Jared Mobarak | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: The Fire That Took Her [2022]

2022/10/152022/10/19 Jared Mobarak

Tell me there’s hope. There are many reasons why director Patricia E. Gillespie wanted to tell Judy Malinowski’s story, but the most crucial was her desire to ensure she wasn’t forgotten. That’s a risk in domestic violence cases regardless of severity since statistics state 1 in 3 American women experience intimate partner violence during their lifetime. It’s so common that no one will be surprised to discover Judy’s murderer not only had multiple priors for that specific charge (amongst others), but that she had called and told police she feared…

BIFF22 REVIEW: Lovely Jackson [2023]

2022/10/142022/11/27 Jared Mobarak

Welcome to my memory. More than just a documentary detailing the circumstances surrounding Rickey Jackson‘s tragic conviction for a murder he did not commit in 1975, Matt Waldreck‘s Lovely Jackson is a memoir that gives its subject the ability to exorcize his demons through a first-hand reckoning with the experience itself in his own words. The result creates an emotional juxtaposition that goes beyond simply narrating reenactments—it enlists Rickey to both play himself and stand watch as Mario Beverly plays the memory of the eighteen-year-old man he was upon entering…

REVIEW: Old Man [2022]

2022/10/122022/10/15 Jared Mobarak

There’s all kinds of death and beauty out here. Some wounds don’t heal. Not with time. Not with a mythical lake of water with the power to mend all ailments. And while we can try to forget, the mind will always keep a little bit of the truth in reach to ensure the cause of the pain is never far away. It therefore makes sense that we would ultimately meet and leave Stephen Lang‘s character at the center of Old Man asleep on his bed with thumb in mouth like…

REVIEW: The Banshees of Inisherin [2022]

2022/10/112022/10/19 Jared Mobarak

To are graves. Just like every other day at two o’clock for the past how many years, Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) strolls across Inisherin, a small island off Ireland’s western shore, to collect his best friend Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) for a pint at Jonjo Devine’s (Pat Shortt) bar. Unlike those days (up to and including yesterday), however, his knock at the window goes unanswered. Colm is neither in distress nor absent. He’s merely sitting inside his house smoking. Pádraic is at a loss. Why won’t he acknowledge his presence?…

REVIEW: Empire of Light [2022]

2022/10/112022/12/07 Jared Mobarak

I’m not some problem to be solved. The lithium has left Hilary (Olivia Colman) numb. That’s what she tells her doctor before he replies that the feeling will go away once she gets used to the medication. It isn’t necessarily affecting her job performance as duty manager of the Empire Cinema, though. If anything, “numb” might help considering what occurred to spark the prescription in the first place. But I’m getting ahead of myself since that information isn’t revealed until later. For now, writer/director Sam Mendes simply needs Hilary to…

REVIEW: May [2003]

2022/10/102022/10/10 Jared Mobarak

I need more parts. Kids don’t like weird. They like being weird and marking those weirder than them as pariahs out of jealousy and/or entitlement. The question where it concerns May Dove Canady (Angela Bettis) is whether she was ever actually weird at all. As writer/director Lucky McKee explains via a brief prologue, the kids stayed away from her because of how she handled her lazy eye. Rather than lean into it and make it a non-issue, her mother did everything in her power to force young May to keep…

REVIEW: To Leslie [2022]

2022/10/062022/10/07 Jared Mobarak

You’re trying to do what I didn’t do. Despite what she tells herself as she scrounges up enough money for that first beer at the bar before quickly pivoting to flirting for free drinks the rest of the night, Leslie (Andrea Riseborough) hit rock bottom a long time ago. Leaving home merely postponed that self-realization by allowing her to avoid the carnage left in her wake much longer than she should have. If she finds another motel to sleep in without paying rent and another man to facilitate her addiction,…

REVIEW: Sirens [2022]

2022/10/032022/10/10 Jared Mobarak

But I don’t want to live in fear. While Rita Baghdadi‘s documentary Sirens centers upon the first all-female thrash metal band from the Middle East, it’s not really about the band. We follow them to a gig at Glastonbury, watch rehearsal sessions, and peek in on photoshoots, but the focus goes deeper than music. It reaches past the usual rock clichés to recognize that the struggle these women face is more immediate than striving to perform for sold out crowds or become signed by a label. This is about surviving…

BIFF22 REVIEW: Relative [2023]

2022/09/302022/11/27 Jared Mobarak

Right beside you. Life is about handling contradictions. And they all demand that we choose between compromising, conceding, or refusing to back down whether it’s opposite a family member, friend, lover, or even yourself. We weigh pros and cons. We anticipate a future that we can never know for certain. Do we choose the job or the potential for love? Do we sacrifice our career for our spouse? Do we leave our hometown, or do we decide to make a new one? Each choice becomes another snowflake falling atop a…

REVIEW: Cerdita [Piggy] [2022]

2022/09/292022/10/10 Jared Mobarak

The town is full of spite. There’s a reason why Carlota Pereda films Sara (Laura Galán) urinating through her clothes as an old friend (Irene Ferreiro‘s Claudia) who’s drifted away towards the clique that bullies her puts a bloody hand on the back window of a serial killer’s van while screaming for help. We need to understand her fear. Just because Sara is a teenager who’s been brutally victimized by an entire town of peers doesn’t mean she’s measuring the situation and deciding to let Claudia, Maca (Claudia Salas), and…

REVIEW: Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon [2022]

2022/09/282022/09/28 Jared Mobarak

Forget what you know. Everyone asks Mona Lisa Lee (Jeon Jong-seo) if she has any friends. It’s the first question that comes to mind when confronting a stranger who looks lost and out of sorts with their surroundings because you want to help them find a safe place and the care of people they can trust. Unfortunately, Mona Lisa can do nothing but shake her head “No” because she’s been locked in a juvenile care facility for a decade: catatonic and in a straitjacket due to “violent tendencies” upon arrival…