Tag: Sophie Okonedo

TIFF21 REVIEW: Charlotte [2021]

Jared Mobarak

The sad ones always feel more true. Similar to co-director Tahir Rana before tackling the project, I too had never heard of Charlotte Salomon before sitting down to watch it. This fact seems weird considering many hold her posthumous masterpiece Life? or Theater?: A Song-play as the first graphic novel. A pedigree like that shouldn’t be swept under the rug—especially not when you delve into her work’s content and begin understanding all she endured as a German Jew during World War II. You would think her name would be held…

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REVIEW: Wild Rose [2019]

Jared Mobarak

What do you need to say? These movies usually start with the music and attempt to find happiness afterwards. That’s the order you need for the fantasy of artistic superstardom to work—that talent is enough to earn everything you’ve ever wanted and therefore the foundation for what’s still to come. That’s not the real world, though. Maybe some people are plucked from obscurity like in A Star Is Born. Maybe some do reach great heights via contests a la Teen Spirit. But what about those dreamers who come to the…

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REVIEW: Hellboy [2019]

Jared Mobarak

It looked bigger in the cartoon. There’s no getting around the fact that Lionsgate did Guillermo del Toro dirty by not extending him an invitation to complete his Hellboy vision with a third film. Whether their decision was due to whatever rubric used to measure the franchise’s success (that they’d willingly reboot the property so soon shows it was viable enough) or creator Mike Mignola wanting to bring things back to where he thought they should be (as was floated around), they turned their back on a soon-to-be Oscar winning…

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