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REVIEW: O.J.: Made in America [2016]

2016/12/032016/12/07 Jared Mobarak

“I’m not black. I’m O.J.” I was enjoying the summer between 6th and 7th grade when O.J. Simpson and A.C. Cowlings infamously drove a white Ford Bronco down a California interstate. Despite being only a year removed from the Buffalo Bills’ four straight Super Bowl loses, my lack of local football knowledge here in the Queen City made “Juice” just another name. I quickly learned he was one of the greats and proved it right where Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas attempted to bring home glory decades later. If I…

REVIEW: Arrival [2016]

2016/11/192016/11/20 Jared Mobarak

“A desire for more cows” While Arrival is very much a Denis Villeneuve film right down to the similarities between his lead Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams)—thrust into an overwhelming military-run situation and doing her best to hold it accountable—with that of Sicario‘s Kate Macer as well as a visually surreal callback to the much-talked about and deciphered conclusion of Enemy, you cannot deny its expert plotting courtesy of screenwriter Eric Heisserer. This is the guy responsible for B-level genre remakes A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Thing inexplicably…

REVIEW: Cameraperson [2016]

2016/11/152018/05/03 Jared Mobarak

“You’re making me cry even though I don’t understand the language” The camera doesn’t lie. It captures private moments, immortalizes public, and adds ten pounds (so maybe it does). It shows a world we can never see: at once untouched perfection and fabricated by the operator’s gaze. And as those among us age and forget, the camera proves a tool of permanence. Cinematographer Kirsten Johnson‘s mother battles Alzheimer’s—losing time, place, and self—while she endures journalistic accounts of terror most wish to leave behind. Just because what Johnson filmed during a…

REVIEW: I Am Not Your Negro [2017]

2016/11/122017/02/03 Jared Mobarak

“My countrymen were my enemy” Author James Baldwin‘s powerful rhetoric can be perfectly summed up by his statement on “The Dick Cavett Show” concerning Patrick Henry’s 1775 quotation, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” He explains how a world oppressed can utter that line with conviction and be applauded whether they’re American, Irish, Jewish, or Polish, but as soon as a black person does he/she is treated like the devil. He/she becomes an enemy of the state, a villain, and a “thug.” It’s therefore not the black community’s responsibility…

REVIEW: The Fits [2016]

2016/10/272016/10/28 Jared Mobarak

“Home of the Lionesses” For those who like to declare how there’s no original cinema these days: I present you Anna Rose Holmer‘s coming-of-age dance drama The Fits. Yes, the most over-used genre of all received a uniquely wonderful rendition in 2016 through the eyes of an eleven-year old girl trying to find her way named Toni (Royalty Hightower). Uncertain of who she wants to become outside the shadow of her brother Jermaine (Da’Sean Minor), she’s embraced the life of a boxer to spend time with him at the local…

REVIEW: American Honey [2016]

2016/10/202016/10/21 Jared Mobarak

“What about you? What’s your dream?” Welcome to our disenfranchised youth. That’s exactly what Andrea Arnold puts front and center with her latest film American Honey: miscreants getting high, road tripping, and lying their way to a few bucks meant to continue the nomadic journey’s unending party. Led by outside-the-box entrepreneur Krystal (Riley Keough), this ragtag bunch of urchins scooped from the side of the road go door-to-door selling magazine subscriptions—or as her number one seller Jake (Shia LaBeouf) says, “… themselves.” We don’t know if their customers will ever…

REVIEW: Blue Jay [2016]

2016/10/182016/10/18 Jared Mobarak

“You leaving room for Jesus?” While we wait the requisite nine years hoping for another installment in Richard Linklater‘s seminal Before saga, Mark Duplass is here to fill the void early with his own intimate, two person reunion of past love and current strife entitled Blue Jay. Many will scoff at this declaration and say there are at best surface comparisons between the works with this one falling short on the emotional gravitas, but I’d disagree. Perhaps it’s the fact that I relate to two former high school sweethearts fatefully…

REVIEW: A Wedding [1978]

2016/10/062016/10/07 Jared Mobarak

“Death is a four letter word” It’s unfathomable to think that a film as elaborately sprawling as Robert Altman‘s A Wedding was given birth out of a joke, but that’s exactly what happened. Having some fun with an interviewer during publicity on 3 Women, the director exclaimed that his next work would be “a great big fancy wedding” and ultimately made good on the promise. He, John Considine, Patricia Resnick, and Allan F. Nicholls crafted their epic to the tune of two full months of production on an eighty-acre estate…

TIFF16 REVIEW: Moonlight [2016]

2016/09/112019/05/07 Jared Mobarak

“Chiron and trouble always found a way” What’s it like to be a young boy on the drug-filled streets of Miami: without friends, without family, without hope? As cliques begin to feign superiority by ganging up on the weak to prove themselves hard enough for what’s coming, Chiron (Alex R. Hibbert)—or “Little” as they call him—can do nothing but struggle to survive. So who would have thought the one man to show kindness would be the king of the very drug holes his bullies seek to rise up within? In…

REVIEW: Hell or High Water [2016]

2016/08/182016/08/19 Jared Mobarak

“I ain’t speeding” It wasn’t long after his run as above-board Deputy Chief David Hale on “Sons of Anarchy” that Taylor Sheridan would find himself caught in awards season platitudes with Sicario, a film earning three Oscar nominations despite his screenplay not quite making the cut. Well he has a second change this January as his earlier script of gritty Texas survival under the poverty line—a 2012 Black List inclusion—has arrived with David Mackenzie‘s stewardship. Hell or High Water utilizes similar themes of determined, smart vengeance and bittersweet resolutions, it’s…

REVIEW: 俠女 [Xia nü] [A Touch of Zen] [1971]

2016/08/042018/05/03 Jared Mobarak

“One should rather believe in ghosts than not” It’s enlightening to read writer/director King Hu‘s press notes that accompanied the Cannes premiere of his then newly-cut 俠女 [Xia nü] [A Touch of Zen]. 1975 was four years removed from the film’s original release—as two parts, a format his producers demanded to try recouping some of its ballooning budget—and six years after he began constructing the elaborate sets utilized during a long, piecemeal shooting schedule to combat changing seasons from ruining continuity. He finally received the ability to restore his three-hour…