Middle Eastern Film Studies

Captain Abu Raed Film Review Directed by Amin Matalqa  2007 ‧ Drama ‧ 1h 50m IMDB            Rotten Tomatoes           Slant Magazine                                          7.2/10                     80%                            1.5/4 My Rating  ✰✰✰ Captain Abu Raed is a heart warming tale about an elderly man working a lower class job in an airport as a janitor and how he saves and inspires the life of a young troubled kid. The first half of the film felt rather slow but it built up the character of Abu Raed fairly well in a way where we are able to understand why he is the way he is and how his upsetting past shaped him and his reactions to the people around him. Abu Raed makes up stories for the children using an old air pilot's hat he found in the trash at the airport and makes up stories of his fake travels to entertain these children. One child saw through his fables and tried to expose Abu Raed for the liar that he is and makes a point of

Wadjda Film Review  Directed by Haifaa al-Mansour   2012 ‧ Drama/World cinema ‧ 1h 38m IMDB     Rotten Tomatoes    Metacritic  7.5/10             99%                    81%  My Rating  ✰✰✰ ✰ Haifaa al-Mansour's film Wadjda is a humble film about a young girl living in Saudi Arabia navigating several roadblocks in her quest to buy the bicycle of her dreams. A very simple plot but told from a perspective people in the West don't usually have access to. Sure we have plenty of "coming of age" films told from a perspective we recognize and can relate to but something very special about this film is how well it is able to make the viewer feel like they are part of the story. There are very few characters but I think this is a good thing since the writer can deeply develop the few characters they have instead of having too many characters at once but with little character development (a trend Western cinema has really gotten worse with recent

The Square Documentary Review  Directed by Jehane Noujaim       2013 ‧ Drama/History ‧ 1h 48m  IMDB          Rotten Tomatoes    Metacritic  8.1/10                100%                   84% My Rating  ✰✰✰✰ The Academy nominated documentary "The Square" is an absolutely harrowing and yet inspiring look into the demonstrations leading into the revolution happening in Tahrir Square from 2011-2013. The documentary follows a few of the activists who stayed in Tahrir Square until President Hosni Mubarak left and continues to follow their journey as the people of Egypt try to establish a different type of government rule. Unfortunately this divided the country into different sects or groups with their own specific interests in mind. This documentary more closely follows just two groups: the liberal youths and the Muslim Brotherhood. One group is clearly more in the spotlight and more sympathized with while the other was sort of shunned and looked down u

Reel Bad Arabs Film Review     Directed by Sut Jhally     2006   ·  Documentary  ‧ 50 mins    IMDB           Top Documentary Films    My Rating     7.6/10                      7.9/10                         ✰✰✰ Based on a book written by Jack Shaheen, "Reel Bad Arabs" is a short documentary depicting how Arabs or people generally from the Middle East are depicted in American mainstream Hollywood films. The short documentary shows how these demeaning and violent images of Arabs are harmful to people from Middle Eastern descent and essentially demonizing them. This wasn't anything entirely new to me but the movie examples and clips that were used really gave strong evidence in just how many times these concerning and racist stereotypes are being used over and over again. We truly only see very few archetypes of Middle Eastern characters and none of them really describe real people and depict them as less than human.  The documentary goes more into the b