Category: Film Features

TIFF18 REVIEW: Fiore Gemello [Twin Flower] [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Shall we go? Two strangers running from personal demons collide at the start of Laura Luchetti‘s Sardinia-set Fiore gemello [Twin Flower]. He (Kallil Kone’s Basim) is an Ivory Coast immigrant desperate for money yet unequipped with the correct paperwork to earn gainful employment. She (Anastasiya Bogach’s Anna) is desperate to escape a pursuer (Aniello Arena‘s Manfredi) seen in duress but no less determined to get his hands on her eventually. They’re both alone on the open road, unsure where to go besides knowing it must be anywhere but here. A…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Aniara [2018]

Jared Mobarak

The utter nonsense of living. So much of our desire to exist is based in control. We have the ability to move our homes, restart careers, and work towards a future of our choosing. No matter how difficult things become, there’s always a hope for better or an avenue towards change. It’s only when we’re cornered without an exit that we start to let our fears rule us rather than the infinite possibilities in our grasp. We search for meaning and answers, struggling to reconcile that happiness may have always…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Jessica Forever [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Why wouldn’t you come with us? Redemption is a tricky concept. Can you be redeemed without forgiveness from those you wronged? Are our actions in the aftermath enough to achieve some semblance of peace if they show we’ve learned through remorse? Everyone has a different opinion on the matter whether victim, loved one, stranger, or corporation. Rehabilitation only goes so far when you find yourself free without any opportunities to prove to yourself that change was worth the trouble. There’s a reason so many criminals find themselves right back in…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Where Hands Touch [2018]

Jared Mobarak

I want her to be like everyone else: unremarkable. Now is not the time to make a film romanticizing Nazism or allowing anyone who donned the swastika during World War II a modicum of sympathy. I’d argue there could never be such a time—at least not for those who say they felt bad but still did nothing to stop the nightmare they helped usher into creation. Their cooperation in a genocidal extermination cannot be given a footnote for remorse. They cannot skate by on some notion that they participated unwillingly…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Hölmö nuori sydän [Stupid Young Heart] [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Nobody knows. It was fun to laugh back in January when Donald Trump spoke to the media about how he wanted fewer immigrants from “shithole” countries and more from the likes of Norway. We laughed because it was obvious what the difference between the two was for him—my ignorance towards Scandinavian politics stopping at the color of their respective skin. But apparently there’s a growing trend towards radical right populism and nationalism over there too. Just as Nazis have come out of the woodwork in America under their rebranded moniker…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: The Truth About Killer Robots [2018]

Jared Mobarak

We will not consider the question of the robot’s guilt. The title to Maxim Pozdorovkin‘s documentary The Truth About Killer Robots is intentionally sensationalized for the same reasons a real newspaper article about the death by machine of a Volkswagen factory worker would be accompanied by a photograph of a terminator. James Cameron put a face to the concern humanity has about artificial intelligence and technology—that some type of uprising will occur once we either wrong our creations or prove the catalyst of our own extinction and thus the “disease”…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Das schönste Paar [The Most Beautiful Couple] [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Stay cool. Okay? It starts with a rape. I won’t lie: I sighed thinking Sven Taddicken‘s Das schönste Paar [The Most Beautiful Couple] was going to end up another drama about coping and retribution like most others wherein Liv (Luise Heyer) struggles as Malte (Maximilian Brückner) protects. So it was a welcome surprise when we’re moved past this harrowing prologue to meet the couple two years later working, smiling, and possibly healed in a bid to forget. Not only that, but Liv proves the one who wants to celebrate upon…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Cascos Indomables [Helmet Heads] [2018]

Jared Mobarak

There’s a spot on your face. If Broken Lizard were Central American and deadpan, they might make something akin to Ernesto Villalobos‘ Cascos Indomables [Helmet Heads]. Think an extremely droll Super Troopers meets Office Space starring a sextet of bike messengers desperately trying to break the monotony of their stagnant lives while also staying afloat once their employer closes shop without warning. At the center lies Mancha (Arturo Pardo), a listless sleepwalker of a man allergic to change in any form. Of all these men left unemployed, he’s the sole…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: The Dig [2018]

Jared Mobarak

He’s on my land. After fifteen years in jail for murder, Ronan Callahan (Moe Dunford) returns home to find his victim’s father caught in a loop. Every day spent behind bars was a day Sean McKenna (Lorcan Cranitch) languished in the bog behind the Callahans’ property, digging holes along a carefully marked grid in search of his daughter’s body. He promised he wouldn’t stop until she was at rest and so he shoveled mud while his wife lay dying of cancer and still shovels mud now that his other daughter…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Lof mér að falla [Let Me Fall] [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Then you’ll get the kick. Films about addiction can be tough to endure depending on how authentically harrowing the experience is drawn. They can only end in one of two ways: death or sobriety. The former can be literal or figurative depending on how deep the drug of choice has its claws fastened and the latter can often be shown as a victory rather than a small step in a series of steps that will go on forever. A character’s journey is therefore always repetitive since reaching bottom before the…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Les salopes ou le sucre naturel de la peau [Les Salopes or the Naturally Wanton Pleasure of Skin] [2018]

Jared Mobarak

In the end there are only human experiments. Can skin tell the difference between love and desire? It’s an intriguing question Marie-Claire (Brigitte Poupart) can’t help but want to answer as a dermatology professor and lover of sex if only to supply a reprieve from the usual carcinoma studies her doctorate students tediously gravitate towards. She knows the young woman who presents it (Charlotte Aubin‘s Sofia) is up to the challenge scholastically, but unsure experimentally. So Marie-Claire takes it upon herself to collect samples of her own cells before and…

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