Film Festival | www.jaredmobarak.com

TIFF21 REVIEW: The Wheel [2022]

2021/09/022022/07/08 Jared Mobarak

The happiest place to be sad. Despite only being twenty-four years old, Walker (Taylor Gray) and Albee (Amber Midthunder) head into the woods from their Los Angeles existence to try saving their eight-year marriage (they’re from Texas). Well, he’s trying to save their marriage. To look at their interactions is to wonder why Albee hadn’t left years ago. We catch glimpses of a smile every now and then, but mostly her head is buried in her phone or coldly lamenting why Walker has taken her to the middle of nowhere…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Julia [2021]

2021/09/012021/09/12 Jared Mobarak

Nothing was too much trouble if it was going to produce a beautiful result. Booked to talk about Mastering the Art of French Cooking on public access channel WGBH-TV, Julia Child took it upon herself to call the station and request a hotplate for demonstration purposes. She wanted to show a recipe in action to the people watching rather than mere conversation and the extra effort turned the segment into a sensation earning enough calls and letters to offer her a pilot. This cookbook that took twelve-years to write via…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Ste. Anne [2021]

2021/08/312021/09/14 Jared Mobarak

She scolded God. It’s been four years since Renée (Rhéanne Vermette) left home without a word. Four years that her brother Modeste (Jack Theis) and his wife Elenore (Valerie Marion) have spent raising her daughter Athene (Isabelle d’Eschambault) as their own. Their reunion is thus not without its confusion as the little girl is suddenly caught between two mothers: one she knows and one she barely remembers. What little does stick in her mind feels different from the woman now set in front of her too just as everything else…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Sis dies corrents [The Odd-Job Men] [2021]

2021/08/292021/09/10 Jared Mobarak

What could go wrong? It’s an important week for three handymen in Barcelona. Pep (Pep Sarrà) is retiring after decades on the job. Moha (Mohamed Mellali) is showing what he can do as his potential replacement. And Valero (Valero Escolar) is left to reconcile their swap’s extreme change to his routine with an empty stomach due to a last-minute attempt to lose weight before a family member’s wedding that weekend. There’s a bit of “old man yelling at clouds” with Pep’s last hurrah providing the opportunity to tell builders how…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Cicha ziemia [Silent Land] [2022]

2021/08/282021/09/11 Jared Mobarak

Guests are always welcome here. Desperate for respite from their bourgeois lives in Poland, Adam (Dobromir Dymecki) and Anna (Agnieszka Zulewska) decide to vacation on a tiny island in Italy to get away. They wanted a big house with a pool and scenic view to spend as much time alone on the property as possible. While a genial local (Marcello Romolo‘s Fabio) promised exactly that, the pool is found empty and in disarray. He offers a discount. They refuse. He offers a free dinner at his trattoria in town. They…

FANTASIA21 REVIEW: Mad God [2022]

2021/08/212022/03/30 Jared Mobarak

The Mad God of the film’s title is writer/director/animator Phil Tippett and the sheer audacity of him manufacturing an 80-minute opus of grotesquery sprung from a passage by Leviticus that would ultimately need thirty years to complete. His original footage went before cameras during the late 80s and early 90s—around the time he was working on Robocop 2—before he let the concept fade away once computer graphics (thanks to Jurassic Park, which he won an Oscar for) began taking over the special effects industry. It wasn’t until the 2010s that…

FANTASIA21 REVIEW: Baby Money [2021]

2021/08/202021/08/22 Jared Mobarak

Everyone’s gotta have their moment. The job is simple. Break into an old couple’s home in the middle of the night, skulk around while they sleep to procure a purple metal box, and then just wait for a 4am call on an already supplied burner phone. In, out, and thousands of dollars richer. Saying “No’ isn’t therefore an option for Minny (Danay Garcia) and Gil (Michael Drayer) considering they don’t even have to get their hands dirty as getaway driver and lookout respectively. Having a baby on the way and…

TIFF21 REVIEW: A Banquet [2022]

2021/08/192021/10/19 Jared Mobarak

What if this is just me now? It’s a question we ask throughout the duration of our lives: What’s the point? Maybe you say those words in search of meaning where humanity as a species is concerned. Maybe it’s to find purpose as an individual when nothing seems to be going right. Jason (Richard Keep) wonders what the point of surviving is when his fate has already been sealed. His wife Holly (Sienna Guillory) is being forced into the role of caretaker while also wading through the reality that she’s…

FANTASIA21 REVIEW: Baby, Don’t Cry [2021]

2021/08/182021/08/23 Jared Mobarak

You still have a chance. Baby (Zita Bai) is a seventeen-year-old Chinese immigrant surviving on the fringes of her community. She’s a voyeur—always with camera on to capture the dialogue and actions of others so that she can better mimic how it is that she should act to “fit in.” That she also photographs animal carcasses and death with excitement might make that sort of assimilation tough, but she’s not really interested in those that would dismiss such a thing without context. It’s not until she meets Fox (Vas Provatakis)…

FANTASIA21 REVIEW: Daewoebi: Gwonryeok-ui Tansaeng [The Devil’s Deal] [2021]

2021/08/172021/08/22 Jared Mobarak

Can’t we live ordinary lives? There’s no way anybody beats Jeon Hae-woong (Cho Jin-woong) in a hometown election because everyone in Haeundae loves him. Walking down the street means shaking hands and bowing to applause because the people know that he will fight for them. He is one of them, after all. Thinking as much only proves naïve if the world in which he exists is corrupt and, according to the President (who is also up for re-election at the same time as Congress), this will be the most transparently…

FANTASIA21 REVIEW: When I Consume You [2022]

2021/08/162022/06/06 Jared Mobarak

I’m taking a lot of deep breaths. Daphne (Libby Ewing) and Wilson Shaw (Evan Dumouchel) didn’t really have anyone growing up besides themselves and the same could be said now too. They cut out their parents years ago and did their best to dig out from under the trauma they endured, but it almost came crashing down five years ago courtesy of the former’s long-lasting drug addiction. They got through it, though. Together. And they have hope again thanks to Daphne’s dream of adopting a child to love like they…