#next is her ex from the diaries series who was so stupid he blew their undercover identities | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

weekendwarriorblog · 6 years

Text

ED’s Tribeca Film Festival Diary Part 3 – Wrapping Things Up (Very Late)

The Tribeca Film Festival has been over for weeks now, and it was a moderately decent year, although I was sidetracked by other things to post the last part of my diary. If nothing else, not having a job allowed me to spend a lot more time seeing a variety of movies than I normally do when I have to work on other things for theatrical release.

I saw a bunch of movies, mostly in Chelsea at the Cinepolis Cinemas and SVA Theater because going to Tribeca is still a pain in the butt even though I live downtown. It requires a crosstown bus that only runs certain hours, as I found out when I was left stranded in Battery Park on a Saturday night after the only premiere I went there to see.

Before I get into my final capsule reviews, I want to give a big, big thanks to the wonderful Tammie Rosen, who once again gifted me with a Hudson Pass, which allowed me to get into a lot more public screenings and therefore, see more movies. I probably saw about half press and half public screenings, but I was shocked to not see many press people at the latter, especially with so many of them getting similar access as me. It’s kind of a shame, because you can’t really judge a festival in any given year without making an attempt to see a variety of movies in different sections and especially catch some of the awards winners on the final Sunday. I just don’t see many of the local press taking advantage of this opportunity, so they end up missing many really strong films, even once they finally get theatrical release.

I always have to explain to publicists that I don’t generally cover documentaries at film festivals, and there’s a number of good reasons for this. First of all, few outlets care about doc coverage, mainly because they’re not sexy enough to get the required clicks/traffic that’s so important for a site’s income. I get it. The other reason is that I’m such a fan of the doc genre that very often, almost always actually, docs end up being my favorite thing out of festivals, so it’s rare for me to make a festival “Best of” list that’s NOT topped by a doc. Not exactly fair, but them’s the breaks.

With that caveat, I present two of the best movies I saw at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival…and they’re both documentaries…

It’s a Hard Truth, Ain’t It?

I mentioned this in my capsule review of Madeleine Sackler’s O.G. as a companion doc, but it’s a lot more than that. Frankly, I think this is up there with some of the best docs I’ve seen, which is amazing since it’s essentially a “school project.” Basically, Sackler was teaching a documentary program at the Pendleton maximum security prison in Indiana, allowing a select group of inmates to talk about their stories and what led them to end up in Pendleton for murder, as other inmates filmed them. I’m going to make a confession here, knowing that few people bother to read my blog, but I have a friend in jail who has become my ersatz pen pal over the past few years. I know his story and how he got there, but I also know that he’s not a bad person and he just did something stupid. Hearing the ups and downs of his experience has made me far more in tune with the experience of inmates and ex-cons trying to get back into society. This is an incredibly emotional film, one that nearly had me in tears hearing all the bad things that happened to some of these guys before they eventually lashed out and ended up killing someone. It’s a fair cop and they rightfully deserve to be in jail, but they all seem to have found redemption, and the fact that they were able to make this doc and get it out to the public makes It’s a Hard Truth, Ain’t It one of the best docs I’ve seen this year and many years, in fact, and it deserves your time and attention, as does…

United Skates

Just as I’d settled into the idea of Sackler’s doc being the best of the fest, I was able to catch this documentary, which won the Audience Award and blew me away just as much. Directed by Dyanna Winkler and Tina Brown, it looks at the rise and fall of the skating rink as a place that brought together the African-American communities in various American cities. I’ll admit that I never really knew much about rollerskating, because I’ve never gone myself, but I found the phenomenon intriguing after seeing it depicted in Malcolm Lee’s Roll Bounce. This doc really gets into the nationwide appeal and tragic death of the roller rink as a community meeting space. The filmmakers spent a number of years with a number of rollerskating enthusiasts in North Carolina and California, as well as an independent rink owner in Chicago, showing how the resistance to “adult nights” – essentially when African-Americans can go to the rink to show off their fashion and moves to the music they liked – as well as the re-zoning of existing rink locations that have made them a dying breed. This is a very entertaining doc, regardless of your own personal interest in rollerskating. What was interesting about the screening I saw this at was that there was not an inordinate amount of African-Americans in the audience, which probably is more because many moviegoers probably bought their tickets to the screening before knowing which documentary won. Still, this doc probably has a lot of potential for the right distributor, and I hope it finds one soon.

The Fourth Estate

Tribeca’s closing night film was also a doc, and that was Liz Garbus’ look at the New York Timesduring the first 100 days of the Trump Presidency, the first of a four-part series for Showtime docs that will air later this month. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not particularly political, nor am I an avid reader of the Times. In fact, I prefer plenty of other New York papers to it, because it always came off to be as high-falutin’ and overly-expensive, and yet, it’s still the best newspaper in the world in terms of quality of content, writing and reporting. I don’t have a ton to say about the movie, as it basically covers similar ground as other docs about the Times, although it’s certainly TIMElier (ha ha) by dealing with the paper’s recent political coverage and how the Washington desk works with (or sometimes against) the higher ups in New York. I’ll definitely be curious to watch the other three parts, though I don’t have Showtime, so hopefully they’ll send me a screener.

