Tag: Martha Plimpton

REVIEW: Mass [2021]

Jared Mobarak

I don’t think I can say it. First things first: you should go into Fran Kranz‘s directorial debut Mass as blind as possible. Knowing the premise beforehand won’t necessarily ruin anything, but he is hiding the particulars with reason as far as the emotional and narrative impact that comes with one of the characters saying it as plain as day. And that moment should be allowed its full weight. You should know that death binds these two couples—Martha Plimpton‘s Gail and Jason Isaacs‘ Jay opposite Ann Dowd‘s Linda and Reed…

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REVIEW: Honey Bee [2019]

Jared Mobarak

You’ll like the horses then. It would be easy to dismiss Rama Rau‘s first non-documentary feature Honey Bee as another melodramatically grim look at the consequences of sex trafficking in North America because it does utilize a lot of narrative convenience as far as driving the plot towards its endgame. Doing so, however, would discount the reason why Bonnie Fairweather and Kathleen Hepburn‘s script works this way and why the resulting message is more important than the journey to get there. The whole point of portraying young Natalie’s (Julia Sarah…

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REVIEW: Frozen II [2019]

Jared Mobarak

Do the next right thing. I have to give directors Jennifer Lee (who also wrote the script) and Chris Buck credit for not simply jumping at the chance to follow up a cultural phenomenon for the paycheck. People wondered on opening weekend when a sequel to Frozen would arrive and these two held fast to their mutual decision of waiting until the story drew them back. They even began work on a completely separate project before heeding the call of unfinished business where Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel)…

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