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REVIEW: A Most Violent Year [2014]

2015/01/192015/01/28 Jared Mobarak

“You’ll never do anything harder than staring someone in the eye and telling them the truth” I remember being surprised when Margin Call—the little movie that could—came out. Writer/director J.C. Chandor earned an Oscar nomination for his screenplay before heading to virtual silence with his harrowing sophomore effort, the Robert Redford-starring All is Lost, a film deemed one of the biggest Academy Awards snubs of 2013. Now that’s a lot of pressure for a young guy who just burst onto the scene and yet he decided to push the envelope…

REVIEW: Selma [2014]

2015/01/062015/01/09 Jared Mobarak

“God was the first to cry” A civil war waged on Alabaman soil in 1965 whether President Lyndon B. Johnson felt holding off on a bill negating the South’s tactics to bar African American citizens from voting would prevent one or not. It was fought under his and the country’s eyes in the streets, on TV, and in their hearts. Finally someone proves brave enough to show it by throwing convention aside to stop treating cinematic historical biographies as revelry for the deceased heroes who helped make our country great.…

REVIEW: Wild [2014]

2014/12/292014/12/30 Jared Mobarak

“Cold mush dreams” The cinematic adaptation of Cheryl Strayed‘s memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail seems to be getting pigeonholed hard as being solely a tale of female empowerment. It most definitely is, but I’m not sure critics should necessarily call it a day with such a generic categorization. There’s a deeper draw to the author’s solo, one thousand mile journey along the Pacific Crest that hits at a human level way beyond gender. Was Into the Wild only thought of as a tale of…

Top 100 Songs of 2014

2014/12/192014/12/19 Jared Mobarak

#100: Coming Home by Kaiser Chiefs #98: Gust of Wind by Pharrell Williams #96: Friday Fish Fry by Kelis #94: It’s a Longer Road to California Than I Thought by The Wind and the Wave #92: Now by Joywave #90: Take My Place by Lily Allen #88: Are You Okay? by Dum Dum Girls #86: Busy Earnin’ by Jungle #84: Never Gonna Change by Broods #82: Riptide by Vance Joy #80: Big Unit by Adebisi Shank #78: Count On My Love by Tessanne Chin #76: Telepathy by ††† #74: Right…

REVIEW: The Imitation Game [2014]

2014/12/112014/12/25 Jared Mobarak

“Shall we leave the children alone with their new toy?” It’s highly unusual for me to get invested in a biography, so when one comes along that enthralls me as fully as The Imitation Game it’s difficult to know whether I’m simply overreacting. Director Morten Tyldum and screenwriter Graham Moore have done what so few seem to want to attempt despite it so often resonating: focus on a moment their subject is known for rather than the person himself. To give us a glimpse into his childhood for psychological markers…

REVIEW: Starred Up [2014]

2014/12/06 Jared Mobarak

“Single cell. High risk.” The hype on Jack O’Connell is real. And I’m only basing that sentiment on one film. Something tells me, though, that Unbroken in a couple weeks and ’71 next year will succeed at corroborating the notion because his turn in David Mackenzie‘s Starred Up is simultaneously fierce and vulnerable like few his age are capable of portraying. He and his castmates surely had plenty of avenues for inspiration thanks to writer Jonathan Asser basing his script on true life experiences made while serving as a voluntary…

REVIEW: Whiplash [2014]

2014/11/16 Jared Mobarak

“I belong here” And here I naively thought the dinner sequence from The Riot Club would end up proving my favorite scene of the year despite the film itself leaving a lot to be desired. It just goes to show that you can never be sure until every prospective entry is counted because the final moments of Whiplash‘s tour de force assault on the senses by musical genius is honestly a transcendent piece of art in itself. From the performances by Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons changing mentality, focus, and…

REVIEW: Interstellar [2014]

2014/11/112014/11/12 Jared Mobarak

“Who’s they?” Say what you will about Christopher Nolan, the man knows how to make resonate blockbusters. He knows movies—plain and simple. There has always been a power in cinema that hits us at an emotionally deep level, a window into our souls through the characters onscreen we have learned to cherish as though extensions of ourselves. Nolan appreciates this truth and has proven to possess an uncanny ability to tap into that universal consciousness despite using inherently obtuse stories rooted in scientific fantasy and actual theoretical physics the layperson…

REVIEW: A Clockwork Orange [1971]

2014/11/082014/11/10 Jared Mobarak

“No time for the old in-out, love, I’ve just come to read the meter.” It didn’t take long for the theatrical experience to prove essential when watching A Clockwork Orange on the big screen. As Henry Purcell‘s March from “Funeral Music for Queen Mary” plays, the frame is filled with a solid bright orange so massive and enveloping that it pulsates to appear as though it’s spilling past the edges. This goes on for a full thirty seconds before “Warner Bros. A Kinney Company Presents” appears in white and by…

REVIEW: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) [2014]

2014/11/052014/11/06 Jared Mobarak

“The truth is always interesting” It’s true what the film’s Times‘ theater critic (Lindsay Duncan) says: an artist should bleed for his craft. Physically, spiritually, metaphorically—blood must be spilt so the world knows he was here, selflessly (selfishly?) making us laugh, cry, and reflect on lives well lived and squandered. This is why those who touch upon life’s intrinsic emotions and universal feelings can demand salaries and compensation so large not even their over-stretched, ambitious, and insane imaginations can think of how to spend it all. They create what we…

REVIEW: Gone with the Wind [1939]

2014/11/012014/11/02 Jared Mobarak

“All we’ve got is cotton and slaves and … arrogance” For years I’ve thought Gone with the Wind some grand, epic romance. How else could anyone take its smoldering poster of Clark Gable ready to ravish Vivien Leigh as her dress falls helplessly from her shoulders? This advert proves as manipulative as the woman positioned at the film’s center because it’s Scarlett O’Hara’s (Leigh) tale from start to finish, complete with every tragic morsel of life’s lemons both unwitting and a result of her own doing. A spoiled brat believing…