Month: September 2012

TIFF12 REVIEW: Silver Linings Playbook [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“Is that song really playing?” I know it’s misguided, but my interest in David O. Russell films kind of ended after The Fighter. This was a guy who used to pave his own path with challenging material and comedies that made you think. It’s not even that I disliked his true-life boxing tale—actually I loved it. But where was the eccentricity? Where was the promise of subversive insanity that his sadly unfinished Nailed possessed? He showed he had the skills for the big time and I’m ecstatic he now has…

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TIFF12 REVIEW: Aftershock [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“I’ll buy you a new hand” When opening credits begin with ‘an Eli Roth film’, you should know what to expect. While not quite his creatively—it’s directed by Nicolás López—the torture porn maestro does get a writing credit to accompany his producer and star statuses. With an act structure pretty much identical to Hostel, the fact it is less polished and includes a much more pronounced comedic bent allows viewers to experience a different reaction. Its Chilean setting provides a wealth of partying to be had by our leading trio…

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TIFF12 REVIEW: A Late Quartet [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“You just took a quality violin from a real musician” When the cellist of a world-renowned string quartet discovers early onset Parkinson’s is taking away the dexterity needed to continue playing, the will of the entire group is shaken. Conversations about a replacement, questions about continuing, and attempts to keep their friend’s desire to play alive unsurprisingly ensue while a comic series of sexual trysts add to the fun. This is Yaron Zilberman‘s A Late Quartet—a tale of the conflicts inherent in any collaboration spanning twenty-five years mixed with silly…

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TIFF12 REVIEW: Venuto al mondo [Twice Born] [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“There’s no sea in Sarajevo” Adapted from the 2008 novel by Margaret Mazzantini of the same name, Venuto al mondo [Twice Born] isn’t quite what it seems. When an aged Italian woman named Gemma (Penélope Cruz) receives a phone call from her past, we infer certain facts via hers and her husband’s (director Sergio Castellitto‘s Giuliano) reactions. The mystery man in a photo on their fridge seems more important than a simple friend for who’s work is showing in Sarajevo. And as Gemma and son Pietro (Pietro Castellitto) exit the…

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TIFF12 REVIEW: The Place Beyond the Pines [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“Your skill set? Very unique.” Retaining the gritty authenticity of his lyrically heartbreaking Blue Valentine, Derek Cianfrance‘s new insanely ambitious look into the nature versus nurture equation feels much smaller than its reality. It would be easy to say The Place Beyond the Pines gives us too much to process in too contrived a way, but I believe that would be too quick a judgment. Shifting character focus three times, the film will have you wondering if it would have worked better with an earlier ending. But then you’d miss…

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TIFF12 REVIEW: Frances Ha [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“Ahoy, sexy” A Noah Baumbach film through and through, I can’t help but praise lead actress and co-writer Greta Gerwig‘s influence in making Frances Ha the quirky, subtly hilarious portrait of a twentysomething refusing to accept she is overdue for adulthood that it is. When her titular Frances unabashedly apologizes for “not being a real person”, the hyperbolic exclamation isn’t far off the mark. Living to have fun while hoping life will ultimately fall into place, the realization it’s only passing her by leads to a quarter-life crisis of identity…

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TIFF12 REVIEW: Anna Karenina [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“If you’re a good man you’ll forget everything” When TIFF director and CEO Piers Handling introduced the newest adaptation of Leo Tolstoy‘s Anna Karenina by saying director Joe Wright appropriately played up the theatricality of the novel, I wasn’t quite prepared for the blatant transparency where his stylistic approach’s artifice was concerned. As the camera lingers on a darkened stage covered by a place card to set the scene, I was blown away by the rising curtain uncovering a brilliantly conceived introduction to this TARDIS-like world much bigger on the…

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TIFF12 REVIEW: Après mai [Something in the Air] [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“I live in fantasy. When reality knocks I don’t open.” Sex, drugs, art, and revolution—such was the life of a young European in 1971. Or at least it was the life of a young director at 17 trying to reconcile the state of his country and his ambitions for the future. Taking us along for the rapid ascent into adulthood of a group of school-aged French radicals, Olivier Assayas‘ semi-autobiographical film Après mai [Something in the Air] is a slice of life at a time of wholesale liberation. These Trotskyites…

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TIFF12 REVIEW: No [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“Happiness is coming” What began with a coup ended by the courage of a select group of citizens believing Chile was ready to think about their future. Without bloodshed, bullets, or illegal maneuvering, a misguided attempt by dictator General Pinochet to let the world know he had his country’s support became his ultimate downfall. After legalizing political parties, pressure from the US in 1988 called for the General to issue a plebiscite vote to decide whether or not to extend his reign by eight years. Allowing political detractors to advertise…

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TIFF12 REVIEW: Inch’Allah [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“Both sides is no side” It’s truly amazing to watch how guilt, regret, and sorrow can change the very make-up of your character. It may only be for a brief while, but that moment can impact the lives of many in tragic and devastating ways. This is the portrait of the war-torn area in the Middle East housing Israeli and Palestinian hostilities that writer/director Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette shares in her powerful new film Inch’Allah. A work marked by an unparalleled authenticity through its performances and depictions of the emotional turmoil wrought,…

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TIFF12 REVIEW: 2012 Short Cuts Canada Programmes

Jared Mobarak

Programme 1 “So a TV killed your father” What do you get when you mix the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the ancient metallurgical science of alchemy, and the namesake of inventor Philo Farnsworth? The answer is Connor Gaston‘s short film Bardo Light—titled for the bright glow none of us can avoid at the end of our lives. Told via the police interrogation of the younger Farnsworth (Shaan Rahman) after his adopted father (Bill Gaston) was found suffocated to death in their cabin, we quickly learn of successful experiments using…

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