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FANTASIA22 REVIEW: Glorious [2022]

2022/07/212022/07/22 Jared Mobarak

You might actually be a bathroom talker. The universe has a favor to ask. Well, it’s the universe’s would-be destroyer who’s asking on its behalf. After an eternity hidden in the ether watching the life that sprang from a wound inflicted by his brothers and sisters evolve, this ancient titan (J.K. Simmons‘ Ghat) realizes his role as his father’s (the creator of existence) reset button isn’t something he looks forward to fulfilling. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have much of a say in the matter. If Dad escapes his prison and finds…

FANTASIA22 REVIEW: All Jacked Up and Full of Worms [2022]

2022/07/152022/07/22 Jared Mobarak

I think I just killed my own childhood. Is first-time feature film writer/director Alex Phillips trying to say something with All Jacked Up and Full of Worms or is he just looking to make viewers wish they were as high on hallucinogenic worms as the characters on-screen? Ask his target audience and they’ll probably laugh in your face for daring to presume they care. All they want is that out-there insanity writhing around in the slimy discharge left behind by a journey between nightmare and reality. Ask everyone else and…

FANTASIA22 REVIEW: L’employée du mois [Employee of the Month] [2021]

2022/07/152022/11/26 Jared Mobarak

The most dangerous thing here is you. It’s review day and everyone is laughing about what raises and bonuses they’re going to request this year. Nico (Alex Vizorek) jokes about asking for an SUV and money because it worked for someone else in the past. And why not? EcoClean Pro’s manager Patrick (Peter Van den Begin) decided to give his latest intern (Laetitia Mampaka‘s Melody) a stack of papers to shred on her first day, so it’s not much of a leap to assume the books have been cooked to…

FANTASIA22 REVIEW: Dark Nature [2023]

2022/07/122022/11/26 Jared Mobarak

Yes. I will face my trauma. Or whatever. The risk of dealing with a therapy group like the one at the center of Berkley Brady‘s directorial debut Dark Nature is that the narrative quite often needs to turn into a “Trauma Olympics” to progress. She knows this and even includes the sentiments as a joke early on when one of Dr. Dunnley’s (Kyra Harper) usual patients Shaina (Roseanne Supernault) speaks about why she’s attending this woodland retreat in the Treaty 7 territory of northern Alberta (Brady is a Métis filmmaker)…

REVIEW: The Long Night [2022]

2022/06/242022/06/27 Jared Mobarak

It’s a southern thing. Grace Covington (Scout Taylor-Compton) wants nothing more than to find her birth parents. We’re told her former foster child has been looking for quite some time, perhaps helped in part by her Princeton-graduate, Hamptons-vacationing jock of a boyfriend’s (Nolan Gerard Funk‘s Jack) money. Well, she finally has a lead thanks to the owner (King Orba‘s Frank) of an old plantation down in Charleston—apparently near where she was born. He’s invited her to come stay and hear what he knows to point her in the right direction.…

REVIEW: Revealer [2022]

2022/06/202022/06/22 Jared Mobarak

There’s no ‘we’ here. What better setting for a Biblical apocalypse than an XXX novelty shop with peep show booths picketed by religious zealots who, more often than not, protest as a means of projecting their own internalized “sins”? That’s where we meet Angie Pitarelli (Caito Aase) and Sally Mewbourne (Shaina Schrooten) at the start of director Luke Boyce and screenwriters Michael Moreci and Tim Seeley‘s Revealer. The former is heading inside to take an extra shift. The latter is screaming at her to repent. These women have a fun…

REVIEW: Flux Gourmet [2022]

2022/06/192022/06/20 Jared Mobarak

It wasn’t the flanger. Despite centering upon a three-piece artistic collective utilizing culinary accoutrement to manufacture aural soundscapes (band name yet undecided), Peter Strickland‘s bone-dry farce skewering the dynamic between artist, patron, and audience Flux Gourmet isn’t really about any of the above. That’s not to say Stones (Makis Papadimitriou) isn’t a participant within that dynamic, he’s just not included to fill any of those positions. His involvement is instead as an objective observer hired to document the work being accomplished by Elle (Fatma Mohamed), Lamina (Ariane Labed), and Billy…

REVIEW: Abandoned [2022]

2022/06/142022/06/16 Jared Mobarak

You said I could keep this one! A former preschool teacher from “the city,” Sara Davis (Emma Roberts) had been told by so many parents of the euphoric sense of love they cultivated the moment their child was born. She hoped it would wash over her too upon giving birth to her and husband Alex’s (John Gallagher Jr.) son Liam, but it simply never presented itself. It eluded her to the point of seeing a psychiatrist about postpartum depression and he agreed there was a problem. She subsequently rejected the…

TRIBECA22 REVIEW: A Wounded Fawn [2022]

2022/06/102022/06/13 Jared Mobarak

All your secrets are escaping. This weekend is supposed to be a rebirth for Meredith (Sarah Lind). After battling the demons of an abusive relationship, she’s accepted an invitation of romantic seclusion from a man (Josh Ruben‘s Bruce) she’s just met. Her friends demand to know all the details, but she’s not quite ready to share them. This might just be an isolated yet necessary sexual encounter that ends upon her return to the city. No reason to let him move into her head psychologically or her inner circle prematurely…

TRIBECA22 REVIEW: Natten har øjne [Attachment] [2022]

2022/06/082022/06/13 Jared Mobarak

Was that somehow my fault? Leah’s (Ellie Kendrick) reasons for being in Denmark are purely academic. At least, that’s what she tells former actress Maja (Josephine Park) upon meeting by accident at a bookshop. It’s a cutely fateful collision, the former with a stack of research and the latter dressed as an elf while running to an engagement to read to a bunch of school children. Maja’s haste causes a mix-up in their attempt to pick everything up, ensuring they must come together once more in calmer circumstances. A mug…

REVIEW: Crimes of the Future [2022]

2022/06/072022/06/07 Jared Mobarak

Body is reality. Much like how heartbreak proves necessary for love, pain is needed for life. To live anesthetized is to simply exist—unfeeling, unbothered, unmoved. It’s no wonder then that National Organ Registry investigator Wippet (Don McKellar) would chuckle when admitting how performance art has become the new rage. Everyone wants to be that thing that breaks through the monotony. They want to both push themselves to the point of artistic beauty through their numbed bodies and inspire audiences to do the same. Not everyone is equally successful, though. When…