Drama | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Madres paralelas [Parallel Mothers] [2021]

2021/12/202021/12/24 Jared Mobarak

I don’t regret it. Janis (Penélope Cruz) and Ana (Milena Smit) find themselves as roommates in a Madrid maternity ward—two single women about to give birth to their first child. The former is a successful photographer who conceived while having an affair with a married man (Israel Elejalde‘s Arturo). The latter is a teenager, the father and circumstances surrounding her pregnancy not yet explained. Ana is trepidatious about the whole ordeal for obvious reasons while Janis is looking forward to the experience, her maternal instincts already kicking in as a…

REVIEW: The Scarlet Empress [1934]

2021/12/182021/12/18 Jared Mobarak

I’m taking lessons as fast as I can. Empress Elizabeth Petrovna (Louise Dresser) wanted to make sure Russia had a strong leader and in so doing ensured it wouldn’t be her bloodline taking up the mantle. Not the way Josef von Sternberg‘s The Scarlet Empress tells it, as adapted from Catherine II’s diaries by Eleanor McGeary and Manuel Komroff. It is she who chooses Princess Sophia Frederica of Prussia (Marlene Dietrich) to marry her nephew (Sam Jaffe‘s Grand Duke Peter) and provide a male heir she could then raise in…

REVIEW: Test Pattern [2021]

2021/12/172021/12/17 Jared Mobarak

Just hear me. Okay? Renesha (Brittany S. Hall) moved to Austin for grad school and stayed upon earning a lucrative job in corporate America. Money has a way of excusing many of the social inequities a state like Texas has for a Black woman because it often provides an avenue around them. And when she meets the shyly sensitive Evan (Will Brill), things seemingly get even easier. The two fall in love, buy a house together, and find themselves in the sort of happy state of living that allows for…

REVIEW: C’mon C’mon [2021]

2021/12/162021/12/16 Jared Mobarak

Lots of blah blah blah. The cross-generational dramedies about the relationships between children and adults continues for Mike Mills with his latest C’mon C’mon about a professionally busy and personally listless documentarian who fatefully reconnects with his estranged sister at a moment when she desperately needs him. Why are they estranged? We get glimpses of Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) and Viv (Gaby Hoffmann) screaming at each other, the ways in which they cope with their mother’s death driving a wedge between. But there’s also allusions to the misguided advice he gave…

REVIEW: Red Rocket [2021]

2021/12/162021/12/16 Jared Mobarak

I’m in. After buying the bus ticket from California to the place he swore he’d never return (his hometown of Texas City, TX), Mikey (Simon Rex) has twenty dollars left in his pocket to passive-aggressively offer his estranged wife (Bree Elrod‘s Lexi) when begging to stay at her mother’s (Brenda Deiss‘ Lil) house for a few days. He does what he does best by leveraging his ego and smarmy charm to fast-talk his way back from the property line to the porch to the shower to the kitchen. Mikey says…

REVIEW: Cyrano [2021]

2021/12/152021/12/24 Jared Mobarak

My fate is to love her from afar. We were about three songs into Joe Wright‘s Cyrano when my partner and I looked at each other and said, almost in unison, “These songs are pretty bad.” I don’t need rhymes (and especially not ones as rudimentary as “know” and “go” and “Cyrano” back-to-back-to-back), but I’d love some sort of dynamism to make me believe there was a reason someone wanted to turn Edmond Rostand‘s “Cyrano de Bergerac” into a musical. What about the material screamed song? What kind of exciting…

REVIEW: The Tragedy of Macbeth [2021]

2021/12/152021/12/22 Jared Mobarak

Come what come may. If a crazy person tells you something crazy about your future, you laugh it off. If that thing they said starts coming to fruition, however, you wonder if it might be true. Add ambition and greed to the mix and the impulse to push towards that impossible result grows until you’re acting against character with fear and paranoia working to ensure its truth. Does the prophecy therefore prove correct? Or have you willed it to be so by your own grisly deeds? Is there a difference?…

REVIEW: 竜とそばかすの姫 [Ryû to sobakasu no hime] [Belle] [2021]

2021/12/142022/01/10 Jared Mobarak

Come now, change the world. If Suzu (Kaho Nakamura) had her way, she’d melt into the floor never to be seen or heard from again. It’s been like this for the decade since her mother put on a lifejacket to wade through the choppy river and save another girl her age stranded and crying in the middle of the water. The girl came ashore in that jacket. Her mother didn’t. Suzu has often wondered why she wasn’t more important than that stranger. Why staying with her and her father (Kôji…

REVIEW:The Humans [2021]

2021/12/132021/12/13 Jared Mobarak

Should I just dump her down the spiral staircase? It was interesting to read about playwright Stephen Karam after watching his feature debut The Humans (adapted from his Tony-winning and Pulitzer Prize-finalist play) only to discover he’s a Lebanese-American Maronite. I say this because I could definitely imagine my father’s family projected above the one on-screen despite Karam’s fictional clan being Irish-American Catholics. My grandparents were very religious Maronites and their six children ultimately branched out to run the gamut between being similarly devout, Born Again, agnostic, and non-practicing Christians.…

REVIEW: New Year [2021]

2021/12/102021/12/14 Jared Mobarak

Stretching the boundaries of comfort. It’s New Year’s Eve: Ben (Timothy V. Murphy) and Kat’s (Elisha Renee Sutton) last night in Los Angeles before heading to New York. He’s spearheading the move with a desire to rejuvenate his writing career after finding the growing chasm separating talent and fame in Hollywood too much to bear creatively. The change in scenery isn’t necessarily great for Kat’s career as a celebrity photographer, but she knows that staying with Ben provides security for her young son Micah (T.K. Weaver) since his father (Neil…

REVIEW: Benedetta [2021]

2021/12/092021/12/10 Jared Mobarak

We’re all entitled to a sin. Even as a child, Benedetta Carlini (Elena Plonka) believed herself protected by Jesus. As director Paul Verhoeven and co-writer David Birke portray it, her arrival to the convent in Pescia was one dripping in entitlement. She belonged there. It was her destiny. And we believe it because her conviction is immovable thanks to a steady stream of miracles occurring whenever anyone doubts her bond with God. Where did that confidence come from? Was this desire to be Jesus’ bride her own? Was it something…