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REVIEW: Deserto Particular [Private Desert] [2021]

2022/01/202022/02/02 Jared Mobarak

I need this break. Writer/director Aly Muritiba said something very interesting about his new film Deserto Particular [Private Desert] in the lead up to its Venice debut last year. He spoke about a desire for its success to not simply be of the “preaching to the choir” variety. Rather than hope an artist, who already understands the breadth of love, could find something at the core of his love story, Muritiba wanted to open the heart of those trapped under the oppressive force of conservatism and traditionalism. This tale of…

REVIEW: Donkeyhead [2022]

2022/01/182022/01/20 Jared Mobarak

I just wanted you to ask for me. You see it often. The “successful” children leave to start families of their own and the so-called “donkeys” (or khotas in the case of this Punjabi household) are left caring for the parents that were hard enough on them to make the level of compassion necessary to do so tough to understand. Mona (Agam Darshi) was the black sheep in many ways growing up. She was the artistic type. The rebel. The “lesser” twin. Growing up in a Sikh home with a…

REVIEW: Definition Please [2022]

2022/01/162022/01/20 Jared Mobarak

Why did you come back? Monica Chowdry (Sujata Day) was everything her Indian immigrant parents could have hoped from a child. Not only did she win the national Scribbs Spelling Bee, but she also became somewhat of a young intellectual celebrity courtesy of the victory tour with photographic keepsakes alongside Oprah Winfrey and fellow Pittsburgh-area native M. Night Shyamalan as well as an episode of television with host LeVar Burton that her mother (Anna Khaja‘s Jaya) still watches to this day almost twenty years later. The sky was the limit…

REVIEW: A Nuvem Rosa [The Pink Cloud] [2021]

2022/01/142022/01/19 Jared Mobarak

It must be a joke. Despite bowing a year into the COVID pandemic, Iuli Gerbase‘s A Nuvem Rosa [The Pink Cloud] was shot two years prior and written two before that. It’s a point of clarification made at the start of the film due to how familiar its themes and events prove when placed in context with our current reality. It’s necessary too so audiences can’t pretend that what’s happening wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Whether a deadly virus or, in this case, a mysterious pink cloud that kills anyone who…

REVIEW: Italian Studies [2022]

2022/01/122022/01/12 Jared Mobarak

You’re ‘warm world.’ It makes sense when writer/director Adam Leon explains the origins of Italian Studies came about by circumstance rather than intent. His friend Vanessa Kirby said she’d be in New York City for a while and that they should do something together. She wanted to be challenged. She wanted to roam the streets. Leon wanted to oblige despite not feeling certain he was ready to create anything new. It was his financiers saying “Go for it” that made it seem the stars were aligned. He called a bunch…

REVIEW: West Side Story [1961]

2022/01/102022/01/11 Jared Mobarak

I’m frightened enough for the both of ya. What started as an idea to contemporize William Shakepeare‘s Romeo and Juliet on the East Side of Manhattan with star-crossed lovers of Irish Catholic and Jewish descent eventually found itself reworked to the opposite side of the island with religion removed so ethnicity could take its place. Jerome Robbins and Arthur Laurents altered things to hew closer towards the 1950s’ rise of street violence by embroiling rival gangs (descendants of Polish immigrants versus newly arrived Puerto Ricans) into a turf war. With…

REVIEW: House of Gucci [2021]

2022/01/042022/01/04 Jared Mobarak

Art, like beauty, has no price. The problem with dynasties—royal or otherwise—is that genius isn’t hereditary. At some point, someone had it. Either they led a country to victory or built a company from the ground up. Then ego ultimately takes over. Those founders and rulers believe their name and blood will be enough to see things through into the future. And they forget that everything they experienced to get to the top cannot be replicated in a vacuum. Not only will subsequent generations not have the same interests, but…

REVIEW: Cryptozoo [2021]

2022/01/032022/01/03 Jared Mobarak

Without dreams, there can be no future. Ever since childhood, Lauren Gray (Lake Bell) hoped to save cryptids. Her first encounter came while struggling to conquer a steady stream of nightmares in youth. Fate would have it that a Baku (an elephant/pig hybrid that steals dreams) happened to be nearby. It came to Lauren while she slept and sucked all the bad thoughts from her mind, ostensibly saving her life. In order to repay the favor, she dedicated her existence to helping animals and, by extension, cryptids like her savior.…

REVIEW: Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc [Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn] [2021]

2021/12/312021/12/31 Jared Mobarak

It’s never anyone’s fault. Did Emilia (Katia Pascariu) and Eugen (Stefan Steel, although we see little beyond his penis) purposefully upload the sex tape that opens Radu Jude‘s bold satire Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc [Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn]? I think we should assume they did. That doesn’t, however, mean they meant for it to be circulated beyond the niche fetish site to which it published. She’s a respected history teacher at a prestigious middle school and thus beholden to certain morality clauses that would deem pornographic…

REVIEW: Dune [2021]

2021/12/232021/12/24 Jared Mobarak

They see what they’ve been told to see. The trap is set. One day House Harkonnen is ruling over the spice mines of Arrakis with an iron fist and the next sees them leaving. The local Freman know it won’t last, though. Outlanders have come to oppress their people for generations ever since discovering the power of this substance within the sand. Without it, interstellar travel is impossible. As such, whomever oversees its cultivation has the potential for wealth beyond the imagination. Baron Vladimir Harkonnen’s (Stellan Skarsgård) avarice therefore makes…

REVIEW: Licorice Pizza [2021]

2021/12/202021/12/22 Jared Mobarak

Gritted teeth and fixed bayonettes. Let’s face it: there’s an elephant in the room (well, make that two with the casual racism) when even beginning to talk about Paul Thomas Anderson‘s latest San Fernando Valley in the 1970s vibe of a movie adorned by two words the writer/director says supply a Pavlovian response to his past, Licorice Pizza. It’s about the exploits of a fifteen-year-old hustler named Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) and the twenty-five-year-old soon-to-be friend/business partner named Alana Kane (Alana Haim) that he tries to pick-up at his high…