Tag: Melanie Scrofano

TIFF22 REVIEW: The End of Sex [2023]

Jared Mobarak

Are you getting enough banana? Emma (Emily Hampshire) and Josh’s (Jonas Chernick) first kiss was at a summer camp as teenagers and, minus a few break-ups here and there, they’ve been together ever since. They’re best friends, awesome parents, and, because of their two daughters being their focus for every waking second of every single day, mutually apathetic to the concept of sex. So, now that it’s the girls’ time to start going to that same camp, Emma and Josh have no clue what to do with their independence. And…

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REVIEW: Ready or Not [2019]

Jared Mobarak

You picked the one bad card. All Grace (Samara Weaving) has ever wanted since bouncing around foster homes during her adolescence was a permanent family to call her own. With Alex Le Domas (Mark O’Brien) that dream has become a reality. He wasn’t interested in a big wedding since he’d been estranged from those back home who lived in the lap of astronomical wealth’s luxury due to a gaming empire begun by his great-grandfather, but he relented to fulfill her wish. Alex could see it as one solitary evening of…

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REVIEW: Birdland [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Crime is nature. Some filmmakers keep their endings ambiguous so the art lingers with the viewer in order to interpret the piece rather than merely consume it. Writer/director Peter Lynch looks to go one step further with his noir Birdland (co-written by Lee Gowan) by rendering the whole a mystery wherein beginnings and ends are both fluid as far as linear coherency is concerned and meticulously structured to amplify the emotional machinations of his lead Sheila Hood (Kathleen Munroe). Lynch intentionally disorients so that mood overshadows action. He focuses on…

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