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REVIEW: Cléo de 5 à 7 [Cleo from 5 to 7] [1962]

2015/09/232015/10/20 Jared Mobarak

“You shouldn’t use the word ‘despair’” It’s crazy to think that Cléo de 5 à 7 [Cleo from 5 to 7] was just the second feature length fictional narrative French auteur Agnès Varda ever made. The maturity in minimal storytelling, singular visual style, and existential metaphor surrounding death’s value that spans classes are stunning to behold. While following Cléo (Corinne Marchand) in virtual real time for an hour and a half as she distracts herself with shopping and work before calling her doctor for potentially devastating test results, we pass…

REVIEW: The Visit [2015]

2015/09/222015/09/23 Jared Mobarak

“Swerve” It’s no secret that M. Night Shyamalan needed a winner after a string of box office and commercial failures. Firmly in the minority saying The Village and Lady in the Water are his two best—the former is one of my all-time favorites—my idea of his failings doesn’t necessarily coincide with the movie-going public, but I was relishing the thought of seeing what the embattled artist could do with a stripped-down, found footage horror. With reviews seemingly positive and financials proving lucrative at ten times the budget and counting, it…

TIFF15 REVIEW: High-Rise [2016]

2015/09/132019/12/29 Jared Mobarak

“I think he’s lost his focus” As soon as the voice of Tom Hiddleston‘s Dr. Robert Laing was heard speaking narration above his weathered and crazed visage manically moving from cluttered, dirty room to darkened feverish corner, my mind started racing. Terry Gilliam‘s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas popped into my consciousness and then his Brazil after a quick title card shoves us back in time to watch as Laing enters his new concrete behemoth of a housing structure oppressively standing above a vast and still parking lot. Add…

TIFF15 REVIEW: Closet Monster [2016]

2015/09/132015/11/09 Jared Mobarak

“Don’t be a wimp” Writer/director Stephen Dunn‘s feature debut Closet Monster cares little about convention to tell the story of Oscar Madly (Connor Jessup) growing up with a psychological revulsion to his sexual urges all thanks to an extremely disturbing event witnessed as a child. This prologue glimpse at his youth (played by Jack Fulton) is a mash-up of tough coming-of-age-dramatics and a dark-edged imaginative whimsy that intrigues to draw you closer. It will be divisive with an idyllic world’s caring father (Aaron Abrams‘ Peter) “pushing” dreams into his son’s…

TIFF15 REVIEW: Len and Company [2016]

2015/09/112016/06/10 Jared Mobarak

“Be good or be gone” Hearing how deeply a film touched its cast lends a certain air that might not normally be there. Len and Company has it as Juno Temple and star Rhys Ifans both exclaimed during their TIFF premiere Q&A how affected they were by director Tim Godsall and cowriter Katherine Knight‘s script. Shot at the former’s own home with a delicate touch of humanity, an abundance of humor, and the perfect pinch of dramatic gravitas, the film proves more than its conventional story presumes. We’ve seen its…

TIFF15 REVIEW: Mænd & høns [Men & Chicken] [2015]

2015/09/112015/09/17 Jared Mobarak

“In fact, they hadn’t been dealt any cards” While I’m not familiar with Anders Thomas Jensen‘s solo work, I am with the films he has collaborated on opposite Susanne Bier. So to see images of his latest Mænd & høns [Men & Chicken] with a weirdly disfigured and hair lipped Mads Mikkelsen readying for a badminton strike was to be unprepared for the dark comedy of pratfalls a la Klovn it provides. A perverse genetic-minded fairy tale about family—warts and more warts—its lead duo consisting of one brother who must…

TIFF15 REVIEW: People Are Becoming Clouds [2015]

2015/09/062015/09/16 Jared Mobarak

“What was the question I had asked?” There’s a cute conceit at the heart of Marc Katz‘s People Are Becoming Clouds. John (David Ross) and Eleanor (Libby Woodbridge) have recently been married and ever since moving into a new apartment together have found she tends to transform into a cloud. Sometimes the type is in accord with her mood as far as color and lightning, others find her as distinct shapes like a dove playing a trumpet. In order to try and combat their struggle they seek Dr. Corduroy’s (Sean…

TIFF15 REVIEW: Der Schwarm [The Fantastic Love of Beeboy & Flowergirl] [2015]

2015/09/032015/09/16 Jared Mobarak

“They had to realize that love was nothing but fantasy” In the grand picture book aesthetic of Bryan Fuller‘s “Pushing Daises”, Clemens Roth‘s Der Schwarm [The Fantastic Love of Beeboy & Flowergirl] is a delightful little fantasy of over-the-top whimsy. Peter (Florian Prokop) is forced to live inside a bee suit due to killer bees perpetually floating around him like dirt on Peanuts‘ Pig-Pen, destined to create honey and live a life of solitude. Elsa (Elisa Schlott), a waitress who loves flowers the world over and makes them out of…

REVIEW: The Diary of a Teenage Girl [2015]

2015/09/012015/09/02 Jared Mobarak

“And now the making of a harlot” You don’t realize what might be missing from a film until it’s staring you in the face elsewhere. I love The Perks of Being a Wallflower for its universality, authentic emotions, and resonance, but there was something absent I could only see while watching Marielle Heller‘s adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner‘s graphic novel The Diary of a Teenage Girl. To say it is honesty would be a disservice to Perks because Stephen Chbosky‘s fictional memoir is honest as far as the subject matter and…

TIFF15 REVIEW: Never Happened [2015]

2015/08/302015/09/16 Jared Mobarak

“Where’s my other earring?” For eight minutes Mark Slutsky makes sure he has us right where he wants us. Never Happened is so precisely measured in its construction and revelations that we don’t even know its true genre until the very end. Yes there’s comedy and romance and drama in its plot concerning two business partners engaging in a sexual relationship while out of town for a meeting, but their decision to forget the encounter brings with it a much larger understanding of the world in which they live than…

TIFF15 REVIEW: She Stoops to Conquer [2015]

2015/08/302015/09/16 Jared Mobarak

“It’s everything you’ll never be” The TIFF description calling Zachary Russell‘s She Stoops to Conquer a “fantastical oddity” is about as spot-on a review as you can get. What else can you say about a short film depicting a struggling performance artist who applies a latex mask—transforming her into an older gentleman in hope of laughter that doesn’t come—who comes face-to-face with the alter ego in real life? The possibilities are almost nightmarish: to see yourself in parody and wonder what sort of game is happening around you. There’s a…