Month: April 2011

BNFF11 REVIEW: Heart of Now [2011]

Jared Mobarak

“The bottom line—I don’t feel good about what happened” Very near the beginning of Heart of Now, a young girl, Monica (Mary Elise Hayden), makes the quasi-pithy, half-serious/half-joking statement that all women need a man who will give them ‘loads of intensity and massive support’. Couldn’t this observation expand further to blanket all of humanity, though? Don’t we all need that mix of feeling and security to go about our daily lives with meaning? Well, if we are to use Zak Forsman’s lead Amber (Marion Kerr) as an exemplification for…

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BNFF11 REVIEW: Zombie Bankers [2011]

Jared Mobarak

“Welcome to America, prick” And now comes the kind of review I hate to write. Being as independent oriented as the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival is, you will have to see some local productions if you plan on taking on a large portion of the schedule. What happens, though, is that oftentimes the amateur work shown in this category just doesn’t come close to the production, budget, or talent of its more polished brethren. I know how much hard work went into the horror comedy Zombie Bankers and I applaud…

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BNFF11 REVIEW: A Lonely Place for Dying [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“Which do you fear more—to be exposed or to be killed?” It begins with a KGB turncoat radioing for assistance from his CIA handler, desperate to make his way to America so he can leave behind the Socialist nation now on his tail. Justin Eugene Evans’s A Lonely Place for Dying, hitting the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival on its two year plus tour, puts all its cards on the table early as Agent Greenglass (Michael Wincott) tells Nikolai (Ross Marquand) no just before the Russian picks up another receiver with…

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BNFF11 REVIEW: More Than Me [2010]

Jared Mobarak

“Screw you, why wasn’t my kid in the game?” When you hear about a documentary featuring Jim Breuer on his first stand-up tour in six years, you think pot jokes, Goat Boy, and plenty of laughs. The last thing you’d expect is a film that pushes the concert aspect to the background in lieu of a poignant tale of family, love, and compassion. William Philbin’s More Than Me shows how this tour is not a cash grab or attempt to restart a career—Breuer is doing quite well on Sirius Radio—but…

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BNFF11 REVIEW: Webdultery [2011]

Jared Mobarak

“I still love him … it’s just not the same anymore” Can having ‘fun’ with a stranger while in a tough marriage save your family from complete destruction? Charles Wahl’s film Webdultery explores the question from both the male and female perspective—two people who fell in love at 20 and now, with a young son, are unable to stand the other long enough to admit there’s a problem. Screened at the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival, the drama starts with some levity, disarming the audience into a state of open-mindedness as…

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BNFF11 REVIEW: The Beast Pageant [2010]

Jared Mobarak

“Sometimes you gotta feed the serpent its own damn tail” The love child of David Lynch and Michel Gondry has been born in Rochester, NY and its name is The Beast Pageant. Screening at the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival, Albert Birney and Jon Moses’s film is obtuse, inventive, funny, and more than it appears on the surface. Well, at least I’d like to think it is. Despite Birney’s answer of “dreams, making a film, and shooting around his city” when asked what his inspiration was, there has to be so…

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BNFF11 REVIEW: La vérité du ciel [The Truth of the Sky] [2008]

Jared Mobarak

“He didn’t say goodbye to his mother” Wanting to bring his film La vérité du ciel [The Truth of the Sky] to the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival was an action of catharsis for Jim McSherry. His documentary short was shot fifteen years after the plane crash that altered the lives of many—including him—it is centered on. Losing his brother, who was coming home to see his pregnant wife by getting on an earlier flight, when an Air Inter flight in France crashed an hour after takeoff changed McSherry in a…

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BNFF11 REVIEW: The Floating Shadow [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“I’ll only bring you bad luck” Throw the preconceptions that China would be unwilling to fund a project with dark subject matter such as rape and murder in a contemporary, non-feudal way out the window. According to writer/director Jia Dong Shuo, as long as you have a unique idea to bring to artistic fruition, finances will be available. And with that comes The Floating Shadow, a psychological drama about a young woman incarcerated, shifting back and forth between past and present, dream and reality. Chock full of traumatic events repressed,…

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REVIEW: Hanna [2011]

Jared Mobarak

“I found her, she can’t speak English. She’s Sri Lankan.” Written on spec by Seth Lochhead in 2006, the Black List alum Hanna finally reaches screens with help from co-screenwriter David Farr and director Joe Wright. If you thought Wright’s last film, The Soloist, seemed a bit out of his comfort zone, having previously completed two period pieces, I can relate to the confusion and excitement you’d have hearing his next would be an action thriller starring a young, brutally violent female killer. But just as he stunned me by…

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REVIEW: The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre [1967]

Jared Mobarak

“I gotta go pay a bill” Known to me by his “King of B-Movies” reputation, Roger Corman was always a guy I equated with low-budget horror. So, it was a surprise to see him as director of The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, a film steeped in the historical fiction of late-1920s American gang warfare. It’s Al Capone versus Bugs Moran, both vying to control the dissemination and profit of prohibition speakeasy alcohol, each looking to rid themselves of irksome competition while acquiring vengeance for body counts accumulated on either side.…

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REVIEW: Arthur [2011]

Jared Mobarak

“A savant-like gift of defying death with fun” Having been a child during the 80s, Dudley Moore will always be Patch, the elf that saved Christmas in Santa Claus [The Movie]. I had seen Arthur, and probably Arthur 2: On the Rocks—they were PG after all, even though my parents could have done better than allow me to possibly cultivate an alcoholic as a role model—but I can admittedly remember very little besides the nondescript plot synopsis available on any movie site. So, while I didn’t really have any attachment…

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