Jared Mobarak

[TIFF Review] The Place Beyond the Pines

Retaining the gritty authenticity of his lyrically heartbreaking Blue Valentine, Derek Cianfrance's new insanely ambitious look into the nature versus nurture e...

[TIFF Review] Frances Ha

A Noah Baumbach film through and through, I can't help but praise lead actress and co-writer Greta Gerwig's influence in making Frances Ha the quirky, subtly hi...

[TIFF Review] What Richard Did

Jealousy could be the most destructive force in youth culture. With hormones raging to drive a need for companionship to help prevail through high school and re...

[TIFF Review] Something in the Air

Sex, drugs, art, and revolution -- such was the life of a young European in 1971. Or at least it was the life of a young director at 17 trying to reconcile the ...

[TIFF Review] Anna Karenina

When TIFF director and CEO Piers Handling introduced the newest adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina by saying director Joe Wright appropriately played up ...

[TIFF Review] Inch’Allah

It's truly amazing to watch how guilt, regret, and sorrow can change the very make-up of your character. It may only be for a brief while, but that moment can i...

[TIFF Review] When I Saw You

Leave it to writer/director Annemarie Jacir to make an American more or less indoctrinated to side with the Israelis in the war for the Holy Land see her people...

[TIFF Review] Shores of Hope

It's East Berlin, 1984—an entire nation under the Stasi's watchful eye. Freedom is near impossible without risk of arrest or bullet courtesy of a botched escape...

Jared Mobarak

Jared Mobarak is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic for The Film Stage, Art Director for Buffalo, NY film series Cultivate Cinema Circle, and member of OFCS and GWNYFCA. You can follow his cinematic viewing habits at Letterboxd.