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TIFF21 REVIEW: Where Is Anne Frank [2021]

2021/09/152021/09/15 Jared Mobarak

Everything is Anne Frank. The premise to Ari Folman‘s Where Is Anne Frank is genius. Rather than adapt the famed diary into a traditional narrative, he brings its target (Anne’s imaginary friend Kitty) to life. And since this figment of a sounding board only knows that which Anne (Emily Carey) wrote to her, finding form in the present is obviously going to leave many important holes. How did the war end? How long did it last? Did Anne become a famous writer? Did she and Peter van Daan ever have…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Listening to Kenny G [2021]

2021/09/082021/11/02 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…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Jagged [2021]

2021/09/072021/11/02 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…

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…

REVIEW: No Man of God [2021]

2021/08/232021/08/24 Jared Mobarak

This is purely academic. What separates Bill Hagmaier (Elijah Wood) from Ted Bundy (Luke Kirby)? Ask a lot of people and they’ll say mental stability. But isn’t that just a cop-out? Isn’t that absolving serial rapists and murderers of their actions because they “couldn’t help themselves?” The real answer skews less towards compulsion than it does abstention. We’ve all thought about hurting people we don’t like, but that’s where our rage ends. We punch pillows, scream in the shower, and tailgate transgressors until our desire for vengeance is satisfied. Bundy…

REVIEW: Ailey [2021]

2021/07/292021/07/29 Jared Mobarak

Sometimes your name becomes bigger than yourself. As someone who knew nothing about Alvin Ailey before watching Jamila Wignot‘s documentary Ailey, it surprised me how relevant the film proves to what’s happening today. How can you watch this man’s trajectory towards the height of his profession and subsequent fall towards a stay in a mental institution without thinking about the mental wellness conversations surrounding Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles? He lived in a time where strength as an outward appearance became a crucial piece to success whether it was a…

REVIEW: 12 Mighty Orphans [2021]

2021/06/112021/06/15 Jared Mobarak

Optimism. Sports-writer Jim Dent had the best of both worlds when deciding to write the book Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football. He had a ragtag bunch of kids languishing in a Texas orphanage that was able to find the self-respect and courage necessary to overcome the stigma the label “orphan” possessed on and off the field in 1927 as well as a leader in Coach Rusty Russell who would end up revolutionizing football with the advent of the spread offense.…

REVIEW: Woman in Motion [2021]

2021/05/272021/06/08 Jared Mobarak

She changed the space program forever. It’s inspiring to hear Nichelle Nichols speak about the moment she realized things weren’t as they were supposed to be because she realized it within a moment of awe. Comprehending how something too crucially important to be missing from the magic of what she was shown isn’t an easy feat because we too often get caught up in excitement to think through the next steps or look beyond the superficial veils of marketing by acknowledging the deficiencies that manufactured sheen was meant to cover…

REVIEW: Dream Horse [2021]

2021/05/192021/05/19 Jared Mobarak

The pigeons keep coming back. A film about a Welsh horse named Dream Alliance doesn’t get made unless the ending holds a cup, but a horse like Dream Alliance doesn’t get the chance to win if not for the loveable band of small-town eccentrics who decided to set ten quid aside each week. For Jan Vokes (Toni Collette), Daisy Vokes (Owen Teale), and Howard Davies (Damian Lewis)—who had the idea, the breeding experience, and knew the racing world respectively—this was more than some hairbrained scheme to make money. They were…

REVIEW: Tiny Tim: King for a Day [2021]

2021/04/202021/04/21 Jared Mobarak

It’s all ambiguous with Tiny Tim. Context is everything. That’s the first thought that came to mind at the beginning of Johan von Sydow‘s Tiny Tim: King for a Day (written by Martin Daniel) since I was born in the 1980s and knew the subject only as his “has been” self at the tail end of both his career and life. In my mind the celebrity he won was therefore always of a complicated sort: toeing the line between laughing at the “freak” and laughing with the entertainer. What I…

REVIEW: A Love Song for Latasha [2020]

2021/03/172021/11/17 Jared Mobarak

I’ll be with you. When the subject of your documentary is the tragic death of a fifteen-year-old Black girl accused of stealing an orange juice while holding the two dollars she was about to use for the purchase, the decision to embrace poetic abstract over reenactment is an easy one to make. And that’s exactly what Sophia Nahli Allison does with her short A Love Song for Latasha. It might begin with the blue screen of a VCR complete with tracking lines as footage appears, but that footage isn’t actually…