Film Features | www.jaredmobarak.com

TIFF15 REVIEW: o negative [2015]

2015/08/292015/09/17 Jared Mobarak

“Everything okay?” Sorry, Twilight. Your depiction of love between vampire and human pales in comparison to the uncensored drama of Steven McCarthy‘s o negative. This is the gritty truth of the type of co-dependent relationship such a union is constructed upon—one where morality and humanity is excised completely from matters of life and death. When your lover needs blood to survive you must be willing to forfeit your own existence whether it means feeding them from your vein or playing mother bird by acquiring an outside source and readying it…

TIFF15 REVIEW: O sinaleiro [The Signalman] [2015]

2015/08/292018/08/24 Jared Mobarak

“The train was on time” Writer/director Daniel Augusto definitely cultivates a dark tone for his short film O Sinaleiro [The Signalman]. Between the quiet isolation of the titular character (played by Fernando Teixeira) and the almost supernatural occurrences surrounding him, you can’t help but conjure ideas of some spectral evil looming at his door. The monotony of his job—logging an on-time train as just that—places him on a path towards psychological upheaval, transforming what we see into nightmarish hallucination as easily as believing it to be reality. Abstract and devoid…

TIFF15 REVIEW: The Ballad of Immortal Joe [2015]

2015/08/282015/09/16 Jared Mobarak

“If you want my story I will proceed” Written in memory of a family member, Pazit Cahlon‘s Western poem The Ballad of Immortal Joe sounds like a nursery rhyme but plays like a bittersweet romance of cursed love. Directed and animated by Hector Herrera, the short has an eye-catching aesthetic with dark palette and deep gradients atop playful characters straight out of the opening credits to Monsters Inc. Some figures have six eyeballs, others four legs, and all are a little left of center in an imaginative way to engage…

TIFF15 REVIEW: Victoria [2015]

2015/08/232015/09/16 Jared Mobarak

“Let’s hit the roof, boys” If director/co-writer Sebastian Schipper wanted, he could have easily turned Victoria into a first-person adventure through the streets of Berlin. It practically is already considering cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen follows behind the filmmaker’s main quartet for the entire two-hour, eighteen-minute single shot. Unlike allowing its characters to turn towards the camera and speak to us like Man Bites Dog or What We Do In the Shadows, this thriller isn’t satirical or comedic. Rather than be explicitly involved in the whirlwind evening full of passion and…

TIFF15 REVIEW: Hellions [2015]

2015/08/222015/09/16 Jared Mobarak

“Blood for baby” There’s a lot I like about Bruce McDonald‘s latest horror Hellions. Just as much also has me scratching my head, though. While this sometimes enhances the experience by cajoling you into wanting to watch it again to catch any little details you may have missed, I’m not sure this is one of those times. Unfortunately, right when the creepy factor breaks through its gauge to push me over the edge, it suddenly devolves into silliness. I don’t think it’s of the intentional kind either because screenwriter Pascal…

TIFF15 REVIEW: Quiet Zone [2015]

2015/08/132015/09/16 Jared Mobarak

“These are the thoughts that we grow up with” This is the type of experimental movie I can get behind because it doesn’t specifically hinge on form and form alone. What David Bryant and Karl Lemieux have done is distort their film with contextual purpose (not that others don’t, it’s just not merely abstract here). The over-exposed fields and darkened waves of burned celluloid trap us inside the head of Ondes et silence’s [Quiet Zone] narrators Nicols Fox and Katherine Peacock. Both women suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity—think Michael McKean‘s character…

TIFF15 REVIEW: Rock the Box [2015]

2015/08/132015/09/16 Jared Mobarak

“I’m out to destroy that virgin whore dichotomy” The story Katherine Monk brings us in Rock the Box isn’t necessarily unique when you only have to look at the Pop charts to see Miley Cyrus—or Lady Gaga to a more art-house abstraction—doing much of the same thing. What’s different between them and Rhiannon Rozier (DJ Rhiannon) is that EDM (Electronic Dance Music) is far from the same universe as Pop. While it’s become the biggest moneymaking sector in the industry, its not-so-radio-friendly tunes and messages keep it from gaining the…

TIFF15 REVIEW: Mobilize [2015]

2015/08/132015/09/16 Jared Mobarak

One piece of a quartet entitled Souvenir—an anthology by Indigenous artists in Canada addressing Aboriginal identity and representation—ITWE Collective member Caroline Monnet‘s Mobilize proves an invigorating sort of time lapse look at the propulsion of life from hand-made disciplines in nature to the steel behemoths of modern cities set to Tanya Tagaq‘s “Uja”. Composed entirely of outtakes from the National Film Board of Canada’s archives of over 700 films, the staccato sounds resemble breathe heaving forward sharp and focused as snowshoes are strung before being used to walk in the…

TIFF15 REVIEW: BAM [2015]

2015/08/102015/09/16 Jared Mobarak

While Howie Shia‘s aesthetic is accurately labeled gritty, that grit is less about being aggressive or “dirty” than it is about lending it an experimental film beauty gorgeous to behold against polished Hollywood studio fare. Just like its main character, BAM becomes a powder keg of duality with its two halves clashing to create something wholly unique and impossible to categorize. Greek Gods in giant blue form loom over the proceedings as the young boy they watch wrestles with an implicit brute force he cannot reconcile against a quiet contemplative…

FANTASIA15 REVIEW: リアル鬼ごっこ [Riaru onigokko] [Tag] [2015]

2015/08/082018/01/03 Jared Mobarak

“Watch the ripple” If リアル鬼ごっこ [Tag] were any indication of writer/director Sion Sono‘s warped mind, I’d almost believe he films without rhyme or reason besides excess. Based upon the Japanese novel Riaru onigokko by Yûsuke Yamada—coined by some as the Stephen King of Japan—this surreal tale of three girls in one traversing a nightmarish landscape of evil pursuers taking whatever form is most absurd lives on the edge of falling into complete randomness. You have to embrace the ride or else you’ll check out very early on because while watching…

FANTASIA15 REVIEW: Catch Me Daddy [2015]

2015/08/052015/08/08 Jared Mobarak

“Why did I create you?” Even though he’s absent until the film’s final sequence because the estranged daughter he’s hired bounty hunters to find is foremost in our attention, director Daniel Wolfe‘s quote explaining his story as “a man imprisoned by his own narrative” couldn’t be truer. Pakistani mobster—the only label befitting him after experiencing the violence wrought in his name—Tariq (Wasim Zakir) is behind everything from scared Laila (Sameena Jabeen Ahmed) and her white boyfriend Aaron (Connor McCarron) scraping together a trailer park life in hiding to son Zaheer…