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NYAFF14 REVIEW: 失魂 [Shi hun] [Soul] [2013]

2014/06/272014/07/08 Jared Mobarak

“I watch the wind and, dreamlike, vanish” Described in equal measure as a slasher horror and psychological meditation on the soul—whether from demonic possession, reincarnation, or both—Taiwan’s entry for the 86th Academy Awards ultimately proves difficult to categorize at all. Mong-Hong Chung‘s 失魂[Shi hun] [Soul] may in fact be better labeled as a drama about familial love and fidelity despite destroying those same two things in the process of their preservation. There’s an unsettling spirituality at play that teeters between supernatural and schizophrenia with a weirdly rigid attitude towards life,…

REVIEW: Tore tanzt [Nothing Bad Can Happen] [2013]

2014/06/242014/06/27 Jared Mobarak

“Sometimes you have to defend yourself” I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that the words “Inspired by true events” only appear onscreen at the end of Tore tanzt [Nothing Bad Can Happen]. The move might be specific to its American release since events as atrocious as those depicted are hardly the type to remain unknown in its home country of Germany before cameras rolled, but boy does reading it pack a punch here. Katrin Gebbe‘s debut is a tough pill to swallow on its own—a story so dedicated to its…

REVIEW: Ida [2013]

2014/06/022014/06/03 Jared Mobarak

“Why am I not here?” A life well lived. Now there’s a concept very few of us can truly comprehend. It doesn’t mean old age. It doesn’t mean fame or fortune. It doesn’t even mean legacy, familial or otherwise. A life well lived can be ten years long or one hundred years short—the only necessity being that you somehow left this world better on your own terms and in front of whatever God or lack thereof you choose. Some of us are lucky; others the victim of fate, time, and…

REVIEW: L’image manquante [The Missing Picture] [2013]

2014/03/012016/02/23 Jared Mobarak

“Our only belonging was our spoon” How do you tell the story of something as horrific as Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge’s four-year rule over Cambodia after the Kampuchean Revolution when the only footage shot was that distributed by the regime itself? This is the problem director Rithy Panh faced, a teenager when war hit to disperse the citizens of Phnom Penh into work camps so they could build a newly “freed” land. He witnessed the atrocities and lived through the famine as party leaders and their dogs ate,…

REVIEW: Le passé [The Past] [2013]

2014/02/282014/03/01 Jared Mobarak

“Some things can’t be forgiven” If A Separation didn’t cause writer/director Asghar Farhadi to be revered as an auteur who understood domestic strife and illness’ lasting effect on those left to pick up the pieces, you better believe he is now. Switching to France for Le passé [The Past], the filmmaker brings us into an interesting clash of worlds for Iranian Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) returning after four years of estrangement from soon-to-be ex-wife Marie (Bérénice Bejo). This pairing of ethnicities underlies the action, especially with prospective fiancé Samir (Tahar Rahim)…

REVIEW: 一代宗師 [The Grandmaster] [2013]

2014/02/262014/04/10 Jared Mobarak

“Keep the light burning” I think 一代宗師 [The Grandmaster] loses something in its translation for an American who couldn’t spot the differences between Kung Fu and Karate if his life depended on it (besides the former being Chinese and latter Japanese, of course). There’s the significance of the dark rain beating down on multiple fight scenes I’ve read provides the “white noise” for one’s “sense of touch”; the honor in accepting one’s actions to seek vengeance by taking vows to forever be alone as compensation; and the history of a…

REVIEW: Al-Midan [The Square] [2013]

2014/02/232014/02/27 Jared Mobarak

“We were all present; we were one hand” As the initial sit-in at Tahrir Square taught the Egyptian people the power of protest and revolution in securing freedoms they only dreamed they could have, Jehane Noujaim’s Al-Midan [The Square] shares it on an international scale. I’ll admit I thought everything was okay after Hosni Mubarak fled the Presidential Palace. I knew there was still strife, that the Muslim Brotherhood took control through an election process yet still didn’t prove better than the regime they replaced, but I never fathomed how…

REVIEW: The Act of Killing [2012]

2014/02/192014/02/20 Jared Mobarak

“They proudly told us stories about what they did” Director Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary The Act of Killing can be described as nothing short of a masterpiece. It’s a one-of-a-kind document that gets into the mind of madmen with the blood of genocide on their hands by displaying their hubris, remorselessness, and cavalier attitudes firsthand. Oppenheimer doesn’t go down a laundry list of scholars, victims, or survivors for floating head commentary to set the stage or vilify evil—he lets the murderers themselves do it with their permission and moreover their satisfaction.…

REVIEW: そして父になる [Like Father, Like Son] [2013]

2014/02/192014/02/19 Jared Mobarak

“Now it all makes sense” After recently reading that Hirokazu Koreeda’s そして父になる [Like Father, Like Son] had been optioned by Dreamworks for an English language reboot, I can’t help but imagine how ineffective it will be in comparison to the Japanese original. A lot of what works in this tale of a father struggling to figure out whether time or blood makes a child yours goes hand-in-hand with the nation’s culture. I don’t see an American possessing the conservative mindset necessary to think six years with a child is meaningless…

REVIEW: Poziţia copilului [Child’s Pose] [2013]

2014/02/132016/02/23 Jared Mobarak

“Why do you keep treating us like enemies?” What does it mean to be a parent? To take a blanketed, personal responsibility for the good and the bad of your child’s actions? This question is at the heart of Călin Peter Netzer‘s Golden Bear-winning (Berlin International Film Festival) film Poziţia copilului [Child’s Pose], not just the singular relationship of lead actress Luminița Gheorghiu‘s Cornelia Keneres and her grown son Bardu (Bogdan Dumitrache). There is that—her overbearing matriarch refusing to let her only child out of her clutches despite his trying…

REVIEW: Cutie and the Boxer [2013]

2014/02/07 Jared Mobarak

“The average one has to support the genius” TV producer Zachary Heinzerling may have set out to make a documentary about two artists, but what he filmed was love. Not the storybook love of a man sweeping a woman off her feet to live happily ever after in piece, harmony, and financial stability, though. No, for Noriko Shinahara and Ushio Shinohara—the titular Cutie and the Boxer—love meant pain, suffering, poverty, and the unwavering, inexplicable connection that never broke between them. There was some sweeping—Ushio was a forty-one year old action…