Sheila McCarthy | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Anything for Jackson [2020]

2020/11/242021/02/26 Jared Mobarak

No one has more time than a grieving family. The day Audrey (Sheila McCarthy) and Henry Walsh’s (Julian Richings) grandson Jackson died was the day they sold their souls to the Devil—figuratively speaking, of course. It wasn’t until they joined a Satanist church run by a bunch of posers in a community center that the idea to bring him back became more than simply a fantasy. That’s where they learned about an ancient book of dark magic possessing the means to do so and how they might find it. With…

TIFF20 REVIEW: Like a House on Fire [2020]

2020/09/192020/09/23 Jared Mobarak

And then I ran out of air. Anxiety is high at the start of Jesse Noah Klein‘s Like a House on Fire. We hear Dara (Sarah Sutherland) breathing heavily in the bathroom of a train car before finding her seat. From there it’s a taxi and the not so confident stroll to a house’s front door—the laughter of a child behind its barrier stopping her in her tracks and forcing her to run across the street and hide as her breathing grows heavier yet again. She lowers herself even further…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Cardinals [2017]

2017/08/252018/06/12 Jared Mobarak

“Good to have me back” The big story surrounding Grayson Moore and Aidan Shipley‘s feature debut Cardinals playing the Toronto International Film Festival stems from the fact that both men graduated from the city’s own Ryerson University. As a longtime festival venue/partner, this premiere will inevitably be treated as a homecoming. But don’t let that fool you into screaming “Favoritism!” while dismissing it as a “homer” pick: it’s the real deal. Stripping away the college they graduated from, the knowledge that both are TIFF alumni after screening their short Boxing,…