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REVIEW: Open Windows [2014]

2014/11/192014/11/20 Jared Mobarak

“I’m just getting even” The first thing I think of when I hear the name Nacho Vigalondo is “high concept”. From his fantastic time traveling debut thriller Timecrimes to a romantic dramedy set against the backdrop of an alien invasion with Extraterrestrial, you know you’re in for a unique genre treat whenever the Spaniard goes behind the camera. His third film Open Windows continues the trend by wearing a gimmick on its sleeve that forces every frame to be viewed off of an electronic screen. Through a suspenseful cat and…

REVIEW: The Mule [2014]

2014/11/172016/02/22 Jared Mobarak

“Who doesn’t want a veranda, eh?” Directors Tony Mahony and Angus Sampson‘s The Mule is not at all what I expected. The marketing materials draw it up as a B-movie romp, something the involvement of Sampson and Saw co-creator Leigh Whannell (they co-wrote this one together from a story by Jaime Browne) helps corroborate. Besides a couple gross-out moments due to the excremental nature of the plot, however, the film proves differently. It’s instead a rather slowly paced true-life thriller spanning two weeks while the authorities wait on their captive…

REVIEW: Thou Wast Mild & Lovely [2014]

2014/11/142016/02/22 Jared Mobarak

“My lover knows how to love me” She is not kidding when she says: “To those who feel that their cruelty is too cruel, their sadness too sad, I dedicate this film: an embrace.” Writer/director Josephine Decker means every single word because she herself has laid bare her own cruelty and sadness with Thou Wast Mild & Lovely. Her characters are flawed, dangerous, and inviting—animals working the farm yet animals just the same. They each desire, take, and enjoy, suffering the psychological consequences after the fact, unregretful for what they’ve…

REVIEW: John Wick [2014]

2014/10/282014/10/29 Jared Mobarak

“I’d like a dinner reservation for twelve” If ever there was a film you truly cannot judge by its cover, John Wick is it. We’re talking an action flick about a retired assassin played with stoic Zen by Keanu Reeves (the titular Wick) going on a killing spree against Viggo Tarasov’s (Michael Nyqvist) Russian mob syndicate because the crime boss’ son Iosef (Alfie Allen) stole his car and killed his dog. Sure there’s more emotional heft to this catalyzing event to not think Wick is entirely off his rocker with…

REVIEW: That Terrible Jazz [2014]

2014/10/272014/10/27 Jared Mobarak

“I’m gonna kick up some dirt” A senior film student at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, Mike Falconi went noir for his thesis short That Terrible Jazz. The piece has an obvious affinity for past cinematic greats with hard-boiled dialogue, a stoic lead, and the missing persons mystery at its core, but his love for the genre inevitably becomes overshadowed by the resource limitations such a project inherently finds itself combating. It’s tough to critique acting when most of the performers are likely as green as their director, so I’ll…

REVIEW: The Minions [2014]

2014/10/222015/04/27 Jared Mobarak

“I shouldn’t have went there” Director Jeremiah Kipp once again amps up the mood with his latest short The Minions to follow his similarly aesthetically-constructed The Days God Slept. From the camera angles catching his actors’ expressions in a way that cultivates mystery, the score pulsing along with the imagery as though everything is set to its beat, and the dark subject matter underlying its elaborate masking of reality in the supernatural, William’s (Lukas Hassel) nightmare gradually becomes ours. Scripted by Joseph Fiorillo—and supposedly based on a true story of…

REVIEW: The Living [2014]

2014/10/202014/10/22 Jared Mobarak

“All we got in life are choices” An interesting choice was made on Jack Bryan‘s film The Living—one that occurred before the camera rolled. If you’re familiar with Fran Kranz‘s emotionally fractured science nerd Topher from “Dollhouse” and Kenny Wormald‘s coolly confident Ren from the Footloose remake, you’d probably have a pretty good idea of who would play who inside a plot dealing with an abusive husband and the sheepishly insecure brother-in-law wrestling with the desire to hire a hitman to kill him. For whatever reason—and this is to the…

REVIEW: The Equalizer [2014]

2014/10/102014/10/11 Jared Mobarak

“Change your world” It may be because I knew beforehand that Antoine Fuqua‘s The Equalizer was based on an old 80s TV show (from Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim), but it felt very episodic in a way that made it utterly boring. There’s that time Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) helps his coworker lose weight. That time he gives a troubled young prostitute a reason to smile. Don’t forget when he helps someone out of a jam with some corrupt cops. Or when he takes down a Russian mob syndicate single-handedly.…

REVIEW: Gone Girl [2014]

2014/10/072014/10/08 Jared Mobarak

“Everything else is background noise” Director David Fincher‘s Gone Girl falls prey to the one thing that often prevents me from truly loving a cinematic adaptation of a novel—unquestionable faithfulness. Gillian Flynn does a wonderful job distilling her pulpy thriller into a fast-paced 149 minutes and Fincher stays true to the back and forth vantage points of Act One between Nick Dunne’s (Ben Affleck) precarious circumstances and the diary of his wife who has disappeared (Rosamund Pike‘s Amy) before all hell breaks loose. It’s perfectly reformed with enough visual detail…

REVIEW: In Da Street [2014]

2014/10/03 Jared Mobarak

“We’re two cops in the hood, man” For a crowdfunded French short shot in two days on only a $1,500 budget, In Da Street looks fantastic. This shouldn’t be surprising coming from writer/director Damien Kazan—a filmmaker whose last work Whisper was nothing if not an attractive visual poem. Building on that film’s stylistic construction, this actioner follows a pair of cops on their beat with plenty of image-based stimulation. His non-descript Spanish-speaking locale (at least to an American like me) provides a hot afternoon of girls in bikinis and cigar-smoking…

REVIEW: The Maze Runner [2014]

2014/09/232018/01/26 Jared Mobarak

“Wicked is good” There’s really no better way to start The Maze Runner than Wes Ball‘s opening. I’ve not read James Dashner‘s novels and probably knew less than the trailer foretold since it’s been so long since I last saw it. So watching the pitch-black screen stare at me while scrapping metal creaked until a scared boy as disoriented as I gets illuminated was brilliant. He and we enter this crazy situation together—running for our lives, being introduced to our new family, and realizing everything that came before this moment…