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REVIEW: L’ultimo bacio [The Last Kiss] [2001]

2016/10/172016/10/17 Jared Mobarak

“With pounds of cellulite and all your insecurities” I really want to love Gabriele Muccino‘s Italian blockbuster of a rom-com L’ultimo bacio [The Last Kiss] because it is funny, charming, complicated, and hopeful. My issue lies in the fact that it’s also awful in its depictions of selfish ego and weak indifference. Maybe this is a product of its European creation. Maybe extramarital affairs are commonplace enough in Italy to be able to laugh them off and accept them as a casualty of war, but I’d be lying if I…

REVIEW: 残菊物語 [Zangiku monogatari] [The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum] [1939]

2016/09/282016/09/29 Jared Mobarak

“Wait for me” Writer/director Kenji Mizoguchi‘s Meiji period-set film about a struggling Kabuki actor and his devoted wife, 残菊物語 [Zangiku monogatari] [The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum], is a heartbreaking display of love’s power to endure no matter the external forces trying to extinguish it. For Kikunosuke Onoue (Shôtarô Hanayagi), the adoptive child of master actor Kikugorô Onoue V (Gonjurô Kawarazaki), fame and fortune meant nothing after experiencing true friendship and affection from his baby brother’s nurse Otoku (Kakuko Mori). She told him the truth about his failings on stage,…

TIFF16 REVIEW: La Mujer del Animal [The Animal’s Wife] [2016]

2016/09/242016/09/26 Jared Mobarak

“What am I paying for?” Colombia’s tourism department won’t be sanctioning Víctor Gaviria‘s La Mujer del Animal [The Animal’s Wife] anytime soon and I definitely will never be visiting to see how accurate a depiction of life there it proves. This film is two-hours of sadism at the hands of Tito Alexander Gómez Arias’ Libardo ‘Animal’ Ramírez. He rapes, maims, drinks, and rapes again while every village he inhabits turns a blind eye out of fear of repercussion. If I could jump through the screen, steal his Bowie blade, and…

TIFF16 REVIEW: Indivisibili [Indivisible] [2016]

2016/09/232016/09/24 Jared Mobarak

“Can we at least see what’s possible?” It starts off so magically with conjoined twins Dasy (Angela Fontana) and Viola (Marianna Fontana) bringing hope and the word of God to the unfortunate souls languishing in poverty just north of Naples, Italy. They’re blissful when singing, eating up the attention and love from their parents Peppe (Massimiliano Rossi) and Titti (Antonia Truppo) despite our knowing that love is steeped in exploitation. This is the life these girls know. They have no computers or cellphones, their cut of the money goes to…

TIFF16 REVIEW: טהורה לעד [Tehora la’ad] [Forever Pure] [2016]

2016/09/222016/09/22 Jared Mobarak

“My heart will always stay yellow and black” Just when you think it can’t get worse—that the vocal, racist minority spewing bile will be extinguished in a show of tide-turning empathy—everything is literally engulfed in flames as a city watches it burn to cheers from a cesspool of hate. This is the 2012-2013 season for Beitar Jerusalem FC in the Israeli Premier League. A soccer team beloved by enough fans to make them a political target for President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the reason their owner at…

TIFF16 REVIEW: Bar Bahar [In Between] [2017]

2016/09/212017/05/01 Jared Mobarak

“Don’t let on that you know what you’re doing” It’s Tel Aviv in 2016 and the parties are wild. Drinking, dancing, snorting, kissing—it’s time for twenty-year olds to have fun and be alive. But whereas in America you’d get looks of jealousy at best or judgment at worst, culture dictates heavier consequences for three Palestinian women living in the Israeli metropolis. There’s the liberal party girl attorney (Mouna Hawa‘s Laila), Christian communist lesbian DJ (Sana Jammalieh‘s Salma), and devout Muslim computer science major Nour (Shaden Kanboura) all trying to embrace…

TIFF16 REVIEW: Kati Kati [2017]

2016/09/202016/12/31 Jared Mobarak

“You’re here because you’re dead” Most of cinema’s best films are those that do rather than explain. These works are created by artists wielding airtight concepts insofar as attaining their goal of delivering a specific, emotion-fueled message. Kenyan creative Mbithi Masya‘s feature debut Kati Kati is a perfect example of what can be made when the right resources are supplied to the right people. Tom Tykwer, Marie Stenmann-Tykwer, and their One Fine Day shingle (originally formed to facilitate year-round artistic opportunities for children in Nairobi) helped with the former while…

TIFF16 REVIEW: Interchange [2016]

2016/09/102016/09/20 Jared Mobarak

“This is not your story” Something’s happening in Kuala Lampur—something that cannot be explained. Deaths in the vein of Bryan Fuller‘s gorgeously ornate displays of murder from “Hannibal” have arrived without any leads or earthly reason. Detective Man (Shaheizy Sam) jokes that his forensic photographer needs to see a witch doctor after collapsing at the scene of the first body, but he may not be far off the truth. Adam’s (Iedil Putra) spell was odd, conjured by the light or power of a glass negative found underneath the suspended cadaver…

TIFF16 REVIEW: Pyromanen [Pyromaniac] [2016]

2016/09/082016/09/15 Jared Mobarak

“You can be whatever you want to be” Going in with no expectations besides the recent news that the film had been shortlisted for Norway’s 2017 Oscar selection, director Erik Skjoldbjærg‘s Pyromanen [Pyromaniac] could not have delivered a better start to get me ready. Using extended camera movements to capture subtle detail from a car driving up to the older woman’s look of panic inside the house as she searches for her husband with ominous words, “He’s here.” I was enraptured. Glass breaks and fire bursts out from door to…

TIFF16 REVIEW: Souvenir [2016]

2016/09/082016/12/05 Jared Mobarak

“Like ABBA but not so famous” It starts with bubbles. So many bubbles rising slowly in liquid as the opening credits in script font flash onscreen. And when the camera finally pans out to see what it’s been that’s mesmerized us so? A glass of water with an Alka-Seltzer dropped in, of course. This is the humor director Bavo Defurne and his co-writers Jacques Boon and Yves Verbraeken infuse throughout their outside-the-box romance Souvenir. As it is the woman about to drink this concoction is hardly special: she lives alone,…

TIFF16 REVIEW: Past Life [2016]

2016/09/062016/09/14 Jared Mobarak

“In tragedy you can’t escape fate” It’s 1977 and you’re the lead soprano in your first international concert. Rapturous applause and a flawless performance later you find yourself hobnobbing with classmates and audience members alike, the famed German composer Thomas Zielinski (Rafael Stachowiak) even enters to the crowd’s delight. But rather than let the electricity of the moment overwhelm you and bask in the glory of a successful evening, you can’t help noticing an older woman walking towards you with a scowl on her face. She asks your name, inquires…