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REVIEW: No Home Movie [2016]

2016/08/08 Jared Mobarak

“When I see you like that I want to squeeze you in my arms” I didn’t want Chantal Akerman‘s last film No Home Movie to be the first of hers I watched, but circumstances didn’t comply. The personal documentary’s brief history is intriguing with critical consensus seeming to be skew towards failure before her suicide (some talk posing its mixed response at Locarno as a possible cause) and success afterwards. I don’t know if her death impacted people’s interpretations, but I can see why it could. On this side of…

REVIEW: 俠女 [Xia nü] [A Touch of Zen] [1971]

2016/08/042018/05/03 Jared Mobarak

“One should rather believe in ghosts than not” It’s enlightening to read writer/director King Hu‘s press notes that accompanied the Cannes premiere of his then newly-cut 俠女 [Xia nü] [A Touch of Zen]. 1975 was four years removed from the film’s original release—as two parts, a format his producers demanded to try recouping some of its ballooning budget—and six years after he began constructing the elaborate sets utilized during a long, piecemeal shooting schedule to combat changing seasons from ruining continuity. He finally received the ability to restore his three-hour…

FANTASIA16 REVIEW: テラフォーマーズ [Tera Fōmāzu] [Terra Formars] [2016]

2016/08/032016/08/04 Jared Mobarak

“Johj!” It’s the tail end of the twenty-first century and Earth has nearly overstayed its welcome with dwindling resources and over-population. Scientists believe they can release the CO2 pockets underneath Mars’ surface and move the Red Planet from -50 degrees Celsius into a human-friendly temperature and atmosphere. So mankind sends rockets of moss and cockroaches to commence the process, a half-century passing before a team of colonists can finally journey forth. Everything should be ready for this hand-selected group under Ko Honda’s (Shun Oguri) supervision: go to Mars, kill the…

FANTASIA16 REVIEW: Shelley [2016]

2016/07/282016/07/29 Jared Mobarak

“But it’s not just about the money” Everything starts so innocently that you’d be hard-pressed to realize Ali Abbasi‘s Shelley is a horror film besides the score’s dread-inducing soundscape rising to a deafening level of static. Sure the setting’s weird with Louise (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and Kasper (Peter Christoffersen) living in the Danish woods without electricity or running water far-removed from civilization, but the world’s fill of eccentrics. They’re actually quite nice, bringing in a new maid (Cosmina Stratan‘s Romanian single mother Elena) with open arms and warm smiles. It…

REVIEW: Supot [2016]

2016/07/27 Jared Mobarak

“What if I can’t stand the pain?” For some rural villages in the Philippines circumcision is a rite of passage for young boys. We’re not talking surgical removal by a doctor as a baby, though. This tradition takes place at age ten by a designated patriarch with a sharpened blade and rock. Each boy soaks in water to soften the foreskin, chews some guava leaves, and looks up into the sky as the knife comes down. To us it’s barbaric; to them it’s an evolution towards manhood. When cut you…

REVIEW: La belle saison [Summertime] [2015]

2016/07/132016/07/20 Jared Mobarak

“Loneliness is a terrible thing” While a romance on its surface, Catherine Corsini‘s La belle saison [Summertime] is really about freedom. The central relationship between Delphine (Izïa Higelin) and Carole (Cécile De France) pushes them to discover their personal identities removed from any union. The former is a farm girl yearning to break from the conservative mentality a future in the country dictates while the latter’s anti-bourgeois feminist Parisian cohabits with a long-term boyfriend equally political and militantly idealistic as she. They’ve each cut trails through the rigid social norms…

REVIEW: Bir Uyku Vakti [In a Time for Sleep] [2016]

2016/07/11 Jared Mobarak

“They are all the same except for their names” Writer/director Tofiq Rzayev‘s latest short Bir Uyku Vakti [In a Time for Sleep] appears to have a lot to say beneath its melodramatic plot. I’m just not sure exactly what it is. This could be a “lost in translation” case, but I found it difficult to fully grasp the underlying themes besides an obvious sense of girl power in its characters freeing themselves from the domineeringly despicable man in their lives. I almost want to say that the result of what…

REVIEW: Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle [The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser] [1974]

2016/07/022016/07/11 Jared Mobarak

“I want to be a gallant rider like my father was before me” If any true story of mystery and perhaps madness were to align itself with Werner Herzog‘s sensibilities, that of young Kaspar Hauser is it. Here was a seventeen-year old boy found standing in Nuremburg clutching a note addressed to the cavalry captain. No one knew how he got there or where he was from until he was ultimately taught to read, write, and think enough to get by in normal day-to-day life. This is when tales of…

REVIEW: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes [Aguirre, Wrath of God] [1972]

2016/06/252016/06/26 Jared Mobarak

“Meat is floating by” Talk about the heart of darkness. It’s completely unsurprising that Francis Ford Coppola would admit to using Werner Herzog‘s Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes [Aguirre, the Wrath of God] as inspiration for his Apocalypse Now because they epitomize the stark moral depravity of warped conquering “heroes”. The quiet rage underlying every action as greed overtakes loyalty and hubris replaces strategy are all too real against the serene jungle settings hiding hidden antagonistic forces to complement the ones waging war inside these soldiers’ minds. For Conquistador Don Lope…

REVIEW: Oh Boy [A Coffee in Berlin] [2012]

2016/06/25 Jared Mobarak

“Are you still serving coffee?” German Academy Award-sweeping Oh Boy [A Coffee in Berlin] is a day in the life of a Berliner slacker named Niko Fischer (Tom Schilling). He’s a law school dropout that’s been living off the thousand-dollar-a-week allowance his father continuously supplies under the auspices that it’s being used for college. He ignores responsibility to the tune of losing his girlfriend, his license, and his drive to succeed as anything more than a thinker thinking for thinking’s sake because he has nothing better to do or the…

REVIEW: Dheepan [2015]

2016/06/152016/06/15 Jared Mobarak

“Be nice. That’s all.” It was a surprise when Palme d’Or winner Dheepan wasn’t chosen as France’s Oscar pick for the 2016 Academy Awards (interestingly enough the country selected Mustang, another film whose main language isn’t French). Even more surprising is how long it’s taken to open stateside as ten months sit between its debuts in Paris and New York. I guess it shouldn’t be too much of a shock considering many Americans will want nothing to do with a Tamil movie starring Sri Lankans, but that’s their loss considering…