Tag: Vivica A. Fox

REVIEW: Arkansas [2020]

Jared Mobarak

Relying on other people is the fastest way to end up dead. As Kyle (Liam Hemsworth) shares during an early voiceover, organized crime in the backwoods of southern America isn’t very organized. This is good since few of the people in the wholesale drug dealing business of which he’s operated for just a little while are smart. He probably wouldn’t call himself very smart either since he’s content to follow his orders to the letter rather than harbor ambitions about becoming the boss. He’s perceptive in ways that ensure he…

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BIFF18 REVIEW: Caretakers [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Do what is right, not what is easy. Dr. Leigh Waters (Angell Conwell) has a line of dialogue towards the end of Caretakers that I was desperate to hear since the beginning. She reminds the med student under her supervision (George Loomis‘ Jones Berg) that he’s neither a psychologist nor a social worker and thus shouldn’t concern himself with questions or manufacture unsubstantiated answers about his patients beyond the already crucial job he has. I’d go even further by telling Jones he isn’t a detective either. He’s not a family…

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REVIEW: Queen City [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“You have any hot water left, Mr. Bubbles?” The second film in writer/director Peter McGennis‘ Buffalo trilogy, Queen City is a very different beast than his first. Where Buffalo Bushido utilized the locale as a backdrop to the personal story of loss at hand, his newest appears to have been written around its inside jokes dripping nostalgia. With photographs by famed artist Milton Rogovin spliced throughout, a never ending slew of name drops, and one of the best utilizations of the city’s underrated architecture, one can’t help but wonder whether…

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REVIEW: Independence Day [1996]

Jared Mobarak

“We will not go quietly into the night” The man who proved we could only take so many disaster films and yet still made more, Roland Emmerich shouldn’t be denied the astronomical success of the one that jump-started the genre’s big budget revival in the first place. After giving us the rather smart science fiction actioner Stargate, he and writing/producing partner Dean Devlin came up with the treatment for Independence Day as a response to the constant questions about their opinions on alien life. Wanting to take a step back…

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