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REVIEW: Becoming Cousteau [2021]

2021/10/222021/10/22 Jared Mobarak

We must go and see for ourselves. A title like Becoming Cousteau would have you imagining a journey from youth to death with historical anecdotes and archival footage describing an upbringing that led to a legendary life. For Jacques-Yves Cousteau, however, director Liz Garbus and screenwriters Mark Monroe and Pax Wassermann didn’t have to go that far back. The man we know didn’t originate until after a devastating car accident led him to two French divers who believed the water could help him rehabilitate. And even then—with the trio making…

REVIEW: The Rescue [2021]

2021/10/162021/10/17 Jared Mobarak

We only have one shot at this. It takes a tragedy to realize it themselves, but the only certainty throughout the entire Tham Luang cave ordeal (where twelve boys and their soccer coach were trapped for eighteen days as the area’s monsoon season started a month early) is that the Thai Navy SEALs weren’t equipped to handle the rescue operation for which they were tasked. Possessing the necessary courage to belief for success isn’t enough when confronting a scenario outside your expertise. Diving for stealth and conducting rescues at sea…

REVIEW: Introducing, Selma Blair [2021]

2021/10/102022/03/03 Jared Mobarak

Disabled people like to have fun too. You can’t help but be inspired by Selma Blair‘s transparency when it comes to her diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. So many people’s first impulse would be to hide—especially after having lived so long in a spotlight as fickle and judgmental as Hollywood’s affinity for equating physical prowess with worth. Yet there she was mere months after finally getting the answer to what was happening with her body, documenting her deterioration on Instagram and giving a voice to the hundreds of thousands of people…

REVIEW: The Velvet Underground [2021]

2021/10/092021/10/11 Jared Mobarak

It was all about extended time. Director Todd Haynes has culled through contextually relevant and era-specific footage, artistic contemporaries, interviews both archival and new, and more (the end credits are over five minutes long to fit the myriad sources) to create a definitive oral history of one of the most influential rock/pop bands of all-time, simply (and aptly) titled The Velvet Underground. He needs to go through these hours of information because, as we soon learn through the journey, that name was bigger than just a band. Its originators Lou…

BIFF21 REVIEW: Bad Attitude: The Art of Spain Rodriguez [2021]

2021/10/062021/10/07 Jared Mobarak

I have faith in the revolution. It’s easy to pick out two of the talking heads in Susan Stern‘s documentary about her husband Spain Rodriguez entitled Bad Attitude: The Art of Spain Rodriguez. Robert Crumb, the artist behind Fritz the Cat, has his own documentary (from Terry Zwigoff) in the Criterion Collection and Art Spiegelman, the artist behind Maus, has the only Pulitzer ever awarded to a graphic novel. To someone like me who has never really delved into the world of underground comix, it takes those touchstones of mainstream…

BIFF21 REVIEW: Roy’s World: Barry Gifford’s Chicago [2021]

2021/10/032021/10/06 Jared Mobarak

You’re really writing history here. The concept is inspired: create a documentary about Chicago, Illinois in the 1950s by way of the fictionalized autobiographical stories written over the course of forty years by Barry Gifford—thus also making it into a documentary about the acclaimed author’s early life. Much like those stories, director Rob Christopher also seeks to use his film Roy’s World: Barry Gifford’s Chicago as a vehicle to put us into that time and place rather than simply talk about it. So while Gifford’s voice can be heard giving…

REVIEW: The Village Detective: a song cycle [2021]

2021/09/232021/09/23 Jared Mobarak

My soul finds comfort here. Documentarian Bill Morrison looks to tell a story through damaged celluloid once more courtesy of four Russian film reels found by a trawler twenty miles off the coast of Iceland at the convergence of two tectonic plates. He didn’t know what he was getting into when emailed by the late Jóhann Jóhannsson (his friend) in 2016—only that a new discovery awaited. That it was more or less a bust considering the footage was from a well-known, middling comedy from 1969 still airing on Russian television…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Flee [2021]

2021/09/162021/09/16 Jared Mobarak

This is where my story begins. Documentarian Jonas Poher Rasmussen went to a lot of trouble to keep his friend and subject of Flee a secret. It’s with good reason too since the story divulged is one that could feasibly send him back to Afghanistan despite living the majority of his life in his adopted country of Denmark. More than just using a pseudonym (Amin Nawabi), however, the interviews also become rotoscope animation as a means of amplifying anonymity. There are obviously still risks involved from the simple act of…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Listening to Kenny G [2021]

2021/09/082021/11/02 Jared Mobarak

I don’t think I’m a personality to people. I think I’m a sound. While the premise of Penny Lane‘s Listening to Kenny G unfolds through the comedic question, “Why do so many people hate Kenny G?” it quickly reveals itself a rather intriguing tight rope walk upon the line separating art from commerce. Because this question cannot be answered without first acknowledging who the “people” are. Kenny G has fans. A lot of them. He’s sold seventy-five million records to become the best-selling instrumentalist of all-time. So, they aren’t those…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Jagged [2021]

2021/09/072021/11/02 Jared Mobarak

There’s hope even when the song is hopeless. It really is strange to look back almost thirty years later and realize just how huge and seminal Alanis Morissette‘s Jagged Little Pill was to rock music. I was only thirteen at the time of its release and therefore didn’t understand then what I can with hindsight now. “You Oughta Know,” “Hand in My Pocket,” and “Ironic” were on constant rotation every time the radio was turned on, but my brain processed them as songs just like any other. When you hear…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Julia [2021]

2021/09/012021/09/12 Jared Mobarak

Nothing was too much trouble if it was going to produce a beautiful result. Booked to talk about Mastering the Art of French Cooking on public access channel WGBH-TV, Julia Child took it upon herself to call the station and request a hotplate for demonstration purposes. She wanted to show a recipe in action to the people watching rather than mere conversation and the extra effort turned the segment into a sensation earning enough calls and letters to offer her a pilot. This cookbook that took twelve-years to write via…

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