Month: September 2018

REVIEW: Appropriate Behavior [2015]

Jared Mobarak

I hate so many things too. It would be easy to minimize the broken relationship at the heart of Desiree Akhavan‘s debut feature Appropriate Behavior to Shirin’s (Akhavan) inability to come out as bisexual to her traditional Iranian parents. This is obviously a factor after watching her ex-girlfriend’s (Rebecca Henderson‘s Maxine) increasing frustrations via flashbacks because there’s an issue of trust, identity, and freedom being stifled. But what about the trust, identity, and freedom of Shirin—the half of this coupling who knows that telling her family the truth could make…

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REVIEW: A Happening of Monumental Proportions [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Choose, commit, and move. Men have it tough don’t they? I mean they have to worry about married women they’ve engaged in inner-office affairs with ratting them out to the new boss. Some are forced to face the crushing existential crisis that comes with their failed pipe dreams of rock stardom revealing how they’re nothing but lowly private school music teachers who’ve accomplished nothing in their lives—including, apparently, educating the children in their class. And don’t get me started on the ones who must endure the untimely death of their…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Saf [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Everybody lies. America isn’t the only country with a portion of its population rejecting refugee clemency (although it’s the most high profile due to international stature, economic wealth, and so-called Christian charity). It’s also not the only one blinded to its hate when confronting the matter. Because that’s what it is to look down on someone worse off than you: hate. Blaming immigrants for “stealing” jobs and “ruining” neighborhoods exemplifies resentment. Just because your community backs this thought process doesn’t make it any less a product of bigotry, racism, and…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Il vizio della speranza [The Vice of Hope] [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Remember, misery isn’t the only thing that exists. Less than an hour from Naples, Italy is Castel Volturno, a place marred by newspaper headlines like “Forsaken Village” and “Sex, Drugs, and the Mafia.” It shouldn’t surprise then that director Edoardo De Angelis would use it as the setting for his latest film Il vizio della speranza [The Vice of Hope] considering child trafficking and prostitution are prevalently at its back. These criminal enterprises are presented as this comune’s means for financial stability, everywhere we’re taken openly servicing one or both…

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REVIEW: Lizzie [2018]

Jared Mobarak

I never wanted anything from you. The level of intrigue surrounding Andrew and Abby Borden’s murders in 1892 is crazy because it’s only increased since. We’re talking the O.J. Simpson trial of the 19th century: a well-to-do family mutilated in their home with a hatchet, their youngest daughter Lizzie the prime suspect. She wasn’t the only one, but everyone else had an alibi (some so detailed that you wouldn’t be wrong for thinking they were too good). But when you look over the details of the case and the obvious…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: First Man [2018]

Jared Mobarak

It’s kinda neat The non-controversy surrounding Damien Chazelle‘s First Man shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows how political parties have appropriated art into their agendas since the dawn of time. Of course they’d glom onto the decision to ignore the lunar flag planting as some “un-American” thing rather than read the script, watch the movie, or ask for clarification—options which would have all supplied insight into the reality that Chazelle and screenwriter Josh Singer aren’t telling the story of the moon landing. That goal might be the driving force behind what’s…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Rojo [2018]

Jared Mobarak

They say bodies appear in the desert. The film opens as people leave a house with objects in-hand, the assumption being that they were bought in an estate sale or pilfered before one could begin. A man (Diego Cremonesi) looks in the front door as clueless as we are to what’s happening before a jump cut finds him entering a packed restaurant. Impatient by the bar, he gruffly asks a gentleman seated alone (Dario Grandinetti‘s Claudio) if he’s done eating. An argument colored by entitlement and false manners respectively breaks…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Can You Ever Forgive Me? [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Do you think they all know? Do you have a Lee Israel work on your shelf? What should be a matter of owning one of her books or not since she was a notable author of biographies who hit the New York Times Best Sellers list, things get much more complicated when you look closer to see she wrote more than just about the likes of Dorothy Kilgallen and Estée Lauder. Israel also wrote as some of her subjects too. During the early 1990s when she was down on her…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Float Like a Butterfly [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Keep your head up. A lot can change in five to ten years and even more can unfortunately remain the same. When we first meet the Joyce family little Frances’ age has yet to hit double digits, her younger brother Patrick still clinging to their mom’s side. Their band of traveling Irish sing their folk songs and drink their stout, enjoying the freedom they live to protect—the same freedom outsiders love to destroy by lobbing racist and classist bigotry onto them as though they were savages. Michael Joyce (Dara Devaney)…

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REVIEW: A Simple Favor [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Oopsy. You don’t wonder which woman has secrets after meeting Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) and Emily Nelson (Blake Lively). Instead you wonder which has more. They’re built to be hiding something in their past whether dark or not. The former: a goody two-shoes, little Miss Perfect type who always has the energy to show up every parent at her kid’s school despite a tragic accident that took the life of her husband and brother. The latter: a hard-drinking enigma who refuses to let people take her photo with a heart…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Monsters and Men [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Six dudes for one guy. The conversation surrounding Black Lives Matter is (and should be) about the victims of police violence who’ve yet to see any killers in blue face real consequences. It’s not about saying their lives matter more than anyone else, but that they matter at all. Because if you look at the headlines it’s easy to wonder if people think they do—especially the police. Just like nursery rhymes in classrooms have begun teaching youngsters how to stay safe during school shootings, many parents of POC children are…

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