Category: Toronto International Film Festival

TIFF21 REVIEW: Jockey [2021]

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…

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TIFF21 REVIEW: All My Puny Sorrows [2022]

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…

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

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…

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TIFF21 REVIEW: Mothering Sunday [2021]

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…

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TIFF21 REVIEW: Petite maman [2021]

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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TIFF21 REVIEW: Du som er i himlen [As in Heaven] [2022]

Jared Mobarak

Dreams should not be taken lightly. Lise (Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl) couldn’t be happier now that she knows her mother’s (Ida Cæcilie Rasmussen‘s Anna) determination has successfully overcome her father’s (Thure Lindhardt‘s Anders) objections about sending her to school. It’s the late 1800s after all. A big reason why a farming family such as theirs has so many children is to work the land. Sending off the eldest at fourteen isn’t therefore conducive to their home’s machinery—especially since Anders has no qualms with leaving the daily chores to his sister,…

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TIFF21 REVIEW: The Middle Man [2021]

Jared Mobarak

You’ve just got to take things as they come. Frank Farelli (Pål Sverre Hagen) has been unemployed in a dying town for quite some time. The area used to attract visitors in the past—not many, but enough to staff a hotel that’s now been closed for years. So too has the local movie theater. As the so-called “Commission” (Paul Gross‘ Sheriff, Nicolas Bro‘s Pastor, and Don McKellar‘s Doctor) explains it, they may not be able to keep the streetlights going thanks to a dwindling budget caused by a lack of…

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TIFF21 REVIEW: Mlungu Wam [Good Madam] [2021]

Jared Mobarak

It seems this house doesn’t like Mama. A matriarch passes and the family swarms to poach whatever they can in the aftermath. Tsidi (Chumisa Cosa) tells herself it won’t matter—she’s been the one taking care of her grandmother and thus has a claim over that which she has called her home for years, but “fair” doesn’t factor in where tradition is concerned. Her uncle (as the eldest) allows Tsidi’s cousins to put her in her place as new construction plans made while the recently departed was still alive become colored…

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TIFF21 REVIEW: Listening to Kenny G [2021]

Jared Mobarak

I don’t think I’m a personality to people. I think I’m a sound. While the premise of Penny Lane‘s Listening to Kenny G unfolds through the comedic question, “Why do so many people hate Kenny G?” it quickly reveals itself a rather intriguing tight rope walk upon the line separating art from commerce. Because this question cannot be answered without first acknowledging who the “people” are. Kenny G has fans. A lot of them. He’s sold seventy-five million records to become the best-selling instrumentalist of all-time. So, they aren’t those…

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TIFF21 REVIEW: Jagged [2021]

Jared Mobarak

There’s hope even when the song is hopeless. It really is strange to look back almost thirty years later and realize just how huge and seminal Alanis Morissette‘s Jagged Little Pill was to rock music. I was only thirteen at the time of its release and therefore didn’t understand then what I can with hindsight now. “You Oughta Know,” “Hand in My Pocket,” and “Ironic” were on constant rotation every time the radio was turned on, but my brain processed them as songs just like any other. When you hear…

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TIFF21 REVIEW: You Are Not My Mother [2021]

Jared Mobarak

I can’t do this anymore. Despite leaving writer/director Kate Dolan‘s feature debut You Are Not My Mother with a lot more questions than answers, I don’t think that reality is necessarily a bad thing. Maybe if I was better versed in Irish lore, I’d be more familiar with the supernatural elements at play and therefore less in the dark about the unspoken details the film doesn’t seem to realize it might need to share for better understanding. But it’s not as though knowing would add too much beyond context. And…

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