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TIFF19 REVIEW: Jallikattu [2019]

2019/09/102020/03/24 Jared Mobarak

Go straight for his heart. The day breaks and the rhythm of a community sparks with music, breathing, and rote action that keeps everyone in a familiar balance. They visit Varney the butcher (Chemban Vinod Jose), accept their pound of red flesh, and head to church. Everyone is happy. Everyone is at peace. Plans for a wedding unfold and the town is abuzz with idle chatter and a wealth of gossip before the evening brings unexpected disaster. From the staccato pounding and ringing of sound to the burning of fire…

TIFF19 REVIEW: Ema [2019]

2019/09/082020/03/24 Jared Mobarak

You’ll forget all this. There’s a lot to unpack in Pablo Larraín‘s dance film Ema. From two lead characters as unreliable to the plot as they are fickle with each other to an elaborate scheme preying on the weaknesses of man and the pleasures of flesh, it’s tough to know what the director wants us to laugh at: the wildly unorthodox situations he’s created or the sociopathic characters within. I think his hope is the former as his talk after the screening heard him admitting he didn’t like the reggaetón…

TIFF19 REVIEW: Mientras dure la guerra [While at War] [2019]

2019/09/062020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

But we’re Christians. Director Alejandro Amenábar spoke very briefly before the screening of his latest film Mientras dure la guerra [While at War] and the main sentiment was this: “It could happen anywhere.” He doesn’t, however, just mean rebellion or uprising. He doesn’t mean a coup or military dictatorship either. What he and co-writer Alejandro Hernández share via the parallel journeys of Don Miguel de Unamuno (Karra Elejalde) and General Franco (Santi Prego) is that just fights always run the risk of becoming unjust very fast. This truth is ultimately…

TIFF19 REVIEW: Proxima [2019]

2019/09/062020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

My mother said it’s not a job for girls. A last minute addition to a Mars mission precursor via the International Space Station, Sarah (Eva Green) is simultaneously excited and anxious. While space travel was her childhood dream, the sheer logistics of this journey dictate a year away from her young daughter Stella ( Zélie Boulant). Her ex (Lars Eidinger‘s astrophysicist Thomas) must confront this reality to pick up the slack as a full-time parent, but she does too considering the milestones, struggles, and joy she’ll miss. And her team…

TIFF19 REVIEW: Harpiks [Resin] [2019]

2019/09/042020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

They ruin everything. Published in 2015, Ane Riel’s novel Harpiks [Resin] found itself the winner of four major Scandinavian literary awards on its way to international bestseller status. It’s no wonder then that it would be optioned as a film so soon afterwards by fellow Danes Daniel Borgman (director) and Bo Hr. Hansen (screenwriter). A dark thriller centered upon a close-knit family of hermits, the story unfolds as though of two worlds: theirs and ours. Jens (Peter Plaugborg) and Maria (Sofie Gråbøl) created this division intentionally as an irrational fear…

TIFF19 REVIEW: Håp [Hope] [2019]

2019/09/042020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

What do we tell the kids? Tomas (Stellan Skarsgård) was married with three children when Anja (Andrea Bræin Hovig) met him. She didn’t want to fall in love, but twenty years and three more kids later show that’s exactly what happened. When Anja raised their babies, Tomas worked—a lot. When it was time for her to go back to work, she did too—a lot. Both alternated their career-motivated traveling so one could stay home and watch the family, a promise to be present at night with the kids honored by…

TIFF19 REVIEW: Entwined [2019]

2019/09/032020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

I long for the old ways. The death of their father triggers Panos (Prometheus Aleifer) and half-brother George (John De Holland) to take stock. The latter wants to stick together and move forward while the former chooses to start anew. Panos is a doctor who now recognizes the delicacy of life too well and wants to hit the country in Alyti so his services can do some real good away from the city. George incessantly calls in the hopes of persuading him out of this altruistic dream he assumes will…

TIFF19 REVIEW: Marian paratiisi [Maria’s Paradise] [2019]

2019/09/022020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

God will punish you. At twelve years old, Maria Åkerblom heard the voice of an angel. It came in a dream and she spoke its words to those around her as though in a trance. She became a traveling sensation as soon as the pious caught on going city to city to tell God-fearing Finnish people that salvation was real. Eventually she grew into an adult with a flock of believers in tow—each devout “child” selling his/her possessions to donate their earnings to the cause. The sect became more and…

TIFF19 REVIEW: Antigone [2019]

2019/09/012020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

My heart says to help my brother. A lot of people die during Sophocles‘ Antigone. The death of Oedipus puts his sons Eteocles and Polynices on the throne, their deaths spark their titular sister to fight for the latter’s right to be buried, and her eventual suicide leads to more dead bodies as only a Greek tragedy could allow. While Canadian director Sophie Deraspe loosely adapts his play to tell her tale of North America’s immigration ills (through the specific lens of Montreal, Quebec), she leaves the killing behind. There’s…

TIFF19 REVIEW: 1982 [2019]

2019/08/312020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

Don’t invite the war into our home. Before 2007, all Lebanese men were conscripted to serve in the military for at least one year. I’ve heard from multiple people that it wasn’t a question of citizenship, but ethnicity. If I ever visited before that year, I wouldn’t have been able to return to America without fulfilling that obligation. Whether or not this was actually true—I’m not certain. But even if it wasn’t, all the children born there during a lengthy civil war against Syrian occupation and an eventual Israeli invasion…

TIFF19 REVIEW: Knuckle City [2019]

2019/08/302020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

I doubt your cries will reach Heaven. It’s 1994 and young Dudu and Duke have little in the way of inspiring role models to build lives for themselves in Mdantsane, South Africa. Apartheid is over and Nelson Mandela is president, but they’re taking notes from a father (Zolosa Xaluva‘s Art Nyakama) raving about how “real men” take care of their family despite cheating on his wife with teenagers and barely knowing what his sons are doing or where they are at any moment. What he means by “protection” is the…

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