Category: Drama

TIFF REVIEW: Beautiful Boy [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Everything. There’s an odd framing device within Felix Van Groeningen‘s Beautiful Boy that strangely frames the first half of the film for no reason. It’s a scene wherein David Sheff (Steve Carell) is conducting an interview with a Dr. Brown (Timothy Hutton). The latter assumes it’s for a story considering the former is a journalist, but this inquiry is in fact a personal issue. Sheff is worried about his son Nic (Timothée Chalamet), a crystal meth addict who’s disappeared. He wants to get a better handle on the physical destructiveness…

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TIFF REVIEW: Duelles [Mothers’ Instinct] [2019]

Jared Mobarak

Forgive me. Director Olivier Masset-Depasse lets us know exactly what to expect out of Duelles [Mothers’ Instinct] from the start, introducing an idyllic bourgeois home with all the sensory cues to foreshadow melodramatic suspense. Alice Brunelle (Veerle Baetens) peers out her window as neighbor Céline Geniot (Anne Coesens) leaves, rushing out once the car pulls away. She enters the woman’s adjoining home with a set of keys to clandestinely move through and close the curtains. We assume the worst: an affair. The music manipulates this suspenseful thought, the camera in-close…

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TIFF REVIEW: کفرناحوم [Capharnaüm] [Capernaum] [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Because I was born. The synopsis doesn’t lie. Young Zain (Zain Al Rafeea) is in prison, his five-year sentence just put into effect. He has no papers despite being born in Lebanon and thus a doctor must estimate his age by his lack of baby teeth as twelve. But here he is anyway for a crime his mother dismisses as “childish,” a label the judge scoffs at considering the term’s length. It’s no wonder then that Zain has called this latest trial to sue his parents for neglect. Worse than…

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TIFF REVIEW: The Front Runner [2018]

Jared Mobarak

A lot can happen in three weeks. And so it began—sentiments that prove true only until the next example replaces it. We’re just two years removed from Donald Trump’s victory for president of the United States and already the art seeking answers about what went wrong and what went right have arrived. Much of it stems from finding a turning point to mark when the mainstream media started including tabloid fodder under the header of journalism, when politics shifted from the good of constituents and country to that of party…

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TIFF REVIEW: Mouthpiece [2019]

Jared Mobarak

This isn’t about you. Cassandra (played by Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava) reminds her mother (Maev Beaty‘s Elaine) that we (humans) used to only live until forty. I think we often forget this fact—subjectively rather than objectively. The disparity between my generation and my parents’ is a veritable canyon as far as notions of domesticity, parenthood, and identity as a whole. Boomers were married with two kids by the time they exited college and now it’s not unusual to wait that long just to pick a major. We don’t move…

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TIFF REVIEW: Les filles du soleil [Girls of the Sun] [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Women, life, liberty. It’s just like America to document ISIS as a fight we must combat—like the saviors we are. There’s a reason for this from our perspective, but our jingoistic thought process does detract from what’s occurring on the ground. People are engaged in a war that they have no way to avoid. They’ve been displaced from their homes by a terrorist regime that has murdered them, raped them, and indoctrinated their youth into joining the cause. So our hero complex has devastating effects insofar as erasing the victims…

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TIFF REVIEW: Loro [2018]

Jared Mobarak

Him, Him? If you watch “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” you know Silvio Berlisconi. The Italian tycoon turned politician is mired in scandals, controversy, and populist excitement to the point of having a bizarre theme song declaring, “Thank Goodness for Silvio.” He smiles and waves, refuses to divest business interests while in office, and worked to enact laws that helped him and his friends become wealthier while also staying out of jail (mostly). It’s no surprise then that many say he set the precedent for the political chaos Donald…

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REVIEW: The Miseducation of Cameron Post [2018]

Jared Mobarak

There’s no hiding from God. “Separation of church and state” has always fascinated me since the only consistency within is the ability to pick and choose when and how it’s enforced. We’re the “land of the free” and therefore shouldn’t impose certain laws and safeties upon religious communities trying to practice their faith. But when a political power finds utility in prejudice and animosity against one religion to turn its own into the very platform on which it runs, that’s okay. It’s funny too that these scenarios deal directly with…

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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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