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BIFF16 REVIEW: Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present [2016]

2016/10/072016/10/09 Jared Mobarak

“No LSD needed” When Tony Conrad passed away in April 2016, I knew of him as an experimental filmmaker. It’s hard to be an art student at the University at Buffalo—despite his teaching in Media Studies rather than Fine Art—and not know his name at the very least. But that was all I knew: a name, reputation, and the plaudits of countless friends who knew so much more. Only when obituaries started being released in the likes of The New York Times did I realize how renowned a figure he…

BIFF16 REVIEW: Tower [2016]

2016/10/042016/10/05 Jared Mobarak

“Stay away from the university area” My first experience with rotoscope animation was probably Richard Linklater‘s Waking Life in 2001. I found it a fascinating technique retaining the live action movement and reality while allowing the room to add dream-like flourishes of fantasy that fit the frame aesthetically. You don’t care when someone’s head becomes a balloon and flies away because the transition has been seamless—there’s no jarring switch from human to cartoon that takes you out of the metaphor itself. A college film studies class later introduced me to…

TIFF16 REVIEW: טהורה לעד [Tehora la’ad] [Forever Pure] [2016]

2016/09/222016/09/22 Jared Mobarak

“My heart will always stay yellow and black” Just when you think it can’t get worse—that the vocal, racist minority spewing bile will be extinguished in a show of tide-turning empathy—everything is literally engulfed in flames as a city watches it burn to cheers from a cesspool of hate. This is the 2012-2013 season for Beitar Jerusalem FC in the Israeli Premier League. A soccer team beloved by enough fans to make them a political target for President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the reason their owner at…

REVIEW: For the Love of Spock [2016]

2016/09/032016/09/07 Jared Mobarak

“He did” I’m not sure what the original plan for Adam Nimoy‘s documentary For the Love Spock was considering a full-length feature about the origins of a fictional character—no matter how beloved—is hardly the stuff for which theatrical releases are made. But Leonard Nimoy‘s passing during production ultimately gave the project a new motivation. It was no longer about commemorating Mr. Spock on the eve of “Star Trek” the original series’ fiftieth anniversary. Suddenly the footage captured had morphed into a memorial for this man who touched so many souls…

REVIEW: How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change [2016]

2016/08/242016/08/26 Jared Mobarak

“I needed to find the people that had no choice” With a title like How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change, documentarian Josh Fox dancing over the opening credits looks a bit incongruous. Here’s a film filling us with the dread of reality and all that’s happened since a planet temperature increase of one degree Celsius (and what will happen when it goes to two degrees and onto four), yet the narrator leading the journey over six continents to see the damage…

REVIEW: No Home Movie [2016]

2016/08/08 Jared Mobarak

“When I see you like that I want to squeeze you in my arms” I didn’t want Chantal Akerman‘s last film No Home Movie to be the first of hers I watched, but circumstances didn’t comply. The personal documentary’s brief history is intriguing with critical consensus seeming to be skew towards failure before her suicide (some talk posing its mixed response at Locarno as a possible cause) and success afterwards. I don’t know if her death impacted people’s interpretations, but I can see why it could. On this side of…

LOCARNO16 REVIEW: Where Is Rocky II? [2016]

2016/07/302016/08/11 Jared Mobarak

“You can Hollywood anything” It was around the time Pierre Bismuth won his Oscar as an original story creator on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that he stumbled upon an unknown work by Edward Ruscha via a BBC documentary. This tape captured the artist as he created a fake rock dubbed “Rocky II,” a fiberglass/resin creation that ultimately replaced “Rocky I” once it was proven unsuitable for longevity in the desert (having been manufactured from wheat paste). It’s a fascinating discovery—a piece by a renowned figure that nobody’s seen…

REVIEW: Do Not Resist [2016]

2016/07/272016/07/28 Jared Mobarak

“It isn’t just us. It’s everybody.” First-time director Craig Atkinson‘s Do Not Resist could easily have become an agenda piece highlighting one viewpoint of the escalating militarization of America’s police force above another. His footage on the ground at Ferguson during the protests of Michael Brown’s murder and numerous glimpses inside deliberations of city, state, and federal commissions seeking to bolster defense and/or question why leans towards the opinion that the country is growing more and more totalitarian. If he added talking-head interviews from liberal experts with leading questions that…

REVIEW: The Kids Grow Up [2010]

2016/07/212016/07/22 Jared Mobarak

“I think I’m just mourning her childhood” It’s easy to get caught up in the extreme physical and mental alterations that occur during the life of a child from adolescence to adulthood and forget the parents’ evolution paralleling it so closely. How children age and mature is a direct response to this relationship whether with a suitable role model to aspire towards or difficult figure to evolve in spite of his/her influence. The generation of parents raising children during the 50s and 60s did so very specifically, their decisions steeped…

REVIEW: Tickled [2016]

2016/07/112016/07/12 Jared Mobarak

“All of this over some tickling” When a journalist known for delving into the weird side of pop culture and society stumbles across an online video depicting a young man tied to a table as four other young men tickle him in a “sport” dubbed “Competitive Tickling,” there’s no way he closes that window to continue his search elsewhere. That is the story—it’s like the Holy Grail of stories when it comes to David Farrier even before the real craziness begins. Because the simple premise of this athletic endurance challenge…

REVIEW: The Decline of Western Civilization Part III [1998]

2016/07/09 Jared Mobarak

“Your spit is greatly appreciated” To a certain extent The Decline of Western Civilization Part III could have been titled The New Western Civilization. The first two films in Penelope Spheeris‘ trilogy showed us the music that was changing American youth culture as well as the people performing it and listening to it. This entry is different, though, as the music and bands take a backseat to the story of a disenfranchised and abused generation with nowhere to go. It’s no longer about the music being an outlet from the…