Author: Jared Mobarak

REVIEW: Vesper [2022]

Jared Mobarak

You don’t know the cost of dreams. It’s the New Dark Ages and the world has devolved to mimic a YA novel’s class system with the poor left to fend for themselves in desolate wastelands while the rich remain protected in Citadels sprinkled throughout their expanse. Animals are dead. Plants are dead. Most humans are dead. To survive means scraping by with what few seeds you purchase from the cities, each lasting only one season. The cost is the blood of children and why those with power in the swamps…

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REVIEW: The Justice of Bunny King [2021]

Jared Mobarak

Nothing can touch us. There’s a crucial point of clarity in the director’s notes for The Justice of Bunny King wherein director Gaysorn Thavat admits one of her goals for the film was to never let its main character become a victim. Bunny (Essie Davis) is obviously struggling with an unnuanced system of legality that’s left her on the streets without custody of her kids, but she harbors zero regrets where it comes to the actions that brought her to this point. Yes, she served time for manslaughter, but killing…

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REVIEW: The Enforcer [2022]

Jared Mobarak

You fight for me. I fight for you. Miami kingpin Estelle (Kate Bosworth) is looking for insurance. Not because she doesn’t trust her usual muscle Cuda (Antonio Banderas) anymore, but because she’s not sure how much time he has left in the tank let alone how well he’s going to adapt to a world running on online currency. Stuck in jail for a decade, his return is therefore just in time to train his replacement: a street fighter named Stray (Mojean Aria) who makes a living always battling above his…

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REVIEW: To the Moon [2022]

Jared Mobarak

You want to breathe from your gut. The word Dennis (writer/director Scott Friend) uses to describe his estranged brother Roger (Will Brill) is malevolent. That’s quite the adjective without context, but one that quickly seems to fit as more details begin to surface. There’s a medical book in their parents’ old home—which now belongs to them both equally—that Dennis’ wife Mia (Madeleine Morgenweck) finds defaced with a child’s drawings that make it seem Roger wasn’t happy to be getting a brother. Talk about where the elder sibling has been gleans…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: Concrete Valley [2023]

Jared Mobarak

What does a doctor look like? Welcome to Antoine Bourges‘ love letter to the Thorncliffe Park apartment complex, better known as “Arrival City” considering it’s the usual landing spot for new immigrants coming into Toronto. Titled Concrete Valley and starring a mix of professional and amateur actors blurring the line between fiction and non-fiction, Bourges and co-writer Teyama Alkamli spent a lot of time with residents to help flesh out their motives and narrative in the form of Rashid (Hussam Douhna) and Farah (Amani Ibrahim), a Syrian couple who have…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: Sidney [2022]

Jared Mobarak

You’re not who you think you are. With Sidney Poitier‘s own voice providing the narrative backbone to Reginald Hudlin‘s documentary Sidney, we get to rediscover just what a wonderful storyteller he was. He speaks about his childhood in the Bahamas, his adolescence in Nassau, and the overnight culture clash of coming to Miami without realizing just what it meant to be a Black man in America with such emotion and drama that we can’t help but hang on his every word. A harrowing experience at the end of a police…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: I Like Movies [2023]

Jared Mobarak

The medium is the homework. Lawrence Kweller (Isaiah Lehtinen) likes movies. Not in the putting a film on in the background while hanging with friends sense. I mean recommending ‘s Happiness to a pregnant couple looking for a romantic comedy. He drags his best friend Matt Macarchuck (Percy Hynes White) to see because they both love watching “Saturday Night Live” together and laughs about intentionally duping him into seeing a Paul Thomas Anderson film he’ll probably hate. So, while Lawrence tells himself that he “likes” movies, he actually likes being…

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REVIEW: 岬のマヨイガ [Misaki no Mayoiga] [The House of the Lost on the Cape] [2021]

Jared Mobarak

In times of yore … The Tōhoku earthquake has left Yui’s (Mana Ashida) small town all but destroyed. Since every house seems to have a lone survivor to lament their loss and wonder what to do next, it’s no wonder that an ancient evil spirit escaped from its prison beneath the water to try and feed on their grief, force them to leave, and take control so it can grow and expand exponentially until all humanity is destroyed. Yui and young Hiyori (Sari Awano) are two such souls wandering the…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: Maya and the Wave [2023]

Jared Mobarak

Accidents are part of the routine. At twenty-six years of age, Brazilian Maya Gabeira was at the top of her sport. A world champion. Winner of countless awards. On covers of magazines. And repped by Red Bull. Looking to progress her career from becoming a pioneer for women in the big wave surfing game to holding a World Record that stood next to the men in control of the sport, she and mentor Carlos Burle traveled to Nazaré, Portugal to accomplish the unthinkable. Everything came apart instead. Not only did…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: Autobiography [2023]

Jared Mobarak

It can turn rage into blessing. General Purna (Arswendy Bening Swara) never had a son, so returning to his mansion to ready for a reelection campaign (the days of military dictatorship in Indonesia might be over, but the power structure surely isn’t) makes him grow sentimental at the sight of young Rakib (Kevin Ardilova). The boy is the youngest son of Amir (Rukman Rosadi)—a man Purna calls a “friend” despite their relationship truly being one of employer and employee. It’s been that way for three generations with Amir’s father serving…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: Free Money [2023]

Jared Mobarak

We received funding to do an experiment. Everyone over the age of eighteen (those fifteen and older become eligible on their eighteenth birthday) will receive twenty-two dollars a month for twelve years. That’s the promise GiveDirectly (represented by co-founder Michael Faye) made to the poor rural Kenyan village of Kogutu and, to their credit, has met in full. The idea is that too many NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have ravaged third world countries by making assurances they never follow through on. People would give them money, they would disburse it as…

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