Fired Up! | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Pitch Perfect [2012]

2012/09/242014/07/12 Jared Mobarak

“He is a hunter” Anything trying to capitalize on the now waning “Glee” craze and Step Up‘s surprising staying power probably should be dismissed sight unseen. How could a film dealing with the catty rivalries of the a cappella world be anything but an eye-rolling waste of celluloid? This is probably exactly what Universal Pictures thinks we’ll assume because they are throwing all their weight behind Pitch Perfect with an early release in select cities and a Twitter campaign putting one of its stars in the end credits to thank…

REVIEW: Friends with Benefits [2011]

2011/07/192014/05/25 Jared Mobarak

“Shut up Katherine Heigl, you stupid liar” I refuse to call it a romantic comedy. Yes, there are clichés, there’s love, some sex, and a little bit of heart, but Friends with Benefits is not just the sum of those parts. It is a raunchy buddy comedy that excels despite its genre’s limitations, a fun, witty, and smart tale of two damaged souls who find their best friend and successfully add a physical relationship to the equation. This tale weaves us through the delicate emotional turmoil of a couple twenty-somethings…

REVIEW: Easy A [2010]

2010/12/032013/07/10 Jared Mobarak

“The Accelerated Velocity of Terminological Inexactitude” Who knew Huck Finn had such homosexual overtones? And who knew Easy A—a film I now regret not having caught at its TIFF debut three months ago, dismissing it as a low-brow tween comedy—would be such a great film? Director Will Gluck has just cemented himself as a guy whose work I will no longer preconceive as unworthy of my time—yes, I will admit to being mesmerized by the surprising comedic glory of his debut film Fired Up! He and writer Bert V. Royal…

Top Ten Films of 2009: Foreign Films Reign Supreme

2010/01/172020/03/31 Jared Mobarak

This list is accurate as of post-date. So many films and not enough time to see them all, the potential for future change is inevitable, but as of today here are the best … Another year gone, another 100+ releases down. 2009 was one that included a lot of good directors and some great ensemble pieces. Out of all the inclusions to my top ten, plus honorable mentions, only three really contained a central figure worthy of mention above the work itself; the others truly were complete packages consisting of…

REVIEW: Fired Up! [2009]

2009/02/192011/08/24 Jared Mobarak

“No, science is awesome” I will admit it first off, I dreaded this day—the day I was going to sit down and watch Fired Up! It’s a film about two high school football jocks that decide to go to cheer camp and attempt to make headway in an untapped market of females. Now when I said high school, I mean the characters, not the actors. How Nicholas D’Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen can play seventeen year olds Shawn and Nick when they are 28 and 31 respectively, I don’t know.…