Tag: Lynn Cohen

REVIEW: The Vigil [2021]

Jared Mobarak

It wants your pain. After spending his entire life within the Orthodox Jewish community, Yakov Ronen (Dave Davis) recently decided to leave its insular environment and make his way amongst the freer and more modern society away from its borders. It’s hardly an easy transition, though, when you consider how little he and his fellow defectors know about the world they’re entering. Yakov himself can’t stop marveling about his new smartphone because it has a flashlight let alone access to the internet, so it’s no surprise that he’d fail to…

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REVIEW: Lingua Franca [2020]

Jared Mobarak

Always a bridesmaid. There are few things worse in this life than to be refused one’s humanity. Whether the result of bigotry via the lens of race, gender, sexuality, and age or mistrust via a desire to underestimate, reduce people to their biggest regrets, or dismiss sight unseen, our capacity to treat others as “less than” ourselves is growing at an exponential rate. And for what? A laugh? A false sense of superiority deflecting from one’s own shortcomings? So much about how we as Americans act boils down to our…

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REVIEW: Feast of the Seven Fishes [2019]

Jared Mobarak

What the hell is nostalgia? Titled after the Southern Italian tradition that made its way across the Atlantic to become a part of many Italian-American families’ Christmas Eve celebrations, Robert Tinnell‘s adaptation of his own graphic novel/recipe book Feast of the Seven Fishes does well to center itself upon its food even if the people eating it prove the real focal point. It’s probably not a coincidence then that most of our attention is specifically spent on seven teens with a direct or peripheral connection to dinner at Grandpa Johnny’s…

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REVIEW: They Came Together [2014]

Jared Mobarak

“I admire your spirit” It’s one thing to satirize the romantic comedy genre and a whole other to literally break it down into its myriad tropes to build a story around them without transforming their generic designations into fully formed characters. But that’s exactly what David Wain (co-writer/director) and Michael Showalter (co-writer) did with They Came Together. It’s so transparent in its commentary that I was surprised they gave leading male Joel’s (Paul Rudd) brother (Max Greenfield‘s Jake) a name. The two men are so invested in calling each other…

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TIFF14 REVIEW: The Cobbler [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“I’m not gonna eat you!” Adults need fairy tales too and Thomas McCarthy—with cowriter Paul Sado—deliver one in The Cobbler. They don’t try to pretend it’s something more either as its opening prologue can attest thanks to older tradesmen on the Lower East Side speaking Yiddish around a table to think up a way to defeat the evil landlord raising their rent to drive them away. Cut to the local shoe man deemed their savior stitching up a pair of loafers with son in tow and we learn his machine…

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