Toronto International Film Festival | www.jaredmobarak.com

TIFF21 REVIEW: True Things [2022]

2021/09/142022/07/21 Jared Mobarak

You’re my tribe. Kate (Ruth Wilson) is listless. She works a dead-end workers’ claim desk wherein her bosses are so redundant that they don’t think they’re doing their job unless they’re chastising their employees for not bringing in doctor notes. Her best friend Alison (Hayley Squires) is too busy with her kids to provide stimulating entertainment beyond a couple drinks at their local. And the only place she really has at her disposal to escape these doldrums is her parents’ home so Mum (Elizabeth Rider) can remind her about all…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Ich bin dein Mensch [I’m Your Man] [2021]

2021/09/142021/09/14 Jared Mobarak

Your eyes are like two mountain lakes I could sink into. Writer/director Maria Schrader‘s Ich bin dein Mensch [I’m Your Man] posits the question: What if Weird Science, but real? That’s not to say the conceit she and co-writer Jan Schomburg have created (from a short story by Emma Braslavsky) isn’t science fiction fantasy. I just mean that their romantic comedy isn’t saddled by the puerile male gaze of an 80s sex romp. It uses its skeptical lead character (Maren Eggert‘s ancient language specialist Alma) to confront the scenario she’s…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Quickening [2021]

2021/09/142021/09/14 Jared Mobarak

You’re doing what you want. Writer/director Haya Waseem‘s feature debut Quickening is not about a pregnancy. Knowing this fact is crucial enough that she opens the film with the definition of pseudocyesis—a false pregnancy wherein the woman experiences all the symptoms of being pregnant without there ever being a fetus. Without it, we would focus too much on what Sheila (Arooj Azeem) having a baby during her freshman year at college would mean for her future rather than accept it as the product of all the stress she’s enduring due…

TIFF21 REVIEW: La hija [The Daughter] [2021]

2021/09/132021/09/14 Jared Mobarak

Nobody can know you’re here. The plan is simple, but risky. Javier (Javier Gutiérrez) has worked at a juvenile delinquent center for two decades, interacting with all kinds of troubled teens. After trying to conceive a child with his wife Adela (Patricia López Arnaiz) for almost as many, they’ve yet to succeed. As a result, Javier can’t help but see a new resident as a means to an end wherein both parties can benefit. Irene (Irene Virgüez) is fourteen, pregnant, and in love with a boy who’s currently in jail…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Sundown [2022]

2021/09/132021/10/27 Jared Mobarak

What are you doing?! Writer/director Michel Franco throws his first curveball early during his latest film Sundown. We’ve already spent a bit of time with his quartet of European characters vacationing in Acapulco to make a few assumptions before workaholic Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) leans over to the quietly satisfied Neil (Tim Roth) and thanks him for coming along. Why wouldn’t he have? Isn’t he her husband and her kids’ father? He might be. Perhaps Alice and Neil are in the middle of a separation wherein he only agreed to come…

TIFF21 REVIEW: The Desperate Hour [2022]

2021/09/132022/01/20 Jared Mobarak

I want this to end. Screenwriter Chris Sparling takes us back to the script that put him on the Hollywood map with The Desperate Hour (formerly Lakewood). Much like his isolated one-man show Buried, this latest focuses on a single character caught in a high-pressure situation with seemingly no way out. Unlike it, however, the real danger is far away from the screen. You see, Amy Carr (Naomi Watts) is safe. She woke up, texted work that she’d be taking a personal day, told the kids to go to school,…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Earwig [2021]

2021/09/122021/09/12 Jared Mobarak

Everything is well, sir. Director Lucile Hadzihalilovic explained how she’d rather viewers of her latest film Earwig (co-written by Geoff Cox) go in knowing as little about it as possible. As such, her introduction said little beyond its source material’s mysterious origins (author Brian Catling dreamt of a girl offering him her teeth before writing the novella in one sitting) and her freedom to make her adaptation unique with as many changes as she saw fit. Do I wish she gave more in hindsight now having finished watching? Yes. Very…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Arthur Rambo [2021]

2021/09/122021/09/13 Jared Mobarak

I can defend myself. There’s an interesting lesson to be learned at the center Laurent Cantet‘s Arthur Rambo that’s honestly shocking to think still needs to be learned. I don’t mean that in reference to the director or his fellow co-writers Fanny Burdino and Samuel Doux, though, as many people talking about the film do. I’m talking about the people like Karim D. (Rabah Nait Oufella) who still can’t quite grasp the reality that social media isn’t a safe space. It’s not a diary to collect your rage and insecurities…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Murina [2022]

2021/09/122022/05/27 Jared Mobarak

Dreams die in paradise. The thing we often forget about exotic locales is that they aren’t an escape for those who live there. While co-eds dock ashore for sun, sex, and fun, families are merely waking up early to go spearfishing so that they have dinner that night. The psychological toll of constantly looking out your window at happy faces while dealing with the futility of teenage living under a domineering father with few if any opportunities to leave must be daunting. So, when Julija (Gracija Filipovic) exits the water…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Encounter [2021]

2021/09/112021/09/12 Jared Mobarak

Everything I do is to protect you. A meteorite falling to Earth disintegrates into stardust that subsequently permeates everything it touches. It hits the soil, enters a bug, is consumed again, and then injected into human flesh by a mosquito while feeding on a microscopic tardigrade about to explode. This is the computer-generated prologue to Michael Pearce‘s Encounter that sets the table for its forthcoming struggle between man and neurological parasite. Has he and co-writer Joe Barton therefore shown that their protagonist has suddenly been infected while sleeping? Malik Khan…

TIFF21 REVIEW: Night Raiders [2021]

2021/09/112021/10/20 Jared Mobarak

We are still here. German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller coined the poetic confession “First they came …” in 1946. The post-WWII piece spoke about how groups like the Nazis would always find new targets to oppress once their recent victims were erased. First it was the socialists. Then trade unionists and Jews. The sigh of relief breathed by those not yet included under those labels is therefore only ever brief. Unless you don the swastika to partake in the purges, they’ll eventually find a label to justify wiping you from…

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