Film Reviews | www.jaredmobarak.com

VENICE22 REVIEW: Goliath [2022]

2022/08/292022/11/26 Jared Mobarak

I totally understand you. If a local village warlord discovers he’s in a movie titled Goliath, he better watch his back. It doesn’t matter what his origin story is—and Poshaev (Daniyar Alshinov) has a bloody one—since power is never absolute. Yes, the villagers hail him as a hero for using his formidable presence to extort jobs for the community at a foreign investment firm’s tungsten mine. Yes, he works to keep drugs out of his domain by ruthlessly gunning down any rival gangs who dare to bring it across his…

VENICE22 REVIEW: Dogborn [2023]

2022/08/262022/11/26 Jared Mobarak

You’ll cope. The twins (Silvana Imam‘s Sister and Philip Oros‘ Brother) have nothing since their mother passed away. No house. No jobs. No money. Brother doesn’t even have a voice—not since they left Syria long ago. It’s therefore up to Sister to manage for them both. Finding places to squat, talking their way into odd jobs to get paid, and making connections that she can hopefully lean on when things get even tougher than they already are. That’s why it’s nice to have someone like their cousin Petri (Lukas Malinauskas)…

TIFF22 REVIEW: A Gaza Weekend [2022]

2022/08/252022/09/11 Jared Mobarak

We’re here. It’s the ‘promised’ land. Director Basil Khalil and co-writer Daniel Ka-Chun Chan waste no time setting the tone for their Middle Eastern comedy A Gaza Weekend. Conceived over a decade ago (and thus not a COVID film despite adding a couple COVID “jokes” into the script), its purpose is to satirize the very real conflict between Palestinians and Israelis to its most absurd extremes while also finding the common ground of humanity hiding beneath—much like Khalil’s enjoyable, Oscar-nominated short Ave Maria. As such, watching a scientist carelessly mill…

REVIEW: Bodies Bodies Bodies [2022]

2022/08/232022/08/24 Jared Mobarak

He’s a libra moon! The reasons for ignoring the group chat were legitimate. Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) had checked into rehab and needed time working through things while readjusting her life to sobriety. Jumping back in with her equally privileged twenty-something products of wealth would probably have been the worst choice she could have made. But things are different now. She’s in love. And while her and Bee (Maria Bakalova) have only known each other six weeks, we can guess that Sophie has never been happier. So, with the strength of…

REVIEW: Clerks III [2022]

2022/08/232022/09/08 Jared Mobarak

Spare the heretic I damned in jest. After a well-publicized implosion despite having already written a script and secured financing wherein everything fell apart in ways that had writer/director Kevin Smith admitting he didn’t see a way back, Clerks III is finally in the can … with a completely new script. Was it an extension of the salary issues that plagued co-lead Jeff Anderson from the beginning or a simple lack of interest in going back to the well that made him hesitate? Bits and pieces can be gleaned from…

REVIEW: Breaking [2022]

2022/08/202022/08/24 Jared Mobarak

I have a bomb. To read Aaron Gell’s article about Brian Brown-Easley’s death from the military-centered publication Task & Purpose is to dive deep into the nuts and bolts of how a tragedy such as this occurred from systemic racism to the failure of organizations to help those it purports to help to mental illness and beyond. To watch Abi Damaris Corbin‘s cinematic depiction Breaking is to confront the incident’s emotional ramifications whether doing so manipulates the facts in the process or not. And that’s expected. Even if Corbin had…

REVIEW: Out of the Blue [2022]

2022/08/192022/08/24 Jared Mobarak

Maybe I can be the solution. A new cinematic drinking game has arrived. It’s a doozy too since taking a shot every time writer/director Neil LaBute uses an intertitle demarking time in Out of the Blue means you’ll probably pass out before Connor’s (Ray Nicholson) inevitable plan to kill Marilyn’s (Diane Kruger) abusive husband is floated let alone put in motion. Many are arbitrary. Some are exacting. Few have narrative relevance beyond telling us something we already know. I’m not therefore sure what the point of using so many is…

REVIEW: House of Darkness [2022]

2022/08/182022/09/06 Jared Mobarak

Seeing things already? Hap (Justin Long) can barely believe his luck. Drunk at the bar and prone to delivering corny pick-up lines, he decides to chat up Mina (Kate Bosworth) only to discover she’s amenable to his liquor-tinged charms. While we don’t witness this meet-cute ourselves, seeing them in his car as it pulls up to her secluded woodlands estate reveals they must have hit it off. Just because Hap was brave enough to offer his services as chauffeur, however, doesn’t mean he’d go so far as to invite himself…

REVIEW: Three Minutes: A Lengthening [2022]

2022/08/172022/08/17 Jared Mobarak

Their trip to Poland was an extraordinary detour. You never know what you’ll find in the attic collecting dust. Even so, thinking you might uncover film of a Polish city inhabited by a thousand people who would surely end up murdered a couple years later in the Holocaust is hardly amongst anyone’s first guesses. That’s exactly what Glenn Kurtz discovered, though. Squirreled away in his parents’ Florida closet was a reel of 16mm film his grandfather took in 1938 during a trip to Europe. And amongst the usual tourist destinations…

REVIEW: Nope [2022]

2022/08/162022/08/16 Jared Mobarak

I guess some animals ain’t fit to be trained. The scene that encapsulates what Jordan Peele‘s Nope delivers comes somewhat early as OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Em Haywood (Keke Palmer) visit the owner and operator of the theme park that serves as their neighbor out in Agua Dulce, California. The purpose of the visit is to sell Ricky ‘Jupe’ Park (Steven Yeun) another of their Hollywood trained horses now that their father’s (Keith David‘s Otis) death has left them with the debts an industry shift towards digital animal effects exacerbated.…

REVIEW: The Legend of Molly Johnson [2022]

2022/08/152022/08/17 Jared Mobarak

Sing it in your sleep. A favorite of Leah Purcell‘s as a child, Henry Lawson’s short story “The Drover’s Wife” was always at the front of her mind upon growing into adulthood as an artist. It only makes sense then that she would take that tale from 1892 and reimagine it as an Australian western able to bring her own ancestral history as a fair-skinned Aboriginal woman into the light. First, she had to give the titular wife a name: Molly Johnson. Next, it was fleshing out a dramatic narrative…