Tag: Jr.

FANTASIA21 REVIEW: King Knight [2022]

Jared Mobarak

We’ve all got poo in our butts. Thorn (Matthew Gray Gubler) and Willow (Angela Sarafyan) are the perfect High Priest and Priestess of their suburban California coven. They are madly in love with each other and the lifestyle they’ve embraced as outcasts from the mainstream monotheistic monolith to which the rest of the world adheres. Their disciples believe in their leadership so fully that they’ll appear on their doorstep at night in search of answers to their most private struggles. This makeshift family has served them well and they’d do…

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REVIEW: Visages, villages [Faces Places] [2017]

Jared Mobarak

To meet new faces and photograph them so they don’t fall down the holes in my memory. To look at some of the work of “unidentified” artist JR—giant black and white images pasted onto surfaces with a literal or figurative contextual relationship—is to see the type of community-based, socially conscious messaging Agnès Varda built a career documenting. It’s no surprise to therefore hear JR explain how meaningful Varda’s Mur murs was to him as a budding artist searching for his unique voice and style. I can think of no two…

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REVIEW: Triple 9 [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“Better him than me” No matter how exciting it is to see a film with the cast John Hillcoat assembled on Triple 9, the old adage “less is more” still stands. The issue with having so many “main characters” is that they all end up becoming periphery players. And if one does rise above the rest, you wonder why so much happens that doesn’t concern him/her. This is where Matt Cook‘s 2010 Blacklist script falls into trouble: Casey Affleck‘s Chris Allen is our lead and yet he’s basically a pawn…

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REVIEW: The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 [2011]

Jared Mobarak

“In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none” In 1972 the United States broke ties with Sweden as their media equated the bombings of Hanoi to Nazism and shortly before that TV Guide’s editor wrote an exposé about the Anti-American sentiments the Scandinavian country was disseminating at will. The Vietnam War was putting strain on relationships worldwide, but from an outsider’s perspective it isn’t hard to imagine the extra vitriol many held for our part in the fight. As far as…

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