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FANTASIA15 REVIEW: リアル鬼ごっこ [Riaru onigokko] [Tag] [2015]

2015/08/082018/01/03 Jared Mobarak

“Watch the ripple” If リアル鬼ごっこ [Tag] were any indication of writer/director Sion Sono‘s warped mind, I’d almost believe he films without rhyme or reason besides excess. Based upon the Japanese novel Riaru onigokko by Yûsuke Yamada—coined by some as the Stephen King of Japan—this surreal tale of three girls in one traversing a nightmarish landscape of evil pursuers taking whatever form is most absurd lives on the edge of falling into complete randomness. You have to embrace the ride or else you’ll check out very early on because while watching…

FANTASIA15 REVIEW: Pos eso [Possessed] [2014]

2015/08/012015/08/02 Jared Mobarak

“What he did left his teacher speechless” I didn’t know I wanted a horror parody in the style of “Celebrity Deathmatch” until about halfway through Samuel Ortí Martí‘s [Sam] pitch black skewering of the genre Pos eso [Possessed]. His and Rubén Ontiveros‘ script is littered with homage to The Day the Earth Stood Still in dialogue, The Omen in characters, The Exorcist in plot, Raiders of the Lost Ark in its cold open, and countless others—Alien, A Trip to the Moon, etc.—in visual flourishes. A fun pastiche of anything and…

FANTASIA15 REVIEW: Crumbs [2015]

2015/07/252015/08/02 Jared Mobarak

“People say the spaceship has been rusting in the sky since the beginning of the war” Spanish writer/director Miguel Llansó‘s independent film company Lanzadera Films explains its mission as a firm that focuses on “undiscovered countries, experimental, weird, hallucinatory, poetic fiction and documentary films”. I’d say his feature debut Crumbs is the epitome of exactly that. A self-proclaimed apocalyptic surreal science fiction, it posits a world centuries removed from a great war that’s all but extinguished life. Only the oft mistaken birth from that time remains: a new generation completely…

REVIEW: Mommy [2014]

2015/07/232015/07/27 Jared Mobarak

“A mother doesn’t wake up one morning not loving her son” If I can be justified in agreeing with all the praise after seeing just one of his films—his latest, Cannes Jury Prize-winning Mommy—twenty-five year old writer/director Xavier Dolan is every bit the wunderkind label that has been thrust upon him. Five films in six years all by the time he’s hit the quarter century mark with four debuting at Cannes and the other Venice? How can you not take notice of such accomplishments? Carrying the preconceptions a critical darling…

FANTASIA15 REVIEW: 奇人密碼: 古羅布之謎 [The Arti: The Adventure Begins] [2015]

2015/07/202015/11/12 Jared Mobarak

“Where the heart is lies eternity” You can’t watch 奇人密碼: 古羅布之謎 [The Arti: The Adventure Begins] without finding yourself in awe of the amazing puppet work on display. While told it was only “enhanced” by CGI, it looks as though a lot more was computer-generated than such a verb would infer. For one the smoothness at which the characters move seems impossible and two there appears to be too many instances of fake backgrounds and green-screen effects to believe there weren’t other shortcuts taken. So it definitely behooves you to…

FANTASIA15 REVIEW: Hwasangorae [Crimson Whale] [2014]

2015/07/182015/07/20 Jared Mobarak

“It is an offense to feed the apes” A product of the Korean Academy of Film Arts’ Advanced Program, writer/director Park Hye-mi‘s Hwasangorae [Crimson Whale] is a fascinating little sci-fi adventure. The hand-drawn character design is cutesy with young faces and oversized clothing dwarfing stature, but the 2070 Busan in which they reside is brutally dilapidated. Looking at young Ha-Jin or even older, bumbling explosives expert Lee carries presumptions that this might be a kid’s film, but that’s definitely not the case once the first f-bomb is delivered. Just because…

FANTASIA15 REVIEW: Ludo [2015]

2015/07/182015/07/20 Jared Mobarak

“Do you want to talk or play?” Called the national game of India by some, Pacisi has evolved throughout the centuries into multiple iterations. One of the most popular versions patented in England around 1896 is Ludo. Pretty much two to four players have four tokens each that they must race around the board in accordance to the number on the di they’ve rolled. Those in America will know it as Parcheesi, but the board isn’t quite the same. So when the game inscribed on a piece of leather finally…

REVIEW: La cage aux folles [1978]

2015/07/072015/07/08 Jared Mobarak

“Procreation is wearing you out” The fact The Birdcage proves an almost shot for shot remake thirty years later is a testament to La cage aux folles‘ quartet of writers if not to the original stage play’s creator Jean Poiret alone. This is how funny, resonate, and timeless the material remains—enough to even provide the basis for a 1983 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical in between. Personally I give Mike Nichols‘ refresher the edge, but its exacting resemblance makes it hard not to love this 1978 production just as much. Édouard…

REVIEW: Трудно быть богом [Hard to Be a God] [2014]

2015/06/252015/06/26 Jared Mobarak

“Don’t drink. I only sniff now.” There’s a plot inside Aleksey German‘s final film Трудно быть богом [Hard to Be a God]—an audacious sci-fi epic slinging mud and feces in our faces while everyone onscreen sniffs them like drugs until we’re involuntarily following suit. No really, there is. Well, maybe a lingering vestige of what Arkadiy and Boris Strugatskiy‘s original novel contained that the 74-year old auteur (who’d wanted to adapt it since the 60s before finally completing it after a decade-long production process ultimately ending in his death from…

REVIEW: পথের পাঁচালী [Pather Panchali] [Song of the Little Road] [1955]

2015/06/182015/10/23 Jared Mobarak

“Go ask him for money” The story behind Satyajit Ray‘s debut film পথের পাঁচালী [Pather Panchali] [Song of the Little Road] is one you cannot separate from the work itself. It’s an underdog tale full of hardship and financial woe—incidents that dragged production along for three years before finally bringing India to the world in its neorealism style (after all, Ray helped scout Calcutta locations for Jean Renoir‘s The River and loved Vittorio De Sica‘s Bicycle Thieves). Money plays a huge part in both stories, especially the film’s plot based…

REVIEW: 思い出のマーニー [Omoide no Mânî] [When Marnie Was There] [2014]

2015/06/11 Jared Mobarak

“I wish for a normal life everyday” If Studio Ghibli ends up closing shop as announced, we can be glad their final film is a winner with the heart and soul we’ve come to love from Hayao Miyazaki and the team. I’m surely in the minority, but I’d even say Hiromasa Yonebayaski‘s When Marnie Was There is better than last year’s Oscar nominee The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. While bringing the aesthetic back to the studio’s customary style a la Spirited Away does remove some of the awe Isao…