David Morse | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Passengers [2008]

2018/10/012020/04/01 Jared Mobarak

Better now than later. An explosion, crash, confused man, and burning plane: this is the sequence of images as Rodrigo García‘s Passengers commences. It’s a pretty straightforward visual set-up for the incident everything else will surround before his lead (Anne Hathaway‘s Dr. Claire Summers) is introduced during the next scene. She’s a trauma counselor enlisted by her boss (Andre Braugher‘s Perry) to take point on helping the small group of people who survived process the event. They’re all in differing stages of psychological distress with one remembering a fire (Ryan…

REVIEW: Concussion [2015]

2016/01/132016/01/14 Jared Mobarak

“Tell the truth” As of September of 2015 it was reported that 87 former NFL players tested positive for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) out of the 91 deceased men researchers at Boston University autopsied. That’s almost 96%. Their study revealed that 79% of all players (professionally, semi-professionally, or college/high school athletes) examined had it—damning numbers not to be ignored and yet the NFL did for many, many years. How long and what exact details they denied, we may never know. Settlements are funny that way. It’s hardly surprising, with the…

Posterized Propaganda March 2014: ‘Noah’, ‘Nymphomaniac,’ ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel,’ ‘Enemy’ & More

2014/03/032014/04/18 Jared Mobarak

“Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” is a proverb whose simple existence proves the fact impressionable souls will do so without fail. This monthly column focuses on the film industry’s willingness to capitalize on this truth, releasing one-sheets to serve as not representations of what audiences are to expect, but as propaganda to fill seats. Oftentimes they fail miserably. Has summer started early? Big blockbusters like Divergent, Noah, 300: Rise of an Empire, and Need for Speed are releasing in March—I guess they must therefore be the studios’ lesser…

REVIEW: The Hurt Locker [2009]

2009/06/292011/08/24 Jared Mobarak

“That’s spoken like a wild man” While reading about the new Kathryn Bigelow film The Hurt Locker, I found it very interesting that people were saying how it really doesn’t have an anti-war sentiment. I was always under the impression that it would be another liberal propaganda-driven message movie like all the others coming out recently. To my great surprise, they were exactly right. Rather than use the war to tell people already against it to protest, Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal decide to use Iraq purely as a backdrop…

REVIEW: Disturbia [2007]

2007/04/132013/07/10 Jared Mobarak

“Coffee and donuts” I understand that the new movie Disturbia is about a person who is unable to leave his room and must look out the window for entertainment. During his peeping sessions, he finds that his neighbor might be a killer and by doing so, tries to get everyone around him to help find out the truth. That premise, and that premise alone, is the ONLY thing that likens this movie to Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece of tension and technical genius, Rear Window. Director D.J. Caruso has taken this script,…

REVIEW: Down in the Valley [2005]

2007/04/052011/08/24 Jared Mobarak

“I invited Tex to the beach” I’m not quite sure exactly how I felt about Down in the Valley. At many times I thought it was a gorgeous film, shot perfectly, but at others I felt uncomfortable and shocked. We are given a love story between a troubled young man and a high school girl trapped in a family that could self-destruct at any moment. These two have been on a journey to find themselves, and in each other’s kindred spirits finds another to help steer them onto the right…