Drama | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Ha’berech [Ahed’s Knee] [2021]

2022/03/162022/03/16 Jared Mobarak

Although there are no answers. Ask Y (Avshalom Pollak) what you can be in an increasingly oppressive state like his homeland of Israel and he’ll say: victim, aggressor, or complicit bystander. It’s a very reductive view of the world—a cynical one too. You can’t really blame him for existing in a headspace of such extremes, though, considering the world around him is crumbling. His mother, confidant, and artistic collaborator is dying of cancer. His politically charged films are at-risk of being censored both in post-production via a cultural ministry working…

REVIEW: The Outfit [2022]

2022/03/142022/03/16 Jared Mobarak

You can’t make something good until you know who you’re making it for. The key to a good mystery isn’t tricking the audience as much as it is entertaining them. The more you watch from this genre, the less slips past your perception. The moment the filmmaker fails to maintain their “trick” is therefore the moment he/she loses their viewer because there’s nothing else for us to grasp onto. Director Graham Moore and co-writer Johnathan McClain understand this fact. They know they can lean into the usual double-cross tropes if…

REVIEW: Offseason [2022]

2022/03/092022/03/10 Jared Mobarak

Wherever I went, there they were. When your dementia-riddled mother starts screaming about nightmares following her and demons crawling out from the water, it doesn’t matter how lucid she appeared to be beforehand. You tell her what she wants to hear, try to make her as calm and comfortable as possible, and wait for the inevitable. That’s what Marie Aldrich (Jocelin Donahue) did when Ava’s (Melora Walters) clear eyes and confident voice spun an outlandish tale surrounding the isolated island where she grew up and left without ever going back.…

REVIEW: Cabaret [1972]

2022/03/052022/03/19 Jared Mobarak

One of my whims. The place to be in 1930s Europe was apparently Weimer-era Berlin. That’s where Cambridge-educated Christopher Isherwood went to live his life as an openly gay man amongst kindred spirits populating its robust nightlife. He met numerous friends, embarking on numerous adventures ultimately inspiring his semi-autobiographical novel The Berlin Stories which in turn inspired John Van Druten‘s Broadway play I Am a Camera. From there, Joe Masteroff and songwriting duo Kander and Ebb (John Kander and Fred Ebb) created their musical Cabaret, largely influenced by Isherwood’s short…

REVIEW: West Side Story [2021]

2022/03/032022/03/03 Jared Mobarak

Life matters even more than love. It’s tough to know what to expect when a remake of a ten-time Oscar-winner (including Best Picture) like West Side Story is announced. Not even Steven Spielberg being at the helm can help in the grand scheme of things either because you almost wish a talent like his would spend that time on original work instead. The hope is therefore always that the powers that be found an avenue in to make the attempt worthwhile. We pray that purpose rather than profits was the…

Review: Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde [Fabian: Going to the Dogs] [2021]

2022/03/022022/03/03 Jared Mobarak

People have no time for angels these days. Why do good people die while bad people live? It’s a rhetorical question that Jakob Fabian (Tom Schilling) asks himself in response to his idealistic friend Stephan Labude’s (Albrecht Schuch) optimistic belief that an intelligent and compassionate world could thrive if only our citizens would find the strength to become those things in the face of selfishness ego. Jakob scoffs at the idea not because he thinks his friend is wrong, but because he’s skeptical as to whether that utopian ideal is…

REVIEW: Against the Ice [2022]

2022/02/282022/03/03 Jared Mobarak

They say there’s truth in every dream. I must say that I was excited coming into Against the Ice. It has a captivating premise centered around an Arctic expedition at the northern end of Greenland circa 1909, is based on the autobiographical account of Captain Ejnar Mikkelsen, and deals with an almost three-year survival opposite extreme weather conditions, isolation, and polar bears. Director Peter Flinth ratcheted up my anticipation even higher during the opening scene, dropping us into the action as Mikkelsen (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who also co-adapted the…

BERLINALE22 REVIEW: Queens of the Qing Dynasty [2022]

2022/02/222022/02/24 Jared Mobarak

We’re both needing something. Our introductions to writer/director Ashley McKenzie‘s leads in Queens of the Qing Dynasty are not to be forgotten. Whether Star’s (Sarah Walker) open-mouthed and fully dilated thousand-yard stare in a hospital bed after her latest suicide attempt (this time for drinking poison) or An’s (Ziyin Zheng) voice regaling the women nurses with a Chinese song while their supervisor drawls “Old Macdonald” in response, the notion that we’re dealing with two eccentrics in a world that may never understand them is abundantly clear. It’s therefore only right…

REVIEW: The Long Goodbye [2020]

2022/02/182022/02/23 Jared Mobarak

I spit my truth and it’s brown. Even before Riz Ahmed (who co-wrote with director Aneil Karia) rises from the pavement to rap his song “Where You From” (also heard in the feature-length film Mogul Mowgli), their short The Long Goodbye feels like a music video. Yes, we hear Ahmed singing other songs in the background as his character’s family prepares for his sister’s wedding, but I mean that more for the energy of the whole than any literal sense of the medium. We can feel that we’re biding time…

REVIEW: Sukienka [The Dress] [2020]

2022/02/182022/02/23 Jared Mobarak

Good different or bad different? Sitting alone at a slot machine, Julka (Anna Dzieduszycka) feels the brunt of sometimes drunken and always insensitive remarks thrown her way by locals and out-of-towners alike. She’s a person of short stature due to dwarfism who has never left her hometown in Poland. At one point Julka speaks about staying not only because it’s where she grew up and where she’s worked as a motel maid for eight years, but also because she wants to make sure her fellow residents see her and learn…

REVIEW: On My Mind [2021]

2022/02/172022/02/23 Jared Mobarak

It makes the soul fly. There may not be any surprises where it comes to the plot of Martin Strange-Hansen‘s short On My Mind, but there’s a ton of heart. And that’s often all you can ask for when it comes to art. Does the piece touch you on a level deeper than whether you can guess the ending? Do you leave the theater with a smile on your face thanks to the melancholic beauty of a character’s actions? Have the events unfolding on-screen brought forward your own memory of…