Dean Norris | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: The Book of Henry [2017]

2017/06/202017/06/21 Jared Mobarak

“I want to see the sky” There’s a lot of backlash against director Colin Trevorrow for reasons he didn’t necessarily earn. Most of the vitriol stems from his being scooped up by the Hollywood studio machine after helming just one indie film. That debut was the Sundance award-winning Safety Not Guaranteed, a small-scale sci-fi written by Derek Connolly. Suddenly Trevorrow was vaulted to A-list status—again something he didn’t quite earn—to helm Jurassic World and to takeover Star Wars: Episode IX from another festival darling turned tent-pole director Josh Trank (whose…

REVIEW: Fist Fight [2017]

2017/02/132017/02/16 Jared Mobarak

“Never trash talk an English teacher” It’s hard to believe that “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” has been on the air for twelve years now, but it’s still going strong. While the show opened doors for the entire quartet of relative unknowns, Charlie Day has been the one who’s leveraged his rising star into a pretty prolific film career, generally as the confused, manic comic relief. He fills that role on the show too, albeit at a level of imbecilic illiteracy that’s hard to fathom without watching yourself. But in…

TIFF14 REVIEW: Men, Women & Children [2014]

2014/09/062014/09/11 Jared Mobarak

“I guess I was just scared” We are the pale blue dot. Earth? No. The intermittently blinking light on the end of an out-of-touch parent’s device for transparently spying on a daughter’s electronic path when he/she should be proud for having a smart and compassionate teen unlike the majority populating the local high school. Our world’s different from the one Carl Sagan represented by filling the Voyager spacecraft with records of music, languages, and calls of whales. Now in a post-9/11 America we fear strangers as well as friends, peers,…

REVIEW: Total Recall [1990]

2012/07/272015/05/29 Jared Mobarak

“A man is defined by his actions, not his memory” By the time Total Recall began filming—about a decade after its Hollywood genesis—quite the team of science fiction luminaries had been assembled. With inspiration from Blade Runner‘s Philip K. Dick; a script by the creators of Alien, Ronald Shusett and Dan O’Bannon; the directorial expertise of RoboCop‘s Paul Verhoeven; and The Terminator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, out front, this colossal undertaking was put atop the shoulders of dreamers. Spring-boarding off the question of whether reality can be proven alongside an authentically…

REVIEW: The Cell [2000]

2010/03/062011/08/24 Jared Mobarak

“Where do you come from?” After being enraptured by its trailer and what looked to be some nightmarishly stunning visuals, it has taken me ten years to finally see Tarsem Singh’s The Cell. Every time I had the desire to rent it, the words of so many around me saying not to waste the effort always killed the idea. But I am the kind of person who can love a movie strictly from its aesthetics, whether the story is coherent or just barely interesting. Having the same feelings after watching…