Tribeca Film Fest notes and notables
New York is always New York, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to suddenly be in the same air space as someone you’ve watched on film for nigh on 30 years. I was still slightly taken aback to see Willem Dafoe walking in front of one of the many theaters to hold Tribeca Film Festival screenings. He was with a female companion, his hands stuffed in his pockets, involved with their conversation, and I was struck by the fact that there was nothing the least bit unusual about seeing him. After a few days, you get used to being in the midst of such celebrity, even as it’s downplayed so significantly by dint of the city itself. This is where a lot of actors live, of course, so in that sense, Tribeca is as much their festival as any of the rest of us regular schnooks sitting in the audience, even if you’re at the same live interview as Bobby De Niro, Ben Stiller and Dustin Hoffman.
Ironically, most of the big-name stars at Tribeca are in the audience next to you: The films themselves, culled from a kind of cultural mishmash from around the globe, weren’t prestigious (or French) enough for Cannes, or Toronto, Berlin or Sundance. While you can see some wonderful fare at Tribeca — and their documentary series is generally pretty killer — there is an even likelihood that over the course of several days, you’ll also witness a few less-than-stellar offerings. After a solid long weekend of movie picks, I closed out my festival experience with the two worst films I saw all week. Here are some other high — and low — lights from the 2017 edition. Most Surprising Twist: The Endless
If there’s a prevailing law most common in twisty, sci-fi thrillers, it’s that the explanation for all the mysterious goings-on will leave you disappointed and exasperated. But Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson’s curious film about a pair of brothers (played by the directors) who return to the “culty” community in which they grew up and barely escaped from, in order to gain closure, actually has a fascinating hook, one I will most certainly not reveal to you here. Suffice it to say, totally anticipating that moment when you realize the filmmakers have no idea what to do with their super-cool setup, I was more than happily surprised to watch the film’s plot-twist enhance the rest of the proceedings. Not sure about the film’s distribution, but if you happen to spy it on Netflix, be sure to put it in your queue.
Most Audacious Debut: Blame Writer-director-star Quinn Shephard was all of 20 when she shot this contemporary high school drama about a female student who returns to school after suffering a breakdown, and discovers the joy of losing herself in acting onstage. What’s notable about the film is Shephard’s dedication to digging through high school tropes and conjuring up characters that challenge the tiny boxes they’ve been placed into. By the end, the heroine and villainess have switched roles and back again, giving us one of the more indelible closing image sequences of the festival. I suspect we’ll be hearing from Ms. Shephard again, and I don’t just mean a postcard. Most Likely to be Adapted Into
a Network Drama: True Conviction
Sometimes, you see a documentary that could just as well be fiction, but in the case of Jamie Meltzer’s film about a trio of former wrongfully incarcerated men who form an agency dedicated to freeing other innocent inmates, you don’t even have to squint to see this as a CBS weekly drama. The doc is fascinating in its own right, but following Christopher Scott and his two best friends as they take on corrupt prosecutors (one of whom claims to let God decide how to try his cases), you can’t help but begin mentally casting the show (for the record, networks, Forest Whitaker would make a superb Scott).
Funniest Bit: Rob Brydon’s Woody Allen in The Trip to Spain
Brydon, the less famous half of the Trip team, along with Steve Coogan, is filled with impressions, from Batman villain Bane to Hugh Grant, but in Michael Winterbottom’s newest installment of the enduring travel series, it is a throwaway moment when Brydon channels Woody Allen (ostensibly to make a point about how his Brando is always ripped from The Godfather) was the one I couldn’t stop giggling about. Coogan actually does certain voices better — his Anthony Hopkins is clearly superior — but between Woody and the return of “a small man in a box,” Brydon more than holds his own. Most Welcome Return to a Leading Role: Debra Winger, The Lovers
It’s not that Winger, an actress with three Oscar nominations to her credit, had vanished, exactly, but the past decade has seen her do more TV work and smaller film roles. In The Lovers, however, she, along with co-star Tracy Letts, takes center stage and the world is better off for it. She plays an unhappy woman, having a long-standing affair (with Aidan Gillen from Game of Thrones), whose equally unhappy husband (Letts) is also having a long-standing affair. At the brink of their final dissolution, however, the pair suddenly and without warning begin to rekindle their own romance. At first brittle and miserable, it’s a joy to watch Winger work her character slowly back into the land of the living. Best Female Performance: Amy Ryan, Abundant Acreage Available
As good as Winger is, however, it is the criminally underappreciated Amy Ryan, playing the lead in Angus MacLachlian’s country farm drama, who put in the most impressive turn I saw over the festival. Playing a lonely woman, living with her brother on the family’s homestead, she is taciturn and emotionally vibrant in the same moment. The film offers no easy outs for its characters, and no unearned pathos, but it is Ryan’s startling performance that anchors everything else.
Best Male Performance: Pablo Schreiber, Thumper
It can be unrewarding to play a psychotic villain. Often you’re working within such a known set of restraints that the best you can do is downplay the evil in the character and hope that resonates. But in Jordan Ross’ undercover cop thriller, Schreiber (the half-brother of actor Liev), playing a violently unbalanced meth cook whose network of high school dealers gets compromised when a beautiful new student starts to infiltrate his world, works the outer edges of his character so convincingly, he actually scares you. By making him more real than cut-out monster, Schreiber (Orange Is the New Black) never loses the character’s humanity, which makes him somehow even more disconcerting when you see what he’s capable of.
Worst Film: Aardvark Oddly, one of the few films at Tribeca with a well-known cast — including John Hamm, Zachary Quinto and Jenny Slate — proved to be one of the least convincing. It’s the ridiculous story of a therapist (Slate), whose patient (Quinto) is haunted by his famous actor brother (Hamm), only for her to improbably embark upon an affair with said brother even as her patient starts retreating into psychosis. The plot rings plenty false as it is, but when you add in the hallucinatory imaginings of Quinto’s character, and the staggeringly incompetent “treatment” Slate’s therapist attempts to offer, you’re left with a real mishmash of a film, which can’t ever decide if it wants to be taken seriously or become a joke. It would have had a better shot at the latter, but it can’t even conjure up convincing laughs.
Best Film: Thumper The aforementioned undercover thriller from Jordan Ross is a bit too undercooked in places, but behind the strength of its strong performances, from the aforementioned Schreiber but also from female lead Eliza Taylor, who plays an undercover cop trying to infiltrate a high school meth ring by posing as a student, and a visceral sort of mise en scene, the film resonates unexpectedly powerfully. Caught between her job and her real life as the divorced mother of a young child from whom she’s growing ever more estranged, Taylor’s character has to shift between boozy party girl and damaged, wounded mother, and it is to her, and the film’s, credit that both versions of her are equally credible. Thumper is not without its flaws — Taylor’s cop seems woefully ill-prepared to defend herself when called upon, for one thing; for another, her boss (played by Lena Headey) is almost comically cruel — but the dynamic between its leads, and the tight cinematography of Doug Emmett, help propel it well beyond its more hackneyed premise.