Category: Comedy

REVIEW: Head Over Heels [2012]

Jared Mobarak

Cute is the first word that pops in my mind after watching Timothy Reckart‘s Head Over Heels. It’s a term containing positive and negative connotations, both of which are included in this story about an elderly married couple that has drifted apart. And I don’t mean metaphorically—they’ve literally separated to the point where Walter (Nigel Anthony) roams their home on the floor as Madge (Ruth Rayyah McCaul resides on the ceiling in a mirrored gravitational pull. They may have been “head over heels” in love when the sweet photo hanging…

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REVIEW: Fresh Guacamole [2012]

Jared Mobarak

PES (Adam Pesapane) has been creating what he calls “twisted” films for about a decade now and they are all a delight. My girlfriend exposed me to his antics after stumbling upon the newest, Fresh Guacamole, earlier this year on Reddit. It’s a brilliant bit of stop motion animation that may not be his best—I reserve that status for The Deep—or his first idiosyncratic culinary escapade—Western Spaghetti is most definitely a thematic and aesthetic precursor—but definitely worthy of collecting a well-deserved Oscar nomination. An amalgam of live action hands and…

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REVIEW: A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“What are all these shoes?” Yeah, so Roman Coppola definitely threw the kitchen sink in much earlier than the moment he actually put it onscreen at the end of A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III. But I don’t think anyone would expect different from a post-“tiger blood” Charlie Sheen for all intents and purposes playing his own crazy self jumping through a bunch of fever dreams on a broken heart. We’d like to believe the actor’s noggin is filled to the brim with depraved and lecherous fantasies…

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REVIEW: CQ [2002]

Jared Mobarak

“Dazzling! Fascinating!” While there are many cinematic examples of directors taking a behind the scenes look at the process of their craft, few are as sure-handed, personal, and entertaining as Roman Coppola‘s debut CQ. For someone who literally grew up in the movies with father Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope reaching legendary status inside his house, inspiration was readily available through the memories and keepsakes acquired along the way. From the vanity of fame to the technological evolution of the industry to the almost forgotten practice of practical effects,…

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REVIEW: God Bless America [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“You guys need extra napkins?” I’ll probably end up on some kind of list for saying it, but Frank Murdoch is my new hero. Here is a guy so fed up with the disintegrating IQ of America turning its rabble into slaves to C-list celebrities and numb to shock value that he’s decided to cleanse the country of its idiocy. Evil role models, entitled millionaires, prepubescent whores, and a new generation so attached to their technologically advanced toys that they’ve lost the concept of personal responsibility and human compassion—all must…

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REVIEW: Knife Fight [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“WWMD: What would Machiavelli Do?” With five nominations and two wins from the Academy Awards for documentary work, director Bill Guttentag set his sights on the world of political strategists with a potential for eye-opening revelations. Unfortunately it didn’t take long to realize acquiring usable, candid footage would be impossible when the presidential candidates he interviewed refused to be on the record. They weren’t going to allow their backhanded deals, amoral treachery, and back alley tactics see the light of day—especially not in their own words. No, for Knife Fight…

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REVIEW: Goon [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“Probably giving some single mother herpes in the parking lot” Written by Jay Baruchel and Evan Goldberg, Goon is their generation’s Slap Shot with Doug Glatt (Seann William Scott) serving as all three Hanson brothers in one. Bearing more in common than a full stomach of bloody fisticuffs, each work also finds itself born from the minor league annals of hockey’s checkered history. Nancy Dowd wrote her 1977 cult classic in part from the stories her brother Ned shared about his experiences in Johnstown, PA while these two Canadian alums…

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REVIEW: Bernie [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“We may have to make a leg adjustment” The unique true story of Carthage, TX assistant mortician Bernie Tiede proves worthy for the big screen. A man too kind, compassionate, and humble for words, he shows how the best of us can still find a bottomless wealth of love stifled to the point of murder. It surely happens more than we’d like to believe, those “he was such a harmless and quiet gentleman” explaining our inability to comprehend our neighbors’ potential for dark deeds. For Tiede, however, those usually empty…

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REVIEW: Let My People Go! [2011]

Jared Mobarak

“My life is one bad Jewish joke” For his first feature length film, writer/director Mikael Buch has decided upon an extremely over-the-top romantic farce about a young homosexual Jewish man coming home to France from Finland after a lovers’ spat. It all plays out during Passover with a not-so-subtle aside about the holiday prayer speaking on the Exodus from Egypt and the coalescing of a people under the leadership of Moses. As Ézechiel the Rabbi (Michaël Abiteboul) says towards the end of the aptly named Let My People Go!, the…

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REVIEW: Jeff, Who Lives at Home [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“The Porsche is normal size. You’re a Sasquatch.” It’s good to see Mark Duplass hasn’t stopped making small-scale, heartfelt indies with his brother Jay despite success on the acting front with the likes of “The League” and Safety Not Guaranteed. While I’m not sure you could still call them mumblecore with increasingly prominent casts—although their second film of 2012, The Do-Deca Pentathlon might—they haven’t lost the quirkily authentic appeal that originally endeared the duo to audiences. Jeff, Who Lives at Home contains some questionable choices with constant zoom pulls recalling…

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REVIEW: The Guilt Trip [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“This place smells like strawberry gum” I never would have thought the aspect of The Guilt Trip I most dreaded would be its one saving grace. Barbra Streisand has never been—and still isn’t—one of my favorite movie stars and the prospect of her playing an overbearing Jewish mother was not an appealing one. I assumed if anything could save what appeared to be a lame pastiche of cinematic tropes mixing the road trip with the out-of-touch parent/child relationship, Seth Rogen would be it. But while his attempt at veiled anger…

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