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REVIEW: Lawless [2012]

2012/10/032014/04/10 Jared Mobarak

“You still have the price tag on your coat” After The Proposition‘s grit and The Road‘s nightmarish post-apocalyptic vision, watching the trailer for John Hillcoat‘s newest film Lawless left a little something to be desired. Looking like an action flick about bootleggers standing against the law in a blaze of glory, all nuance from its showcase of familial strength and honor was missing. Based on an historical novel written by its subject’s grandson Matt Bondurant—The Wettest County in the World—this is the heroic legend of three indestructible brothers refusing to…

REVIEW: Simon och ekarna [Simon & the Oaks] [2011]

2012/09/292014/04/10 Jared Mobarak

“Children forget so fast” A tale about family, its many definitions, and its discovery through the prism of an unstable time, Marianne Fredriksson‘s international bestseller Simon och ekarna [Simon & the Oaks] has found its way to the big screen. Epic in scope and yet pared down to the tumultuous emotions of a young man growing up in Sweden during and after World War II, the film spans less than two decades but somehow appears to portray a lifetime. Simon Larsson started as a boy avidly reading within a giant…

REVIEW: End of Watch [2012]

2012/09/282014/04/10 Jared Mobarak

“Comfortable footwear. Police is all about comfortable footwear.” If David Ayer is to be believed, life as a South Central L.A. cop is a ticking time bomb ready to explode. What the region isn’t, however, is a cesspool of corrupt officers on the take forming yet one more gang of street thugs to combat. This is a new development in a career built on the nefarious deeds of men in power and the amorality of fresh blood taken under their wings. The writer/director of Harsh Times, Street Kings, and scribe…

REVIEW: Trouble with the Curve [2012]

2012/09/182014/04/10 Jared Mobarak

“Can De Niro rap?” The Atlanta Braves’ Turner Field outdoor gate security guard in Trouble with the Curve perfectly encapsulates the film. Sitting silently with his newspaper, you see him slowly lower it as Amy Adams‘ Mickey exits to answer Justin Timberlake‘s Johnny “The Flame” Flanigan’s flirtatious baseball trivia question. Like the guard, whenever the sport is onscreen—whether game action or verbal sparring—my interest piqued and I was able to invest in the plot of an aging scout going blind as he checks out the newest cocky high school prospect…

REVIEW: The Master [2012]

2012/09/172014/04/10 Jared Mobarak

“You’ll be my guinea pig and protégée” There really is no one making movies quite like Paul Thomas Anderson these days. Between cultivating an environment to conjure some of the best performances we’ve seen the past fifteen years, the challenging subject matter delving into the human soul, and the starkly beautiful cinematography able to transport us back in time or into a fairy tale world just on the other side of reality, his film releases have become major events with both arthouse and mainstream theatre patrons clamoring for tickets. The…

TIFF12 REVIEW: To the Wonder [2013]

2012/09/162014/04/10 Jared Mobarak

“In a dream you can’t make mistakes” For any who thought Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life was a divisive piece of cinema, you haven’t seen anything yet. Continuing to strip the very medium of film down to its barest essentials, form once again trumps narrative in his beautiful account of love through memory, To the Wonder. A glimpse into the joy, pain, sacrifice, and compromise of binding oneself to another body and soul, Malick shows us how complicated this concept of physical and emotional connection is. Told through the…

TIFF12 REVIEW: Argo [2012]

2012/09/152014/04/10 Jared Mobarak

“The United States government has just sanctioned your science fiction movie” In 1979, tensions between Iran and the United States reached a boil after Ayatollah Khomeini called for a return of his predecessor—Shah Pahlavi—in order to try him in what would be a kangaroo court whether or not deserved. Allowed passage into the US to attend the Mayo clinic and combat his cancer, the fact we were housing him infuriated a group of Islamist students and militant followers of the Imam’s Line to the point of storming the American embassy…

TIFF12 REVIEW: Cloud Atlas [2012]

2012/09/152021/12/06 Jared Mobarak

“Our lives are not our own” In grand fashion comes an epic about freedom and the wrongs of humanity forever marring how we’re seen through the annals of time. Every misstep is repeated; every stand against oppression spawned from the voice of one strong enough to understand equality’s worth over the cowardice of blindly hiding behind religious or societal rhetoric. There will always be some faction of life deemed unworthy, dirty, incomplete—some species, race, invention for us to lord our superiority over. And it isn’t about stepping back to gain…

TIFF12 REVIEW: The Impossible [2012]

2012/09/092014/04/10 Jared Mobarak

“Maybe tomorrow” Making a film about a tragedy like the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami should never be taken lightly. With over 230,000 people dead in fourteen countries, the entire world was affected by this devastating event made worse due to its untimely December 26th date. An attempt to convey the emotions, pain, and hope hidden within could easily fall into manipulative territory, missing the point to become an exploitative moneymaking endeavor. So, it was with a skeptical soul that I went to the World Premiere at the Toronto International Film…

TIFF12 REVIEW: Passion [2013]

2012/09/092014/04/10 Jared Mobarak

“Why don’t we kiss and make up?” Five years after his last foray behind the camera, writer/director Brian De Palma looks to take some of the alternative devices used to film Redacted and combine them with the sexual thriller genre to which he is so indelibly aligned. A remake of the 2010 French film Love Crime, the auteur brings Natalie Carter and Alain Corneau‘s tale to Germany and lets its cutthroat female executives have at it. Beginning as a congenial work relationship, our central duo’s dynamic quickly spills into their…

TIFF12 REVIEW: The Company You Keep [2013]

2012/09/092014/04/10 Jared Mobarak

“We made mistakes, but we were right” In Robert Redford and Lem Dobbs‘ adaptation of Neil Gordon‘s novel The Company You Keep, the personal futures fought for by the militant Weather Underground during the Vietnam War risk being destroyed as the last surviving members of a Bank of Michigan robbery find their past catching up to them after thirty years. Hidden with new identities and normal, domestic lives far from the bombings and murders of a previous era, they’ve begun to take stock and find the guilt of what they…