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TIFF17 REVIEW: The Current War [2019]

2017/09/102019/10/24 Jared Mobarak

“Star in a jar” A casualty of Harvey Weinstein’s downfall, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s thought-to-be awards-contender that was rushed for a lukewarm TIFF reception in 2017 finally sees the light of day. Retitled The Current War: Director’s Cut due to the director’s extensive revisions (thanks to producer Martin Scorsese’s contractual ability to block the other version’s release), the film remains narratively identical with effective pacing tweaks that fix some of what gave me pause two years ago. The most noticeable change is the slight increase in screen-time for Nicholas Hoult’s Tesla to…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood [2018]

2017/09/092017/11/15 Jared Mobarak

“Get what I mean?” If the phrase “tell-all” hadn’t been coined before 2012, Scotty Bowers‘ memoir Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars would have done the job. Here’s a Marine Corps veteran of World War II born in Illinois who decided to land in Hollywood upon his return on a whim. He answered a “wanted” advertisement to work at a gas station, was hit on sexually by Walter Pidgeon while pumping gas, and realized he could use this well-trafficked locale to help…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women [2017]

2017/09/092017/09/14 Jared Mobarak

“Fantasy is possibility” Many probably don’t know about the man who created Wonder Woman. It’s not a surprise considering the decades it took to finally bring the character to the big screen despite a popularity that rivals her male Justice League counterparts. He wasn’t just some writer cashing in on the superhero craze spawned by neither a successful run of Superman nor a rags-to-riches story of an unknown. No, Dr. William Moulton Marston was a psychologist, Harvard PhD, professor, and inventor of the lie detector. He was a feminist who…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Stronger [2017]

2017/09/092017/09/14 Jared Mobarak

“I’m a hero for standing there and getting my legs blown off?” Peter Berg‘s take on unsung heroes Patriots Day is barely a year old and here we are with another Boston Marathon bombing film in David Gordon Green‘s Stronger. Rather than focus on the event itself, however, John Pollono‘s script turns focus squarely onto the shoulders of Jeff Bauman—the terrorist attack’s most recognizable victim. But while he could have easily minimized this man’s struggle into a generic fluff piece of Hollywood inspirational perseverance, he admirably highlights the darkness those…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Papillon [2018]

2017/09/072018/07/22 Jared Mobarak

“I have trouble seeing hope in hopelessness” It’s amazing how some tweaking can turn a decent film showing its age into a worthwhile project that earns its upgrade four decades later. To watch Franklin J. Schaffner‘s original Papillon adaptation is to see an arduous series of harrowing ordeals strung together for no reason other than the thrill of adventure. It introduces the titular tough guy safecracker Henri “Papillon” Charrière and scrawny forger Louis Dega as two men caught in a horrible place with little hope. They team-up in order to…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Borg/McEnroe [2017]

2017/09/072017/09/13 Jared Mobarak

“Who am I? The gentleman or the rebel?” Juan Martin del Potro just ruined the match-up everyone wanted to see at the 2017 US Open—a semi-final pitting Rafa Nadal against Roger Federer. Despite both being in their thirties, their rivalry has never stopped. What’s intriguing, however, is how amiable it has always been (or seemed to be). With the quieter Pete Sampras and emotional Andre Agassi a generation earlier, the same was true despite their differing personalities and server versus returner billing. You could call the former a product of…

REVIEW: Papillon [1973]

2017/09/022017/09/02 Jared Mobarak

“Blame is for God and small children” While Henri Charriere‘s account of his incarceration and escape from the penal colony known as French Guiana has a contentious history as far as it being an autobiography or novel of historical fiction, such debate is inconsequential to Franklin J. Schaffner‘s cinematic adaptation Papillon. Whether or not what we see actually happened has no bearing on our enjoyment of its so-called “Greatest Adventure of Escape!” What we watch are the harrowing years of men convicted (falsely or not) of heinous crimes that deserve…

REVIEW: The Glass Castle [2017]

2017/08/152017/08/16 Jared Mobarak

“You learn from living. Everything else is a damn lie.” It’s easy to dismiss films like Destin Daniel Cretton‘s The Glass Castle for losing their bite upon reaching a conclusion nobody can deny is melodramatically sentimental. You’ve watched Jeannette Walls’ (Brie Larson) decades-long journey of psychological pain and suffering wrought during her upbringing and ever-present in adulthood. You’ve seen trying times in poverty crosscut with present success, emboldened by her strength to stand tall and be the woman she wants to be no matter what the voices of her past…

REVIEW: Detroit [2017]

2017/08/082017/08/09 Jared Mobarak

“Burn it down” The title may be presumptuous enough to broadly call itself Detroit, but make no mistake that Kathryn Bigelow‘s latest film is very much about the Algiers Motel incident on the night of July 25th, 1967. Screenwriter Mark Boal allows for some prologue exposition before reaching that fateful evening—setting up the events that sparked the city’s five-day long 12th Street Riot—but nothing more. We witness the raid conducted on a club operating without a liquor license, watch the streets erupt with fury in response, and move between archival…

REVIEW: I Called Him Morgan [2017]

2017/06/11 Jared Mobarak

“I’m making the biggest mistake of my life” The life of jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan was one of extreme highs and lows. He was a musician plucked towards superstardom at the age of eighteen by Dizzy Gillespie, eventually touring with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers while helping create the Blue Note label’s sound. But he’s also a guy who took to heroin hard enough to risk and almost destroy his career and life. Guys who would later play with him after rehab recall catching a glimpse of what looked…

REVIEW: Churchill [2017]

2017/05/262017/05/30 Jared Mobarak

“I mustn’t let it happen again” I’m far from a history buff. To me Winston Churchill was a pillar of strength that helped take down the Nazis and declare victory for the Allied forces against fascism. I don’t believe that’s an ill-advised description by any means, but it’s definitely a shallow one. Here we are half a century removed from that carnage and our memories are mostly divided into two categories: good and evil. The latter holds the Holocaust, genocide, oppressive regimes, the suspension of freedom, and some of our…