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TIFF19 REVIEW: The Report [2019]

2019/09/142020/10/02 Jared Mobarak

It’s based on science. It matters that Diane Feinstein and other Senators (John McCain included) fought to make the Intelligence Committee’s report on “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” public because it held information the American people needed to know about how the CIA conducted itself after 9/11. While many would say the fact nobody has been prosecuted or held accountable since for what was laid out is the most important takeaway, however, I’d disagree. To me writer/director Scott Z. Burns distilled it in one line of dialogue during his cinematic adaptation of…

REVIEW: All Is True [2019]

2019/06/052020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

Perhaps, to some, I was the lark. Sony Pictures Classics announced their deal to distribute Kenneth Branagh‘s latest All Is True after it had already been completed without the usual media fanfare surrounding projects with royal Oscar pedigrees such as one whose cast is rounded out by Judi Dench and Ian McKellen. You shouldn’t, however, be surprised to recognize this fact upon watching its often meticulously positioned frames of conversational exchanges with little to no camera movement. Alongside those longer elegiac shots of emotive gravitas are shorter ones devoid of…

REVIEW: Leto [2018]

2019/06/032020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

Laziness has kept me out of trouble many times. We only recognize it through hindsight, but Americans are spoiled by cultural freedom. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s meant having the opportunity to listen to radio stations, records, and cassettes of music spanning multiple genres and eras. It was all at our fingertips and we didn’t have to do much to acquire it unless we lived in a conservatively oppressive household with parents who thought rock-n-roll was a gateway drug for Satanism. From new wave to grunge with blues…

REVIEW: Rocketman [2019]

2019/05/302020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

I’ll take care of the rest. When you have an icon like Elton John as your subject, the straightforward biopic formula simply won’t work. We know him as the flamboyantly dressed, rock star pianist with funny glasses and sequins who belts out songs that will either make you tap your feet or cry. And while that might have started as a façade to break free of Reginald Dwight’s introverted shell of shyness, he ultimately became this on-stage persona for real. The battles with drugs and alcohol alongside the constant media…

REVIEW: The White Crow [2019]

2019/05/152020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

I shall fight fear. While I don’t know anything about ballet, I am familiar with Soviet defection. Being a Buffalonian whose hometown hockey favorite as a kid was Alexander Mogilny means I must. It helps then that director Ralph Fiennes and screenwriter David Hare (inspired by Julie Kavanagh‘s book Rudolf Nureyev: The Life) start their film The White Crow at its end rather than beginning. By sitting Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin (Fiennes) down across from a not so composed government official to answer the pressing question of why his star pupil…

REVIEW: Red Joan [2019]

2019/05/062020/03/28 Jared Mobarak

That’s a peculiar way of putting it. The government agents within Trevor Nunn‘s Red Joan arrest Joan Stanley (Judi Dench) under suspicion of treason and enthusiastically ask who politicized her because to them only an outsider could have brainwashed someone to act against his/her country on behalf of a foreign enemy. It’s an understandably emotional reaction experienced by a patriot discovering a truth so wildly unbelievable to someone under the belief that his/her nation is the true protagonist of world history. It’s a logical one too considering we’re talking about…

REVIEW: Ask Dr. Ruth [2019]

2019/05/012020/10/02 Jared Mobarak

“My parents actually gave me life twice” A couple mentions of Dr. Ruth Westheimer as “Grandma Freud” are seen and heard throughout Ryan White‘s documentary Ask Dr. Ruth, but it isn’t until the conclusion that we discover the label is apt beyond its original intent. On the surface it’s hardly an original nickname considering she was over fifty when starting her radio show “Sexually Speaking” and thus an easy backhanded compliment to make. When the film turns to her ninetieth birthday party, however, her grandmotherly ways actually rise to the…

REVIEW: Wild Nights with Emily [2019]

2019/04/302020/03/28 Jared Mobarak

Sue, forevermore. As evidenced by her poetry and letters, the reclusive spinster Emily Dickinson proves anything but. Through them we learn of her struggles to get published, the rejections endured, and a love shared with her sister-in-law Susan. Why then was the former thought process how we were told to consider her life? Because those lies were better suited to the mythic status one would manufacture as publicity to garner posthumous acclaim. Mabel Todd erased Sue’s name from Emily’s love correspondence (proven via spectrographic technology) and created a legend that…

HOTDOCS19 REVIEW: Mr. Toilet: The World’s #2 Man [2019]

2019/04/262020/03/28 Jared Mobarak

Turning poop culture into pop culture. This statistic says it all: 40% of citizens on Earth don’t have toilets. A big part of that number is India and China, but it’s still insane to comprehend as someone from a country that won’t allow homes or businesses to be built without one. It’s the type of problem you’d assume tops every nation’s to-do list and yet most cases have it found at the very bottom. Why? Because change isn’t easy. If your family has practiced open-air defecation for generations, why stop?…

HOTDOCS19 REVIEW: Willie [2019]

2019/04/242020/03/28 Jared Mobarak

I’m not done. It was 2003 before a Black hockey player had the honor of being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. That player was Grant Fuhr, the Stanley Cup winning goalie of the Edmonton Oilers and multiple other teams (including a short stint with my hometown Buffalo Sabres). Because he was far from the first Black player in the league, however, you wouldn’t be faulted for wondering why the man with that unique distinction hadn’t already been enshrined. The reason was simple: Willie O’Ree only played forty-five games…

REVIEW: JT LeRoy [2019]

2019/04/192020/03/28 Jared Mobarak

I wouldn’t even exist without her. It really is a wild story. Laura Albert, in need of expressing her pain outside of her own identity, creates a fictional version of herself to write three novels as exorcism under “his” name. Who knows if she anticipated the type of acclaim they and “he” would receive, but Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy necessitated her performing multiple characters out of her San Francisco apartment with fake accents to speak with journalists, fans, and artists over the phone in order to keep the charade alive. Only…