Tag: Andrew Lanham

REVIEW: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings [2021]

Jared Mobarak

It’s all about staying in the pocket. A big success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been its ability to adapt. Case and point: The Ten Rings. Here’s a terrorist organization utilized in the first MCU film ever, Iron Man, with a logo inscribed by Mongolian symbols that didn’t go over well. It’s been said that the idea was to tease Shang-Chi in The Avengers before giving him and Iron Man’s arch-rival, The Mandarin, exposure afterwards. So enraged by the connotations of that first use, however, the possibility that China…

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REVIEW: The Kid [2019]

Jared Mobarak

You gotta learn to trust inna fella. With so many different iterations of the same exact story flooding the cinematic market every year via reboots and sequels, it’s nice when someone decides to look at a common narrative through a new lens. This is what director Vincent D’Onofrio and screenwriter Andrew Lanham hope to accomplish with The Kid—a glimpse at the oft-mythologized game played by former friends turned enemies Billy the Kid (Dane DeHaan) and Pat Garrett (Ethan Hawke) from the eyes of a fourteen year old boy (Jake Shur‘s…

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REVIEW: The Glass Castle [2017]

Jared Mobarak

“You learn from living. Everything else is a damn lie.” It’s easy to dismiss films like Destin Daniel Cretton‘s The Glass Castle for losing their bite upon reaching a conclusion nobody can deny is melodramatically sentimental. You’ve watched Jeannette Walls’ (Brie Larson) decades-long journey of psychological pain and suffering wrought during her upbringing and ever-present in adulthood. You’ve seen trying times in poverty crosscut with present success, emboldened by her strength to stand tall and be the woman she wants to be no matter what the voices of her past…

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