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TIFF21 REVIEW: The Desperate Hour [2022]

2021/09/132022/01/20 Jared Mobarak

I want this to end. Screenwriter Chris Sparling takes us back to the script that put him on the Hollywood map with The Desperate Hour (formerly Lakewood). Much like his isolated one-man show Buried, this latest focuses on a single character caught in a high-pressure situation with seemingly no way out. Unlike it, however, the real danger is far away from the screen. You see, Amy Carr (Naomi Watts) is safe. She woke up, texted work that she’d be taking a personal day, told the kids to go to school,…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Earwig [2021]

2021/09/122021/09/12 Jared Mobarak

Everything is well, sir. Director Lucile Hadzihalilovic explained how she’d rather viewers of her latest film Earwig (co-written by Geoff Cox) go in knowing as little about it as possible. As such, her introduction said little beyond its source material’s mysterious origins (author Brian Catling dreamt of a girl offering him her teeth before writing the novella in one sitting) and her freedom to make her adaptation unique with as many changes as she saw fit. Do I wish she gave more in hindsight now having finished watching? Yes. Very…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Arthur Rambo [2021]

2021/09/122021/09/13 Jared Mobarak

I can defend myself. There’s an interesting lesson to be learned at the center Laurent Cantet‘s Arthur Rambo that’s honestly shocking to think still needs to be learned. I don’t mean that in reference to the director or his fellow co-writers Fanny Burdino and Samuel Doux, though, as many people talking about the film do. I’m talking about the people like Karim D. (Rabah Nait Oufella) who still can’t quite grasp the reality that social media isn’t a safe space. It’s not a diary to collect your rage and insecurities…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Murina [2022]

2021/09/122022/05/27 Jared Mobarak

Dreams die in paradise. The thing we often forget about exotic locales is that they aren’t an escape for those who live there. While co-eds dock ashore for sun, sex, and fun, families are merely waking up early to go spearfishing so that they have dinner that night. The psychological toll of constantly looking out your window at happy faces while dealing with the futility of teenage living under a domineering father with few if any opportunities to leave must be daunting. So, when Julija (Gracija Filipovic) exits the water…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Encounter [2021]

2021/09/112021/09/12 Jared Mobarak

Everything I do is to protect you. A meteorite falling to Earth disintegrates into stardust that subsequently permeates everything it touches. It hits the soil, enters a bug, is consumed again, and then injected into human flesh by a mosquito while feeding on a microscopic tardigrade about to explode. This is the computer-generated prologue to Michael Pearce‘s Encounter that sets the table for its forthcoming struggle between man and neurological parasite. Has he and co-writer Joe Barton therefore shown that their protagonist has suddenly been infected while sleeping? Malik Khan…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Night Raiders [2021]

2021/09/112021/10/20 Jared Mobarak

We are still here. German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller coined the poetic confession “First they came …” in 1946. The post-WWII piece spoke about how groups like the Nazis would always find new targets to oppress once their recent victims were erased. First it was the socialists. Then trade unionists and Jews. The sigh of relief breathed by those not yet included under those labels is therefore only ever brief. Unless you don the swastika to partake in the purges, they’ll eventually find a label to justify wiping you from…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Jockey [2021]

2021/09/112021/09/11 Jared Mobarak

I’ve never been scared before. Between the stiff hand and the self-applied electrode therapy in his trailer, hearing the track veterinarian tell Jackson Silva (Clifton Collins Jr.) he needs to see a human doctor isn’t surprising. Neither is his refusal to heed the warning. Jackson knows that going to the hospital for confirmation will be the final nail in his jockey career’s coffin and he truly believes he has two good years left. Add the prospect of his long-time trainer/friend Ruth (Molly Parker) unveiling a horse she took a gamble…

TIFF21 REVIEW: All My Puny Sorrows [2022]

2021/09/102022/04/04 Jared Mobarak

We’re meant to move on. What we feel often confuses what we know. To Yoli (Alison Pill), living in the shadow of her perfect sister Elf (Sarah Gadon) was a frustrating existence that seemingly guaranteed her own rocky path continued into adulthood. She had a daughter at eighteen (Amybeth McNulty‘s Nora), left her husband after sixteen years despite being the one who refuses to sign the divorce papers, and sees her writing career as fledgling at best. Elf, on the other hand, is now an internationally renowned concert pianist with…

TIFF21 REVIEW: A feleségem története [The Story of My Wife] [2021]

2021/09/102021/09/10 Jared Mobarak

You must accommodate life or else it will punish you. It was a joke. Captain Jakob Störr (Gijs Naber) is cajoled into meeting his con artist friend Kodor (Sergio Rubini) at a fancy restaurant while on shore leave to help spy on a business partner double-crossing him. Störr had recently been told by his ship’s cook that the stone in his gut was a longing for love rather than food poisoning, so Kodor’s prompt for fake small talk inevitably leads to the captain declaring his need for a wife. The…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Mothering Sunday [2021]

2021/09/102021/10/19 Jared Mobarak

I just wanted everyone to keep playing. Mother’s Day, 1924: a day for servant girls to ride the train home to their mothers and wealthy mothers to have brunch with their children. Except that a post-WWI England could no longer guarantee such things. Even those who still had the opportunity to forget wouldn’t quite be able to shake the generally sense of sorrow permeating the memory of all those sons who died. Marriage announcements hold the bittersweet truths that the groom should have been someone else. Breakfasts carry a quiet…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Petite maman [2021]

2021/09/092021/09/10 Jared Mobarak

We might not see each other again. It’s difficult grappling with the reality that we can never know when our latest “goodbye” to a loved one might prove the last we’ll ever share with them. The act itself is so commonplace and routine that we find ourselves performing on reflex. The assumption is that it’s really a “so long”—an ellipsis awaiting its next word whenever and wherever it may arrive next. Then the day comes when you realize two dots disappeared while you were away to reveal a period of…

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