Category: Toronto International Film Festival

TIFF14 REVIEW: Spring [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“I’m not drunk enough to sleep in your mother’s deathbed” The first words in Colin Geddes’ TIFF description for Vanguard selection Spring are, “Before Sunrise gets a supernatural twist.” You read that as a cinephile and you push everything aside to check out what it could mean. A horror romance co-director Aaron Moorhead described in his and Justin Benson’s (who also wrote the screenplay) introduction as “life, love, and monsters”, its Italy-set journey of an American lost and alone proves equally suspenseful, grotesque, funny, and beautiful. The best part, however,…

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TIFF14 REVIEW: Kill Me Three Times [2014]

Jared Mobarak

“Quality always costs” Director Kriv Stenders left the audience seated for his latest film Kill Me Three Times with the words, “I hope you have as much fun watching as we had making it”. I doubt I did, but I cannot deny it wasn’t the sort of entertaining romp that keeps you on your toes hypothesizing who—if anyone—survives. It seems such a small thing, but a movie with no fear in killing its characters is a lot more enjoyable than one forcing you to watch misfires and flesh wounds so…

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TIFF14 REVIEW: Bang Bang Baby [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“I am that. I am the service station.” Harkening back to the era of its setting, Bang Bang Baby embraces the over-the-top aesthetic of 1963 entertainment with small town girl Stepphy (Jane Levy) dreaming big for a chance at stardom in New York City. Overproduced, old-timey vocals emanate from her mouth as faux backdrops provide the film with the same type of production value we see in the cheesy TV program starring heartthrob Bobby Shore (Justin Chatwin) that she adores. Unfortunately, even if her song wins her a spot on…

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TIFF14 REVIEW: The Cobbler [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“I’m not gonna eat you!” Adults need fairy tales too and Thomas McCarthy—with cowriter Paul Sado—deliver one in The Cobbler. They don’t try to pretend it’s something more either as its opening prologue can attest thanks to older tradesmen on the Lower East Side speaking Yiddish around a table to think up a way to defeat the evil landlord raising their rent to drive them away. Cut to the local shoe man deemed their savior stitching up a pair of loafers with son in tow and we learn his machine…

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TIFF14 REVIEW: The Duke of Burgundy [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“The colder the better” Sometimes you just need to cleanse your palette or expand your mind by checking out a film even the director says is all about the experience. So when Peter Strickland explains how he tried hard not to make us want to find metaphor or meaning beyond what’s onscreen, I’m going to take him at his word. He also admitted title The Duke of Burgundy was a joke—which “ended too late to change it”—that was intentionally misleading considering a staunch period piece this most certainly is not.…

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TIFF14 REVIEW: Welcome to Me [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“And only five carbohydrants” There’s a great reference in Welcome to Me about Cindy Sherman that many may gloss over. Director Shira Piven and screenwriter Eliot Laurence made mention to Network and The Truman Show during their Q&A after my TIFF screening, but I don’t think such comparisons hold a candle to Sherman’s photography challenging audiences with staged depictions of women in society and the media. In them the artist made herself up to be the subject rather than a model or community figure aligned with her concept. The film’s…

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TIFF14 REVIEW: Nightcrawler [2014]

Jared Mobarak

“If you want to win the lottery you have to have the money to buy a ticket” There are some huge ebbs and flows in Dan Gilroy‘s Nightcrawler. At times I loved it, others I felt bad for laughing, and some instances made me wonder what exactly it was I was watching. In the end, however, I can unequivocally say it’s a gem of a lean, mean film that never let’s its foot off the gas pedal with an iconic antihero in Jake Gyllenhaal‘s Lou Bloom who might currently be…

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TIFF14 REVIEW: Men, Women & Children [2014]

Jared Mobarak

“I guess I was just scared” We are the pale blue dot. Earth? No. The intermittently blinking light on the end of an out-of-touch parent’s device for transparently spying on a daughter’s electronic path when he/she should be proud for having a smart and compassionate teen unlike the majority populating the local high school. Our world’s different from the one Carl Sagan represented by filling the Voyager spacecraft with records of music, languages, and calls of whales. Now in a post-9/11 America we fear strangers as well as friends, peers,…

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TIFF14 REVIEW: 归来 [Gui lai] [Coming Home] [2014]

Jared Mobarak

“So you do have a heart” I kept trying to think about what films Zhang Yimou‘s 归来 [Gui lai] [Coming Home] reminded me of while watching. Obvious ones came to mind like Away From Her and Amour where Gong Li‘s Yu was concerned and even Atonement for Huiwan Zhang‘s Dandan. But it was a fellow audience member as we walked out who said it best: 50 First Dates. The selection resonated with me because until three-quarters of the way through I thought people laughing were crazy. This is a sensitive…

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TIFF14 REVIEW: October Gale [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“Sorry. I have to put my gum in your belly button for a second.” After enjoying Ruba Nadda‘s Inescapable and hearing a ton of praise for Cairo Time, I went into her latest effort October Gale with high expectations. Whether this fact tainted my experience or not, those hopes were not met. For whatever reason Nadda doesn’t seem quite certain about what she wants from her plot. Is it a Nicholas Sparks love triangle for the middle-aged between a still grieving widow (Patricia Clarkson‘s Helen), the memory of her husband…

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TIFF14 REVIEW: Samba [2014]

Jared Mobarak

“Red paper. Then … no more.” Every movie should have a score by Ludovico Einaudi and it’s comforting to see Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano agree. After using his haunting music on the brilliant Intouchables, the duo take a few tracks from his album In a Time Lapse to enhance their latest work Samba. Another drama dealing with serious issues oftentimes handled melodramatically by Hollywood, they find a way to infuse each character’s hardship with a delightfully comic streak. The formula is similar to that Oscar nominee with its two…

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