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TIFF17 REVIEW: Jusqu’à la garde [Custody] [2018]

2017/09/092018/06/25 Jared Mobarak

“Which of you is the bigger liar?” It didn’t win the Oscar for best live action short in 2014, but Xavier Legrand’s Just Before Losing Everything was by far my favorite nominee. Discovering his debut feature Jusqu’à la garde [Custody] was constructed as an expansion of that story therefore made it a must-see. The short is soon revealed as a prequel, its look at the fallout of domestic abuse hopefully in the rearview considering Miriam Besson (Léa Drucker) readies to plead her case as to why her now ex-husband (Denis…

REVIEW: De sidste mænd i Aleppo [Last Men in Aleppo] [2017]

2017/08/302017/09/01 Jared Mobarak

“If I leave, it will be to the cemetery” It’s a shame that those who need to watch Last Men in Aleppo are those who won’t. I’m talking the brainwashed masses quick to call a liberal media “fake news” while they help facilitate legitimate fake news fabricated by enemy regimes hoping to plant dissent. They include watchers of Fox News and listeners of Alex Jones amongst others—an American conservative media outlet and a shock jock peddling fear and bile to an easily manipulated audience. These “news” sources latch onto stories…

REVIEW: Lady Macbeth [2017]

2017/07/272017/07/28 Jared Mobarak

“We did it” At the back of William Oldroyd‘s Lady Macbeth (adapted for the screen by Alice Birch from Nikolai Leskov‘s 1865 novella Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk) are the ideas of oppression, power, and the fluidity of both as the oppressed often find themselves clawing their way to a position of becoming oppressor above another more marginalized sect of society. This theme isn’t one that has been solved by any means since the time of 19th century England and its persecution of women as subservient baby-makers to be bought by…

REVIEW: Dunkirk [2017]

2017/07/172017/07/18 Jared Mobarak

“He may never be himself again” War is often depicted as a quantifiable number of those who survived and those who did not. Many films choose this route, picking a battle to show the firefight’s chaos and cost. We remember the Battle of Gettysburg and D-Day as turning points, insane offensives that wrought heavy casualties just as they provided a newfound and tangible hope for victory. It’s glory or despair that’s highlighted depending on whose perspective the story adheres because we want to witness the emotional gray areas of melancholy…

INTERVIEW: Matt Tyrnauer, director of Citizen Jane: Battle for the City

2017/05/122020/03/21 Jared Mobarak

Debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2016, Matt Tyrnauer‘s Citizen Jane: Battle for the City has received rave reviews across the country as it opened in limited release April 21st, 2017. Centering on Jane Jacobs—a journalist, author, and activist—the film showcases the problems inherent to how urban planners in the mid-twentieth century worked. One of the key proponents of this movement to teardown what he deemed “slums” for new, mammoth housing projects of concrete erasing the very communities they sought to “save” was New York’s Robert Moses. His…

REVIEW: A Quiet Passion [2017]

2017/05/012017/05/03 Jared Mobarak

“Give me something pressed from truth” I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who never heard the name Emily Dickinson, although I’m probably not alone insofar as being ignorant to her work. For someone as prolific as the Amherst, Massachusetts-born poet with approximately 1,800 poems to her name, I’m sure I’ve heard at least a few over the years. Like many revered artists ahead of their time, however, only a dozen were published before she died of Bright’s disease at age fifty-five. It would therefore be easy to fashion…

REVIEW: Bacalaureat [Graduation] [2016]

2017/04/272018/05/03 Jared Mobarak

“Do what’s best for you” The amount of corruption to simply exist within the borders of Romania as displayed by Cristian Mungiu‘s Bacalaureat [Graduation] is insane. So much so that I feel bad admitting to what it reminded me of on a much more insidiously vile scale. Yes, it was nearly impossible not to see my hometown of Buffalo, New York as though looking in a mirror: the nepotism and the continuous promise of a future on the rise. It’s more than just Alexandra Davidescu‘s character talking about a reality…

INTERVIEW: Aaron Moorhead, director/cinematographer & Justin Benson director/writer of The Endless

2017/04/272020/03/21 Jared Mobarak

As someone who loved Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson‘s Spring to the point of seeking out everything else they had done before that point, hearing about a new work debuting at Tribeca got me excited to see what they would deliver. My assumption was that it was the Aleister Crowley picture they spoke about when I interviewed them last year—I was wrong. While that discovery wasn’t surprising considering how long projects gestate, it was shocking to discover The Endless proved to be a sequel to their first feature collaboration Resolution.…

REVIEW: Under sandet [Land of Mine] [2015]

2017/04/182017/04/19 Jared Mobarak

“I’ll make it home” War is a horrific reality that forces people into doing terrible things. Everyone sees him/herself as being on the side of “good” and “righteous”—look at the discrepancies from one history book to another in how education systems describe certain events to shine one’s own nation in a rosier tint than it might actually deserve. There are of course exceptions, though. This idea obviously doesn’t work in regards to genocide, but I don’t think any Germans today (white supremacists excepted) believe Hitler did God’s work or are…

Top 100 Albums of 2016

2017/03/062020/04/11 Jared Mobarak

Honorable Mention BJ the Chicago Kid – In My Mind; Opeth – Sorceress; She Is We – War; The 1975 – I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it; Ed Harcourt – Furnaces; J. Cole – 4 Your Eyez Only; Nada Surf – You Know Who You Are; Against the Current – In Our Bones; Tall Heights – Neptune; The Lumineers – Cleopatra; Lissie – My Wild West; Thrice – To Be Everywhere Is to Be Nowhere; Green Day – Revolution Radio;…

REVIEW: Get Out [2017]

2017/03/042017/03/05 Jared Mobarak

“Magic isn’t real” If you ever watched “Key & Peele” you’d know the line between comedy and horror is very fine. Their sketches would often devolve into a horrific situation that you’d have to cry about if you weren’t already laughing. I think of “Aerobics Meltdown” where there’s this hilarious conceit of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele going over-the-top, 1980s-era Richard Simmons—it’s absurd, campy, and frivolous. But then they inject a sense of fear and helplessness through a stagehand explaining how one of their wives was in a terrible accident,…