Fantasy | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: I Kill Giants [2018]

2018/03/132020/04/11 Jared Mobarak

We’re stronger than we think. While the main creative force behind I Kill Giants is unquestionably screenwriter Joe Kelly (whose limited comic series of the same name alongside artist J.M. Ken Niimura is the basis for his script), director Anders Walter‘s Oscar-winning short Helium shows he’s hardly a stranger to its subject matter. These two found success through the delicately complex experience had when a child confronts his/her as yet abstract conception of death wherein the infinite expanse of one’s imagination can manifest a path towards understanding. Few people find…

REVIEW: La montaña sagrada [The Holy Mountain] [1973]

2018/03/012020/04/11 Jared Mobarak

You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold. To wish an art film took itself more seriously seems counterproductive considering most art films have their head so far up their backside that it would be impossible for them to do so. I love Matthew Barney‘s Cremaster series because it is so excessively pretentious and precious about its grand ideas that really don’t matter when approaching the work as a visual art wherein aesthetic is paramount. The fact that it revels in its museum sterility helps us to approach it…

REVIEW: November [2017]

2018/02/182020/04/11 Jared Mobarak

The two of you with your frozen souls. What is the point of having a soul if everyone around you doesn’t? I think that’s the central question asked by Rainer Sarnet‘s November, a bleakly told Estonian fairy tale tragedy adapted from Andrus Kivirähk‘s novel Rehepapp. At its core is romance—the kind based in unrequited love that will never bear fruit. Liina (Rea Lest) is a peasant girl trying to catch Hans’ (Jörgen Liik) eye while his sights are affixed well above his social stature upon the German Baron’s (Dieter Laser)…

REVIEW: Marwencol [2010]

2018/01/052020/04/13 Jared Mobarak

I didn’t know who I was. A thirty-eight year old drunk leaves his local bar only to be jumped by five teenagers who proceed to beat him into a coma. This is the beginning of Mark Hogancamp‘s life as he knows it. The incident left him with brain damage to the point where he had to re-learn how to walk and talk. His memories from before were gone, his identity too. Only through home movies, photographs, and a stack of journals written while inebriated could he start to understand the…

REVIEW: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle [2017]

2017/12/252020/04/17 Jared Mobarak

Find the missing piece. The end of Jumanji shows Alan and Sarah chaining up the board game before throwing it over a bridge into water. Later we see it washed ashore on a beach, buried in the sand with chains removed as people walk by speaking what sounds like French. So we wonder how long after the main plot this Planet of the Apes ending is set. Did it cross the Atlantic? There’s real fun to this abstract epilogue with infinite possibilities, especially since the unlikely sequel Jumanji: Welcome to…

REVIEW: Star Wars: The Last Jedi [2017]

2017/12/142020/04/17 Jared Mobarak

No one is ever really gone. If you ever saw a kids show during the Aughts you’ll be familiar with the educational tactic of repeating a message over and over again throughout an episode before repeating that episode each day of the entire week. This was a huge component of “Blue’s Clues” because it was proven to work. There’s no better way to ingrain a theme than by hammering it in until the viewer can no longer ignore it if he/she tried. But while this is an appropriate technique for…

REVIEW: The Shape of Water [2017]

2017/12/032020/04/18 Jared Mobarak

We’re all alone. Leave it to Guillermo del Toro to create an adult fantasy in the vein of Beauty and the Beast wherein there is no “beauty,” only the “other.” It’s one thing to read or watch a tale of overcoming the odds as a child with a specimen of perfection finding it in his/her heart to give a “monster” love, but such utopic vision is too reductive to the mind of someone who has experienced the difficulties of living in a world built on advancement and superiority. Kids are…

REVIEW: Justice League [2017]

2017/11/142020/04/22 Jared Mobarak

I don’t have to recognize it. I just have to save it. There are a lot of haters out there—those who pile on Zack Snyder, the DC Extended Universe, and both. I’m not one of them. But that doesn’t mean I’ve loved what they’ve delivered. We’ve received one good film (Wonder Woman), one ambitiously enjoyable mess (Batman v Superman), an okay origin tale (Man of Steel), and a mildly enjoyable mess (Suicide Squad). Despite this union’s many flaws, however, it’s consistently brought something wholly unique tonally in comparison to Marvel.…

REVIEW: Thor: Ragnarok [2017]

2017/11/022020/04/22 Jared Mobarak

Good luck with that, new Doug! Marvel fatigue has officially hit me, but not like a ton of bricks as much as a nagging sense that the studio is merely going through the motions. Unfortunately this slow unraveling is worse than a huge misstep because it means that a shift back onto the rails is less likely, especially with everyone hailing Thor: Ragnarok as a franchise entry that “breaks the rules.” If that means “push plot to the background for bloated excess dragging pacing out to the point of realizing…

REVIEW: Creepshow [1982]

2017/10/172020/04/25 Jared Mobarak

Seven years before HBO brought EC Comics’ 1950s-era horror strips to life for their long-running anthology series “Tales from the Crypt”, Stephen King and George Romero delivered their own homage to the style with Creepshow. The former served in the role of screenwriter with two of the five chapters being adaptations of short stories he had written previously. The latter took his spot behind the camera to orchestrate King’s madness and mayhem with the help of special effects legend Tom Savini, each tale proving to be a mixture of black…

REVIEW: The Craft [1996]

2017/10/102020/04/25 Jared Mobarak

Nothing makes everything all better again. There’s a ton of untapped potential in Andrew Fleming‘s The Craft. It delivers four embattled teenage girls faced with tragic circumstances out of their control who seek to empower themselves against the internal and external struggles presented by them. This is a premise that allows for empathy and understanding because they each know what it’s like to be on the other side of nightmare. Maybe their acquisition of powers through the occult will present a period of dominance as a knee-jerk reaction to going…