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REVIEW: Visages, villages [Faces Places] [2017]

2017/10/252020/04/22 Jared Mobarak

To meet new faces and photograph them so they don’t fall down the holes in my memory. To look at some of the work of “unidentified” artist JR—giant black and white images pasted onto surfaces with a literal or figurative contextual relationship—is to see the type of community-based, socially conscious messaging Agnès Varda built a career documenting. It’s no surprise to therefore hear JR explain how meaningful Varda’s Mur murs was to him as a budding artist searching for his unique voice and style. I can think of no two…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Jusqu’à la garde [Custody] [2018]

2017/09/092018/06/25 Jared Mobarak

“Which of you is the bigger liar?” It didn’t win the Oscar for best live action short in 2014, but Xavier Legrand’s Just Before Losing Everything was by far my favorite nominee. Discovering his debut feature Jusqu’à la garde [Custody] was constructed as an expansion of that story therefore made it a must-see. The short is soon revealed as a prequel, its look at the fallout of domestic abuse hopefully in the rearview considering Miriam Besson (Léa Drucker) readies to plead her case as to why her now ex-husband (Denis…

TIFF17 REVIEW: Le sens de la fête [C’est la vie!] [2017]

2017/09/082017/09/18 Jared Mobarak

“Can you repeat the options?” I went into Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano‘s latest film Le sens de la fête [C’est la vie!] knowing nothing about it. My assumption from their two previous works Intouchables and Samba was that it would prove a charmingly funny dramedy tinged with relevant politics and racial complexity. Boy was I wrong. Whereas the latter film honed in on the former’s politics, this one strips them away completely to focus solely on the comedy. The result is an uproarious contemporary riff on Robert Altman‘s underrated…

REVIEW: Junior [2011]

2017/04/12 Jared Mobarak

“I think I’m strange” Writer/director Julia Ducournau‘s Raw might be taking the horror world and cinema in general by storm this year, but its success wasn’t simply born out of thin air. Its Cannes-winning feature takes a lot of inspiration from the artist’s Cannes-winning short Junior back in 2011, another story about a young girl’s metamorphosis. Whereas the former deals more in atmosphere, mood, and nuance, however, its predecessor is far more obvious in its machinations. Rather than present its genre-tinged affliction as a genetic aftereffect of sexual awakening, its…

REVIEW: Frantz [2016]

2017/04/112017/04/11 Jared Mobarak

“I don’t want to forget him” Loosely inspired by Ernst Lubitsch‘s post-WWI-set film Broken Lullaby (itself an adaptation of Maurice Rostand‘s play), François Ozon‘s latest Frantz similarly deals with a French soldier searching for the family of a German casualty of war. It doesn’t, however, focus upon this foreign stranger entering the nation his army just recently defeated, the pain still raw with grudges strong. Instead it centers on young Anna (Paula Beer), the unfortunate fiancé of this fallen German, Frantz Hoffmeister (Anton von Lucke). A shadow of the woman…

REVIEW: Grave [Raw] [2017]

2017/03/132017/03/14 Jared Mobarak

“Two fingers will make it come up easier” We strive to become ourselves in college thanks to that first taste of freedom after adolescence’s long haul packed tightly at home and within part-time jobs and/or classes alongside peers who simply don’t want to be there. This is when we’re able to let loose and buckle down simultaneously, acknowledging our unique personalities and drive to succeed at a vocation of our choosing. But this rite of passage is never completely devoid of expectations or outside pressures. Some must maintain grades for…

REVIEW: Ennemis intérieurs [Enemies Within] [2016]

2017/02/082017/02/09 Jared Mobarak

“Between you and me, what’s the difference?” The definitive exchange in Hidden Figures—the one that defines America then and still today—is when Kirsten Dunst‘s personnel manager tells Octavia Spencer‘s yet-to-be-given-the-title supervisor, “Despite what you may think, I have nothing against y’all.” Spencer’s Dorothy Vaughan counters without missing a beat, “I know you probably believe that.” It’s such a perfect distillation of how racism permeates the very core of who we are to the point where we don’t even understand why we are racist. It happens all the time now, white…

REVIEW: La Femme et la TGV [2016]

2017/02/072017/02/09 Jared Mobarak

“I’ve never sent an internet and I never will” While its age-old conceit of a misunderstood curmudgeon discovering joy after being perpetually caught in a cycle of monotony is familiar, Timo von Gunten‘s cutely inspiring La femme et le TGV is in fact based on true events. The woman at its center is Elise (Jane Birkin), a baker left alone after her husband passed on, her son (Mathieu Bisson‘s Pierre) moved away, and her clientele gradually enticed by a cheap German bakery with unbeatable prices. She rides her bike to…

REVIEW: Elle [2016]

2016/12/222017/01/11 Jared Mobarak

“It was necessary” Director Paul Verhoeven has made a career of pushing the envelope whether through violence, sex, politics, or all three wrapped together. It’s hardly surprising then that his buzzword of choice on the promotional trail for his latest Elle has been “controversial.” The word choice is appropriate considering David Birke‘s script (adapted from Philippe Djian‘s novel Oh…) plays with taboos in ways that subvert public consciousness, but there’s an even more appropriate adjective: dangerous. Controversy is needed to shake us out of our doldrums, but it can also…

REVIEW: L’avenir [Things to Come] [2016]

2016/12/202016/12/20 Jared Mobarak

“Can we put ourselves in the place of the other” No one is making movies with as much depth of character as Mia Hansen-Løve—so much depth that you may wonder where the plot is considering everything is hinging on a single trajectory. But that’s how our lives progress. How we experience our own evolution stems from our actions and our interpretations of others’ actions. She focuses on her lead so acutely that we begin to know them as though a long lost friend. We feel for their struggle and hope…

REVIEW: Ma vie de Courgette [My Life as a Zucchini] [2016]

2016/12/14 Jared Mobarak

“Well, I think I killed my mum” You have to respect when a story targeted towards children is allowed to possess pathos. Take Gilles Paris‘ 2002 novel Autobiographie d’une courgette for example—a 228-page piece centering on a nine-year old boy’s experience living as an orphan in France after accidentally killing his mother. This is the kind of dark subject matter many parents wouldn’t let their children go near and yet it also contains a hopeful strain of optimism and love those same kids crave. But even if some readers aren’t…