Film Reviews | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa [2008]

2012/06/012014/04/25 Jared Mobarak

“I find it pretty and slightly hypnotic” It’s amazing what happens when filmmakers craft a plot for their characters. I’m not saying I approve of sequels with lame flashback origin prologues trying to make up for the lack of story in their predecessors, but I won’t complain if such contrivances help ground the jokes into a cohesive three act structure. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa isn’t hampered by the need to remove its leads from their fabricated habitat, instead starting off the reservation and relying on everyone’s intrinsic desire to return…

REVIEW: Madagascar [2005]

2012/05/312014/04/25 Jared Mobarak

“Just smile and wave boys. Smile and wave.” Made as though in opposition to Pixar’s brand of magical storytelling, Dreamworks Animation’s Madagascar ushered in the studio’s want for broader comedy and adolescent appeal. With Shrek, they found a franchise that subverted Disney’s use of fairy tales for cinematic fodder and created a nice hybrid of laughs and story with an underdog hero inside an ugly duckling tale. But after a steady stream of Pixar work including Monsters Inc. and the previous year’s The Incredibles, you have to believe that Dreamworks…

REVIEW: Snow White and the Huntsman [2012]

2012/05/292014/04/25 Jared Mobarak

“Have I not given you all?” What happens when a fairy tale depicting an innocent princess saved by a litany of characters on her way to the crown turns into an epic battle with heroine in full armor storming the castle herself? Well, we discover just how flimsy a character the titular Snow White actually is. A prisoner for years while an evil queen brought darkness upon her kingdom, the young girl’s escape into the hallucinogenic Dark Forest proves nothing but a sense of survival. She has no skills at…

REVIEW: Los cronocrímenes [Timecrimes] [2008]

2012/05/252014/04/25 Jared Mobarak

“No one knows our phone number” All he had to do was stay hidden for an hour, biding time away from sight as his impossible doppelganger went through the same motions of an hour earlier. The ramifications of time travel would have been erased; the insane crippling fear of seeing another man identical to him kissing his wife goodbye a distant memory. But curiosity proves too much as the strangeness leading him to the time portal in the first place was too odd to simply hope it would happen again.…

REVIEW: 7:35 de la mañana [7:35 in the Morning] [2004]

2012/05/232014/04/25 Jared Mobarak

“Always in a hurry; always at the same time” An Oscar nominee for Best Live Action Short with his debut work, writer/director Nacho Vigalondo has gone on to make a couple features with festival appeal in the almost decade since. But there is something peculiar, unique, and a bit demented about 7:35 de la mañana [7:35 in the Morning] that makes it the film I will always associate with him. A crazy musical shown to me by a coworker two years after its release, the darkly comic subject isn’t easy…

REVIEW: Men in Black 3 [2012]

2012/05/222016/02/22 Jared Mobarak

“He didn’t say please” While strange for a Men in Black film to open with something other than a crashing spaceship, I’ll admit to being ecstatic for the alternative. Having the sexy Nicole Scherzinger lead us into the maximum-security prison housing one of the universe’s most notorious criminals definitely didn’t hurt either. What I really enjoyed about the pre-credit sequence to Men in Black 3, however, was that our introduction to Bogladite destroyer Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) seemed to get the series back on track as far as giving…

REVIEW: Men in Black II [2002]

2012/05/212014/05/14 Jared Mobarak

“I see you neuralyzed another partner” There’s nothing like a lost memory trope to allow lazy screenwriters the opportunity to explain their film within the construct of its plot. Despite an inventive, tongue-in-cheek reenactment program hosted by Peter Graves about mysterious conspiracy stories ushering us back into the Men in Black universe, Robert Gordon and Barry Fanaro‘s subversion of their expository prologue is wasted. No one enjoys disembodied voices and scrolling text to describe backstory in a Kindergarten teacher’s tone of superiority, so why not poke some fun at the…

REVIEW: Men in Black [1997]

2012/05/172014/05/14 Jared Mobarak

“May I ask why you felt little Tiffany had to die?” Fresh off the success of Get Shorty two years prior, director Barry Sonnenfeld‘s still young but effective career found it’s biggest hit in the rollicking science fiction comedy Men in Black. Unfortunately for him, the film also proved to be his last cinematic work worthy of note after a solid Hollywood journey beginning behind the lens for Rob Reiner, Penny Marshall, and the Coen Brothers. Broader in his comic sensibilities than that more subversive duo, his handling of Ed…

REVIEW: Battleship [2012]

2012/05/152014/05/14 Jared Mobarak

“It’s the North Koreans—I’m tellin’ ya” Screenwriters Erich and Jon Hoeber actually made paying Hasbro a boatload of cash for their seemingly unnecessary board game property a relevant story point in their big budget, science fiction actioner Battleship. The fact they had to conjure up a humanoid alien race with reptilian characteristics and cloaking technology to keep gigantic flying nautical vessels off radar is beside the point. The American public loves extra-terrestrial invasions, thinks Andy Roddick’s wife Brooklyn Decker is hot, and can’t help getting revved up when their armed…

REVIEW: Grosse Pointe Blank [1997]

2012/05/122014/05/14 Jared Mobarak

“Well thank you for profiting from my childhood” Despite having most likely seen John Cusack in previous films, I do believe black comedy Grosse Pointe Blank was the first to put him firmly on my radar as an actor to follow. While the last few years haven’t necessarily been a great showcase of his talent, his late-90s run was quite a streak of hits that seemed to stem from this gem. Credited as a producer and co-writer, the film possesses a very keen comedic sensibility with a great sarcastic wit…

REVIEW: The Dictator [2012]

2012/05/102014/05/14 Jared Mobarak

“Where’s the trashcan?” After starring in three films and on television in two countries by engaging unwitting audiences in a guerilla-style ambush of often cruel and lewd comedy proving he hadn’t a shred of modesty, Sacha Baron Cohen‘s days of anonymity have officially ended. Utilizing many of the same collaborators behind the scenes as his last few creative endeavors, The Dictator exists inside a fully scripted world because the Englishman’s antics have become too widely documented. Gone are the days when a ‘supreme beard’ could hide his identity from an…