Yorick van Wageningen | www.jaredmobarak.com

TIFF17 REVIEW: Papillon [2018]

2017/09/072018/07/22 Jared Mobarak

“I have trouble seeing hope in hopelessness” It’s amazing how some tweaking can turn a decent film showing its age into a worthwhile project that earns its upgrade four decades later. To watch Franklin J. Schaffner‘s original Papillon adaptation is to see an arduous series of harrowing ordeals strung together for no reason other than the thrill of adventure. It introduces the titular tough guy safecracker Henri “Papillon” Charrière and scrawny forger Louis Dega as two men caught in a horrible place with little hope. They team-up in order to…

REVIEW: Blackhat [2015]

2015/01/132015/01/16 Jared Mobarak

“How badly do you need this guy?” Is there a way for a village to get wiped out—buildings and people—and still ensure the dogs are safe? No. So why do Michael Mann and Morgan Davis Foehl write Blackhat in a way that forces its lead to speak unnecessary truths intrinsic to his initial declarations? Talk about a surefire way to alienate your audience by treating them like imbeciles who need to be reminded that a city’s annihilation entails all its contents being destroyed too. And don’t think I’m being nitpicky…

INTERVIEW: Emilio Estevez, writer/director of The Way

2012/02/022020/03/21 Jared Mobarak

I walked into the Elgin Theatre a year and a half ago for the Toronto International Film Festival’s screening of Emilio Estevez‘s The Way without knowing exactly what I was in for. I loved his Bobby a few years earlier, but after reading the glossy sheet of information pertaining to the film handed out to all in attendance I knew this was going to be a completely different beast. Spiritual, personal, and a testament between father and son, this new work is an inspirational journey of finding oneself at a…

REVIEW: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [2011]

2011/12/192014/05/21 Jared Mobarak

“It’s how we’re taught about strangers” If Stieg Larsson had lived long enough to see his The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo become an international sensation worthy of two cinematic adaptations in less than two years, I wonder which he would have approved of more. It’s easy to disregard David Fincher‘s remake as nothing more than an Americanized version of a top-notch mystery thriller already wowing audiences across the globe and much harder to praise it alongside its predecessor. While I’ll admit to finding the telepathic translation device turning everything…

REVIEW: Oorlogswinter [Winter in Wartime] [2008]

2011/07/222014/05/25 Jared Mobarak

“Rule one in wartime: keep your mouth shut” War has a way of involving even the most unsuspecting child thought to be safe from the pain of death and destruction left in its wake. It has a way of hardening the most innocent of souls, quickening the pace towards adulthood by exposing all to hard choices, treason, and unfathomable compromise. In Nazi-occupied Holland, a mayor’s son is caught in the middle of his own quest for morality. Michiel (Martijn Lakemeier) is just a boy—horsing around with his friend Theo (Jesse…

FILM MARATHON: Terrence Malick #4 – The New World [2005]

2010/09/182016/01/09 Jared Mobarak

“At the moment I was to die, she threw herself upon me” There is no way to mistake a Terrence Malick film for anything but. His use of score as a character rather than background, the hitch cuts in scenes as though only a few frames are removed, ultra short vignettes right out of a nature documentary spliced in perfectly, and, my favorite, scenes of people talking where the words are drowned out and made almost inaudible, allowing for the visuals to trump all, are just some of the unforgettable…

TIFF10: Day Two Recap

2010/09/112020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

Day Two at TIFF may have started with two junket screenings, meaning there was no chance of seeing any filmmakers/actors, but it also began with what could be my number one film of the year—Never Let Me Go. Amidst the small contingent of press glomming down free danishes and coffee courtesy of Fox Searchlight was a work of art that will devastate even the most cynical of souls. It’s tough to go into detail of the plot, though, without ruining the nuance of the parallel universe world, one where disease…

TIFF10 REVIEW: The Way [2010]

2010/09/102013/08/12 Jared Mobarak

“You don’t choose a life, Dad. You live one.” When you decide to fit in an almost two and a half hour film about a man hiking an 800 kilometer trail through Spain at the Toronto International Film Festival, you do begin to fear whether the time might be better served elsewhere. Arriving at the gorgeous Winter Garden Theatre to ushers handing out booklets—this film has a guidebook?—only makes you question the decision further. But then director Emilio Estevez came to the stage to help introduce his new work, a…