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TIFF15 REVIEW: Desierto [2016]

2015/09/192015/11/09 Jared Mobarak

“Welcome to the land of the free” A tense thriller of survival set against a desolate landscape of quiet austerity until the deafening sound of our heroes’ pursuer returns after a brief respite allowing these strangers the time to emotively talk about their lives—no, it’s not Gravity. Filmmaker Jonás Cuarón certainly has a type, though, since his sophomore effort in the director’s chair Desierto has a lot of formal similarities to his and father Alfonso Cuarón‘s Oscar-winning ride. Thematically different since the whole exists in the wasteland battlegrounds of the…

TIFF15 REVIEW: El Adiós [2015]

2015/09/042015/09/16 Jared Mobarak

“Rosana, can you help me with this?” I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of servants in this day and age. Money notwithstanding, just thinking about sitting at a dinner table and asking someone to do something you could have completed in the time it took to ask is impossible to fathom. Add the dynamic of an entitled secondary employer and the whole thing becomes even less so. Clara Roquet‘s El Adiós takes great care to show just how much the deceased matriarch of this wealthy Bolivian family meant to…

FANTASIA15 REVIEW: Pos eso [Possessed] [2014]

2015/08/012015/08/02 Jared Mobarak

“What he did left his teacher speechless” I didn’t know I wanted a horror parody in the style of “Celebrity Deathmatch” until about halfway through Samuel Ortí Martí‘s [Sam] pitch black skewering of the genre Pos eso [Possessed]. His and Rubén Ontiveros‘ script is littered with homage to The Day the Earth Stood Still in dialogue, The Omen in characters, The Exorcist in plot, Raiders of the Lost Ark in its cold open, and countless others—Alien, A Trip to the Moon, etc.—in visual flourishes. A fun pastiche of anything and…

REVIEW: Relatos salvajes [Wild Tales] [2014]

2015/03/182015/03/26 Jared Mobarak

“Crime of passion?” Best. Wedding. Ever. And trip to the bureaucratic black hole that is government sanctioned towing. And expertly planned, faux fateful airline flight this side of “Lost”. I mean it. Damián Szifrón‘s Relatos salvejes [Wild Tales] is a twisted cousin of Krzysztof Kieslowski‘s The Decalogue, a sextet of darkly comic morality plays where chaos reigns and vengeance rewards the unhinged desperate for a win. From the hilariously absurd yet perfectly revealed machinations of its opening segment “Pasternak” to the vicious table turn of its last “Til Death Do…

REVIEW: La Parka [The Reaper] [2013]

2015/01/312015/01/31 Jared Mobarak

“It’s your turn now” With thought provoking musings on life and death, La Parka [The Reaper] provides a unique look at Mexican slaughterhouse employee Efraín Jiménez García. A husband and father who walked by the business one day to see a “Now Hiring” sign, Efraín has worked his way up from waste sweeper to killer during a twenty-five year career. He understands what it is he does—the difference between animal and man as well as the similarities inherent to watching a bull shot with tears in its eyes. He’s lived…

REVIEW: Libertador [The Liberator] [2014]

2015/01/07 Jared Mobarak

“I am the people” I think I may have snorted a bit when the short list for foreign film Academy Award nominations came out with Libertador [The Liberator] as one of its paltry ten. They wouldn’t have placed the movie with those melodramatic character posters shrouded in a dark brooding atmosphere above critical darlings like Mommy and Two Days, One Night, would they? It just goes to show how you truly cannot judge a book by its cover because even I, the hater of sprawling epics hitting checkpoint after checkpoint…

REVIEW: Una noche [One Night] [2013]

2013/08/192013/08/21 Jared Mobarak

“In Havana nothing stops for anybody” If people didn’t know about the 90-mile expanse of Caribbean waters between Havana, Cuba and Key West, Florida before Elián González in 1999, they certainly did afterwards. Citizens residing in dictatorships have always used America’s “home of the free” slogan as a calling card to immigrate, defect, claim asylum, or simply live illegally—my hometown Buffalo Sabres even assisted in NHLer Alexander Mogilny’s 1989 defection from the Soviet Union. The mixture of civil rights restrictions and poverty can cause anyone to salivate at the prospect…

TIFF12 REVIEW: Ahí va el diablo [Here Comes the Devil] [2013]

2012/09/132014/04/10 Jared Mobarak

“Frightened eyes never lie” If ever a horror film begged for multiple viewings, Ahí va el diablo [Here Comes the Devil] makes a good case. In fact, until a little over halfway through I was completely checked out. I saw what writer/director Adrián García Bogliano was doing, but the on-the-nose sexual juxtapositions of womanhood, devil rape, and a lust for violence lost me. Highly carnal, full of allusions to demonic possession, and presented so matter-of-fact that it becomes discomforting, a streak of cruelty without justified reason introduces how evil exists…

REVIEW: Santiago 73, post mortem [Post Mortem] [2011]

2012/09/042014/04/10 Jared Mobarak

“Congratulations. You now serve the Chilean Army.” Taking the formula he used in Tony Manero one step further, writer/director Pablo Larraín‘s Venice Film Festival Golden Lion award-winning film Santiago 73, post mortem [Post Mortem] assures the world he is a director worth your time. Retaining his trademark shooting style that lingers way longer than comfort should allow, we are thrust into the action by sifting through its aftermath. Always hearing destruction off-screen or seeing it on the edges of the frame, it’s the methodical tracking shots through empty streets with…

REVIEW: Tony Manero [2008]

2012/09/032014/04/10 Jared Mobarak

“That glass floor is the only thing that turns you on” The first of Pablo Larraín‘s cinematic trilogy set during Augusto Pinochet’s reign in Chile, Tony Manero seems happy to keep the political turmoil of the dictator’s regime in the background. Rather than overtly describe the period and the oppression against government detractors, the writer/director decides to focus on one very eccentric man named Raúl Peralta. Friends with enemies and fans alike, we watch his proclivities for violence as he uses the police state to his advantage. With curfews enforced,…

REVIEW: Extraterrestre [Extraterrestrial] [2012]

2012/06/042014/04/23 Jared Mobarak

“Maybe the spacemen will give us diplomas” You wake in a strange place without memory of arriving. You see light’s curved shadows on the wall through clouded eyes while a chorus of clanging is heard in the next room. Disoriented, mildly frightened, and without a clue to what is going on, you’re lost trying to recall the erased minutes of an alcohol-infused evening eerily similar to a crackpot’s account of alien abduction. But rather than a greyed creature with probe in hand, the figure moving in the kitchen is an…