To Dust

The narrative Audience Award went to Shawn Snyder’s dark dramedy about a Hassidic man whose wife died and who turns to a science teacher to help him understand what’s happening since her body was buried. It’s a fairly grim and morbid premise but one with enough heart and humor that I can totally understand why it played so well with audiences. It wasn’t my personal favorite movie of the festival, but considering that it premiered out of competition as a Special Screening (possibly to avoid favoritism of it having come out of the Tribeca Institute, maybe?), it was good that it got love from the Tribeca audiences, because I might have missed it otherwise. The film stars Géza Röhrig, who played the title character in the Oscar-winning Son of Saul, as Shmuel, a Hassidic cantor whose wife passed away recently, but he’s been having nightmares about her not resting peacefully after her burial. Unsure of what she must be going through as her body decomposes in the ground, he turns to a science teacher played by Matthew Broderick, to figure out what exactly is happening with his wife’s body. It’s a very dark buddy comedy of sorts as these two men from different backgrounds trying to understand death and decomposition, yet the movie does work.

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda

Another Tribeca doc I was interested in, mainly due to my own experiences and passion for music, was this spotlight on the Japanese composer and musician, whose career began with Yellow Magic Orchestra and David Sylvain’s band Japan, which is from where I know him best. Sure, he’s done a ton of soundtrack work and that’s mainly the focus of this film, but it’s by no means a typical “history of” doc, as much as it covers some of his more recent years. It begins with his trip to the Fukushima area where a nuclear power plant exploded in 2011 following an earthquake and monsoon. He was there looking for sound sources but also because he was a frequent ecological warrior in terms of trying to save the earth from the destruction being caused by Godzilla… I mean… man. A few years later, Sakamoto is diagnosed with throat cancer, although it skips over most of his treatment to pick up in 2014 when he’s trying to find direction for his next record. If you’re a musician or into film scores, this doc from Stephen Schible offers enough of Sakomoto’s process for making music to keep you invested, although it’s definitely a movie for music nerds more than anything else. MUBI will release this doc theatrically and On Demand in July sometime.

Egg

I was mostly interested in this film because it was directed by Mariana Palka, whose last movie Bitch, while not perfect, was an interesting commentary on gender roles in the family. (And it starred Jason Ritter, who is one of my favorite underrated actors.) This is a very different movie, written by Risa Mickenberg, and it reminded me very much of God of Carnage, not the play, because I never saw that, but the movie by Roman Polanski that had an all-star cast. This is a similar movie about two couples who get together with issues arising the more time they spend together. The first couple is played by David Alan Basche and Christina Hendricks, who are pregnant with their first child, while Alysia Reiner and Gbenga Akinnagbe play their friends Tina and Wayne, who living in a bohemian Brooklyn loft and are having their own baby through a surrogate. The movie kind of grew on me but really, the best part was when Anna Camp shows up as the notorious surrogate who they’ve been talking about for the last 45 minutes. She brings a much-needed level of humor as the somewhat ditzy but oddly-logical blonde Kiki who really stirs things up. Honestly, this might have worked better as a stageplay, because there’s nothing about it that makes it feel like it necessarily needed to be a movie. I’m sure mileage will vary depending on whether you have had kids or plan to, but it’s not the strongest follow-up for Palka.

Diane

Kent Jones’ narrative feature debut stars Mary Kay Place as the title character, and she’s very good in the role of a middle-aged woman trying to deal with a lot of things at once, including a son with addiction issues, a cousin dying from cancer and more. Jones’ movie reminds me of the work of Kenneth Lonergan, who I’m really not that big a fan of (especially not the much-ballyhooed Margaret), and it’s essentially a character piece that never really goes anywhere. There’s lots of scenes of driving and lots of talking but not really much in terms of plot, as we follow Diane trying to deal with these various things, and quite a bit of time passes over the course of the film. And yet, Jones’ film won the main jury prize as well as awards for screenplay and cinematography. Go figure. I had seen much worthier offerings. (It also became abundantly clear what was missing from Jones’ film when I watched the similarly-paced but far superior First Reformed from Paul Schrader, although to be fair, Schrader has four decades more experience making films than Jones.)

That should be all for now, as the Tribeca Film Festival is over for another year. I’m not sure if I’ll have a job or somewhere to cover Tribeca for next year, but I think I’ve found a happy medium on coverage in terms of seeing as many movies as possible and writing about all of them. Would love to hear your thoughts on my reviews or other movies, if you get a chance.

#TribecaFilmFestival UnitedSkates Egg RyuichiSakamotoCoda ToDust #movie

0 notes