Category: Drama

REVIEW: Firestarter [2022]

Jared Mobarak

When you see her, you will understand. My initial impulse upon rewatching the original movie was to read the novel assuming something got lost in translation to make it feel so boring on-screen. Now that I’ve seen director Keith Thomas and screenwriter Scott Teems‘ latest adaptation of Stephen King‘s Firestarter, however, I’m beginning to wonder whether the source material is just dull. Because a lot has changed this go-round. The fact there’s only thirty minutes left by the time Andy (Zac Efron) and Charlie McGee (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) make it…

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REVIEW: Pleasure [2021]

Jared Mobarak

It feels good to say yes. Right? Bella Cherry (Sofia Kappel) couldn’t have asked for a more inviting introduction to a porn set upon arriving in Los Angeles from Sweden. The filmmakers are courteous and sympathetic to her inexperience both when it comes to the “usual” pre-game hygienic rituals and a case of stage fright—genuinely seeming like they’re prepared to let her walk away if need be. Maybe it’s an act and they’re just coercing her into staying by being kind, but it works. Bella gets over her jitters, completes…

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REVIEW: De uskyldige [The Innocents] [2021]

Jared Mobarak

Can I just listen? You’ve seen De uskyldige [The Innocents] before. Whether the telekinetic powers, battle between good and evil, or exploitation of neurodevelopmental disorders like Autism to supply a character a sense of power that contrasts preconceived prejudices, everything Eskil Vogt puts into his script is familiar in some way. What makes it so uniquely different in tone and expectation is therefore the choice to project those tropes onto children. His decision becomes an evolutionary progression forward from Max Landis and Josh Trank‘s Chronicle in that the sort of…

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REVIEW: Montana Story [2022]

Jared Mobarak

There’s nothing left now. For anybody. Estranged family members returning home after a long absence to see the death of a parent through is hardly a unique premise, but it doesn’t have to be if the psychological and emotional toll expended from the reunion remains honest and authentic. Scott McGehee and David Siegel achieve exactly that with Montana Story, a script born from the necessity of another production’s COVID-driven postponement leading them to scale back and create under the industry’s newfound restrictions that didn’t allow for sprawling casts or excessive…

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REVIEW: The Defiant Ones [1958]

Jared Mobarak

They’ll probably kill each other before they go five miles. Whether to satisfy his own desire to not sit in silence or earn the ire of the guards transporting him to jail, Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier) is introduced at the back of a prison wagon singing W.C. Handy’s “Long Gone” to effectively achieve both. The cops aren’t alone in wishing he’d shut his mouth, though. The inmate chained to his wrist (Tony Curtis‘ John ‘Joker’ Jackson) wants to silence him too—if his size disadvantage would allow such an act of…

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REVIEW: L’événement [Happening] [2021]

Jared Mobarak

What do I label it? I’m not saying you can’t create a film as unflinchingly raw as Audrey Diwan‘s L’événement [Happening] without having a true-to-life source, but the starting line is surely closer when you do. Not only did Diwan and co-writer Marcia Romano have Annie Ernaux‘s memoir of what happened forty years prior to draw upon, they also had the author herself to talk with and glean additional context to ensure the authenticity of a twenty-three-year-old literature student discovering she’s pregnant weeks before her final exams in 1963. This…

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REVIEW: The Northman [2022]

Jared Mobarak

We thirst for vengeance, but we cannot escape our fates. Like the Brothers Grimm were to Disney with so many fairy tales, it appears Saxo Grammaticus was to William Shakespeare where it comes to Hamlet. The Danish historian’s lead character was Amleth—a young boy who witnesses the murder of his father and forced romance of his mother at the hands of his uncle before having to run away from the latter’s kill order so that he may return (if an ambitiously opportunistic soldier lies about watching him die). The parallels…

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REVIEW: Vortex [2022]

Jared Mobarak

Stop scaring me. The woman (Françoise Lebrun) at the center of Gaspar Noé‘s Vortex is steadily losing her battle with dementia. Her husband (Dario Argento) is a few years removed from a stroke and saddled with a bad heart that does him no favors when trying to keep a clear head as far as care goes. And neither wants to leave their home no matter how sensible doing so proves. She’s a psychiatrist whose lucidity has her believing everything is under control. He’s a film critic desperate to finish his…

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REVIEW: Les amours d’Anaïs [Anaïs in Love] [2021]

Jared Mobarak

Everything is possible if you want it. There’s nothing discreet about thirty-year old Anaïs (Anaïs Demoustier). We meet her as she’s running to greet her landlady. Anaïs is two months late on rent and her live-in boyfriend has moved out, yet she’s unafraid to let the woman graciously allowing her to stay despite no real evidence that she won’t have to throw her out in a week know this agreed upon conversation is cutting into a party for which she’s also late attending. Candid to a fault, this graduate student…

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REVIEW: Re Granchio [The Tale of King Crab] [2021]

Jared Mobarak

Princes and poor people. While Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis‘ Re Granchio [The Tale of King Crab] begins with the discovery of a piece of Etruscan gold by a 19th century self-loathing, drunken lover known as Luciano (Gabriele Silli), we don’t meet the character until after being whisked away to the Tuscia, Italy village Vejano and a group of present-day hunters gathering for food, wine, and stories. These are real people as far as I’m aware, men whose words already inspired a prior short and feature length documentary…

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REVIEW: Edge of the City [1957]

Jared Mobarak

It was my fight. Axel Nordmann (John Cassavetes) only ever loved one person his entire life: his brother. When he died, an existence that already didn’t quite make sense suddenly made none. So, he ran away, joined the army, and sought to “prove himself” as his cop father always used to say every man needed to do. That ultimately failed too, though. Now he’s moving city to city under a different name (North), pretending to be friends with strangers to receive work without much scrutiny if he’s willing to give…

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