Tag: David Rasche

BIFF20 REVIEW: Paper Spiders [2020]

Jared Mobarak

All we have left is each other. Mental illness isn’t an easy topic to adapt for the big screen since doing so oftentimes forces a writer into making the choice between pain and hope. Not everyone survives an affliction like delusional disorder and not everyone who suffers from it is able to hold onto a support system with the strength to help. For every story you hear about a person giving up his/her dream to be with someone they love as a constant tethered to reality comes another where the…

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REVIEW: Swallow [2020]

Jared Mobarak

I did something unexpected today. Hunter (Haley Bennett) has never had control over her life. She’s tried her hardest to claim some, however, by giving away her love. She gave it to a mother who treated her like an afterthought compared to her siblings, a career in art that always found itself to be just out of reach, and the man (Austin Stowell‘s Richie) she walked down a matrimonial aisle towards despite his only ever seeing her as a prize—a possession for a shelf of conquests someone in his socio-economic…

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REVIEW: In the Loop [2009]

Jared Mobarak

“An anti-war shag?” There is something about British comedy that resonates with me. I don’t know if it is because we in the States experience so little of it, or maybe because Hollywood rapes and pillages the material for their own water-downed versions, but the humor just seems fresh, uncensored, and hilarious. When I first came across the new political black comedy In the Loop, I will admit to being less than interested. The marketing materials were using the whole Obama silkscreen poster look and I really wasn’t interested in…

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REVIEW: Burn After Reading [2008]

Jared Mobarak

“His optometrist has a sense of humor” Last year’s No Country for Old Men showed the world that the Coen Brothers could make a great film. After a pair of not-so-good flicks, no one really cared about them, two creative geniuses that crafted some of cinema’s best black comedies of the 80s and 90s. Then came the Oscar winner, showing an attention to detail and precision pacing worthy of the accolades if not, in my opinion, the best film of the year. But it was so serious and unlike anything…

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