Day: September 12, 2020

TIFF20 REVIEW: I Care A Lot [2021]

Jared Mobarak

There’s no such thing as “good people.” It’s the kind of grift that would make ‘Slippin’” Jimmy McGill proud. Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) calls up her friend Dr. Amos (Alicia Witt) to get a line on any prospective dementia patients with good insurance and ample nest eggs that have come through her office. She gets her partner (professionally and romantically) Fran (Eiza González) to run a background check with help from police contacts and calls an emergency trial with Judge Lomax (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) if their assumptions can be corroborated.…

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TIFF20 REVIEW: Pieces of a Woman [2020]

Jared Mobarak

There will be consequences. Every bit of promotional material I’ve read about director Kornél Mundruczó and writer Kata Wéber‘s Pieces of a Woman (kudos to their shared “a film by” credit) has billed the work as a look into the emotional grieving process of a woman who just lost her newborn child. Even the title highlights her experience above all others because she’s the one who gave birth. She’s the one who everyone is turning to for his/her own cues as to how to act. She’s the one whose body…

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TIFF20 REVIEW: Falling [2020]

Jared Mobarak

I’m sorry I brought you into this world … so you can die. The best part of Falling, Viggo Mortensen‘s debut as writer/director, is a family dinner bringing the surviving members of the Peterson clan together in California. John (Mortensen) has gone through the emotionally arduous task of collecting his homophobic father (Lance Henriksen‘s Willis) from the family farm up north to stay with him, his husband (Terry Chen‘s Eric), and their daughter (Gabby Velis‘ Monica) in a bid to move him down now that old age and dementia are…

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