagasu] [Missing] [2022]

2022/07/292022/09/13 Jared Mobarak

They deserve to be delivered. Santoshi Harada (Jirô Satô) has a plan. It concerns a three-million-yen reward for helping to capture the infamous serial killer known as “No-Name” (Hiroya Shimizu). Santoshi says he saw him on the train to work. The man who’s been all over the news is inexplicably here in town right now and he’s pretty sure he knows where he can find him. Except, of course, that Santoshi is in no shape to “find” anyone. He’s been clinically depressed and unable to hold a full-time job since…

FANTASIA22 REVIEW: Inu-ô [Inu-oh] [2022]

2022/07/282022/08/01 Jared Mobarak

Here we are. Director Masaaki Yuasa and screenwriter Akiko Nogi‘s adaptation of Hideo Furukawa‘s novel The Tale of the Heike: The Inu-oh Chapters finishes with a couple screens of text describing its titular Noh performer’s final years of success despite his name being all but forgotten in comparison to the shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu’s personal favorite. It’s why these three have brought the story of Inu-ô [Inu-oh] to life to ensure his name, and that of his friend Tomona from Dan-no-ura, a blind biwa-playing priest, won’t disappear again. What better way…

FANTASIA22 REVIEW: 搜神傳 [Su Huan-Jen] [Demigod: The Legend Begins] [2022]

2022/07/252022/11/26 Jared Mobarak

Many things could happen in a minute. The Huang family and Pili International Multimedia are back on the big screen, two decades since their feature debut Legend of the Sacred Stone, and, if the end credits of Chris Huang‘s Demigod: The Legend Begins are to be believed, they have many more chapters in-store for their hero Su Hua-Jen. Utilizing the Taiwanese technique of budaixi (operatic glove puppetry), expert cinematography to hide the puppeteers, and impressive computer augmentation for special effects, this tale of leadership strife in the Wu Lin mountains’…

FANTASIA22 REVIEW: Chorokbam [2022]

2022/07/242022/07/27 Jared Mobarak

Why do I have to do all your dirty work? This is not a happy family. Dad (Tae-hoon Lee) works a night security guard shift that makes it so he arrives home as Mom (Min-Kyung Kim) leaves to dry peppers in the sun the next morning. He wants quiet. She wants support. They ultimately sit in silence while eating. Their son (Kang Gil-woo) works as an aide for the disabled, driving around and taking care of patients on the way to their appointments. He doesn’t make much—at least not enough…