Jared Mobarak

I bet another viewing would reveal missed details, but the threat of being wrong and finding myself enduring the slow, quiet madness again scares me.

Everything you want from a western thematically is present with arch stereotypes of good and evil prevalent but never detrimental to the characters.

Estevez isn’t afraid to swing for the fences and elicit some tears from empathetic audience members, but he’s also willing to stop himself short of full-on exploitation via senseless violence. That’s what makes The Public a success despite the convenient characters and constant paralleling showing the merit of second chances. Estevez never forgets the humanity he’s striving to spotlight.

While the movie provides common sense scenarios, its success lies in putting faces to the issue. It highlights heroes and villains to transform abstract numbers into human beings. That power trumps any lack of cinematic brilliance because this type of documentary seeks exposure and potential hope.

I feel like Day could have made three documentaries out of his footage: one about Greif’s journey, one about street artists, and one about the art world’s old and new guard.

It means something to see activists in Wisconsin band together and dig for the truth even if the damage has already done its job. Dashed hope is still hope after all. Every example—failed or not—reminds us that we can fight again.

With superb performances (Fiennes, Mulligan, James, and Flynn shine), gorgeous cinematography, lyrical editing, and a complementary score, the film proves a melancholic wonder that isn’t easily forgotten.

The documentary gets repetitive as Mokhnenko does his thing over and over again. The promise of more keeps us engaged and the absence of it disappoints. This is too bad because when it works it is captivating.

How Joelle Touma’s script progresses is heavy-handed in its desire to augment the tensions and provide justifications, but it’s still powerful nonetheless.

Being on the track at all and using it to springboard themselves to higher education is the real victory here. It’s hard to dig ourselves out of trouble if we’re never given a chance. They got one and ran with it.

The result is a fantasy adventure with high stakes despite death seeming impermanent throughout. Rather than be about finding eternal life like many tales of its kind are, Big Fish & Begonia is about giving it.

The imagery of water fish swimming in the sky while Hina floats towards an uncharted “marine” habitat of clouds is stunning to behold and the humor earns some big laughs even if much of it centers around teenage horniness and sex-based assumptions. Beneath all that, though, is a resonant tale of empathy and romance.

Don’t expect to know how it’s all going to end; Pereda makes certain to save the blood for the finale.

I won’t lie and say Mystery Road kept me on the edge of my seat for its duration, but there is a lot to enjoy in its delicately peeled back layers.

Alice is truly independent like never before and she’s confronted with the unfair fact that she probably won’t be able to maintain it if she also hopes to keep Jules. To watch Piponnier weigh that abhorrent truth is to witness the internal struggle every woman who’s experienced this type of coerced acquiescence faces.

It’s not laugh-out-loud funny, but I was smiling for the duration, and its subversions of certain archetypes (see Noah Urrea’s Clay) kept things marginally fresh. Good and bad, it met expectations.

The filmmakers utilize Rose’s intent with Barker’s story and run with it to find the most terrifying, resonate, and scathing conclusion.

It reaches past the usual rock clichés to recognize that the struggle these women face is more immediate than striving to perform for sold-out crowds or become signed by a label. This is about surviving a chaotic environment marked by past violence while still entrenched in present-day political revolution.

It’s the story of a young woman coming of age against the backdrop of both the injustices of her family and country. The former is overtly portrayed by the events that lead Margo to run, but the latter is never far behind despite its more subtle inclusion.

This is the Devil’s story. The Dark and the Wicked is Satan entertaining himself with the dread of those he could kill in an instant if he wanted. But he doesn’t. He wants them to endure an agony they never thought possible and for us to question the veracity of what we see.

While a romance on its surface, Catherine Corsini‘s Summertime is really about freedom.

Maskell is great in the title role.

McArdle and Brallier have thus rendered VFW an efficient us versus them scenario with Fred’s crew possessing an infectious, three-dimensional rapport opposite Boz and cronies leaning into their one-track yearning for a fix. Begos then brings the grainy and gritty aesthetic its predecessors possessed to really deliver a throwback vibe augmented solely by new advancements in violently realistic gore.

Definition Please‘s strength is its authenticity and normalization of minorities away from blatant stereotypes. It acknowledges the struggles endured with honesty and humor in ways that are as relatable as they are unique.

Robe of Gems isn’t an easy film. Its harrowing content is devoid of optimism and its pacing ensures we wallow in the resulting suffering even if very little of it is actually shown on-screen.

While the film has some heartfelt exchanges of kinship and empathy, however, it is also punctuated by moments of abject despair. This is crucial to a core message that moves beyond the healing power of art towards the entitlement those who make it possess and those who serve as their subjects don’t.

It’s a helluva ride through the annals of religious history and the ways in which the concept of God has been bought and sold by charlatans and pop culture.

This is a very quiet and contemplative film driven by characters above plot.