Tag: Hard Candy

REVIEW: Paradise [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“Why twitter with Satan when you can friend with God?” My first trip to the Toronto International Film Festival had me arriving at the box office with vouchers and no clue about what to see. Ready for anything, my friend and I took a chance on Juno based solely on our enjoying Thank You for Smoking and our intrigue in Ellen Page’s follow up to her fantastic turn in Hard Candy. It was a great choice: funny, fresh, contemporary, and accompanied by a Q&A with director Jason Reitman and first-time…

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REVIEW: 30 Days of Night [2007]

Jared Mobarak

“Where’s my phone?” Here is the next chapter in the graphic novels cum film movement that has been taking over the industry. The ingredients seem pretty foolproof: a revisionist vampire tale screenwritten by the novel’s authors, a setting without the sun for thirty days, a hard-r rating, a good cast, and visionary music video director David Slade fresh off his debut feature Hard Candy. 30 Days of Night is a brutal look into a world where the monsters reign supreme with little in their way to slow them down. With…

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REVIEW: Little Children [2006]

Jared Mobarak

“Please be a good boy” When you have the sort of auspicious debut that director Todd Field had with his fantastic first feature In the Bedroom, there is a big anticipation to see whether the sophomore effort can bring the same intensity. The trailer for Little Children definitely set an ominous tone with its minimalist composition of frame, the sparse amount of words, and the foreboding train sounds heard throughout. It was a great tease, doing its job to spark interest while not giving too much away. I had hoped…

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