Our roving reporter Ernest The Third rounds up the rest of the movies featuring at the Tribeca Film Festival, including S&TC2's Kim Cattrall as a run-down porn star. You can probably come up with your own jokes for that one.
The Tribeca Film Festival has closed its doors for another year. While I enjoyed watching parts of the festival from the easy access of my laptop, streaming video doesn’t really compare with the anticipation of a packed house crackling with excitement as the lights dim and the film begins to project on the screen.
Of course, it would be quite a feat to see everything Tribeca had to offer, and to be quite honest; I had no intention of taking on that task. Instead, I did what the average festivalgoer must do: look at the lineup, see what isn’t sold out, try my best to avoid long lines, take a gamble and walk into the theatre with an open mind and a whole lot of hope.
How did I fare? Well, let’s find out...
Meet Monica Velour
Directed by: Keith Bearden
If given the choice of one movie from the past 10 years to erase from history, I wouldn’t hesitate before answering Napoleon Dynamite.
It’s not that I think it’s a bad movie (it is) or that it lacked comedy (I laughed once), it’s that its success has spawned far too many annoying imitators in the world of independent cinema trying desperately to position themselves to be the next Dynamite.
In the case of Meet Monica Velour we have, Tobe (Dustin Ingram), who could be accurately described as Napoleon with a raging porn addiction, fixated on Boogie Nights-era adult star Monica Velour (Kim Cattrall).
With Monica Velour Scrapbook in hand, Tobe goes on a journey to seek out the object of his hormone driven affection, only to find a washed up aging stripper living in a trailer park. Star-struck, Tobe begins, with much resistance from Monica, to insert himself into her troubled life.
Despite poignant and harshly realistic scenes between the leads, there's some cringe inducing dialogue, and one-note supporting characters that add little to the story. Cattrall, however, is fantastic from the moment she comes on the screen. Always the most engaging actress among the Sex and the City crew, there isn’t a glimmer of Samantha Jones in this performance; it’s all Monica, beaten down by a lifetime of bad decisions, yet not ready to let go completely of her past behavior.
If you can stomach Tobe’s over-the-top awkwardness and the cutesy aesthetic choices that continually remind one of Napoleon Dynamite than Meet Monica Velour is a fine reminder of how talented an actress Ms. Cattrall can be.
Every Day
Directed by: Richard Levine
The synopsis for Every Day almost scared me away: “TV writer deals with the challenges of his changing family life while pressure mounts at work.” Another semi-autographical Hollywood centered drama? I’ll pass, if you don’t mind.
But it was the only available film showing at the time and with an impressive set of actors attached including Liev Schreiber, Helen Hunt, Carla Gugino, Brian Dennehy, and Eddie Izzard, I decided to give it a go. And I’m glad I did.
Every Day turns out to be more than just a piece of mid-life therapy for writer/director Richard Levine.
It’s an enjoyable, if not exactly deep, look at a family dealing with a set of mounting problems. Schreiber, an astonishingly good stage actor whose film roles have never quite matched up to his potential, doesn’t exactly have a breakout role here, but makes an engaging and sympathetic leading man juggling a newly outed gay son, an increasingly emotionally distant wife, a bitter and cranky father-in-law and an impossibly demanding self-centered boss.
Levine takes great fun in skewering the outrageousness of his employers on the TV show Nip/Tuck and Izzard and Gugino are excellent as Schreiber’s morally flexible coworkers.
Every Day may not break any new ground on the family drama front. It skates dangerously close to the edge of cliché but never quite falls in and ends up being a lighthearted reflection on the importance of a well-balanced work and home life.
Legacy
Directed by: Thomas Ikimi
Here’s a tip to aspiring filmmakers: it is always a smart move to cast an actor from TV’s The Wire. Legacy is smart enough to cast two: Idris Elba (Stringer Bell) and Clark Peters (Detective Lester Freamon).
Elba, already flirting with Hollywood stardom, serves as the lead actor and executive producer in this claustrophobic tale of a black-ops mission gone wrong and the solider that may have the information to break a sinister conspiracy wide open.
Political intrigue, betrayal, revenge, murder, paranoia, insanity, feuding brothers, a woman caught in-between; Legacy is not exactly what’d you call subtle. It has Shakespearian like aspirations, all while being set in a one-room apartment.
Elba’s acting dives head first into Jack Nicholson The Shining territory as his increasing desperation and solitude descends into a state of madness. It’s a little much to take at times, the film feels longer than it’s running time suggests and as the film goes on it begins to telegraph it’s twists and turns a little too soon so the shock ending comes as little surprise.
Still credit goes to director Ikimi for making the most of a limited budget, and turning in a directing debut that shows the potential for future promise.
Not a wholehearted recommendation, but hardcore fans of Idris Elba (and who isn’t really?) will find enough to like here. I’m sure there were more than a few great films to come out of Tribeca this year that I missed.
I didn’t end up seeing any of the films that won a jury prize, nor did I see the Audience Award Winning film Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, a documentary about the Canadian rock band or the runner up Snowmen, a family film featuring Ray Liotta and Christopher Lloyd.
But, ultimately the fun of a festival comes with the risk-taking. This festival is over, but another will soon arrive with fresh hype and pageantry and the chance once again to roll the dice and possibly, if you’re really lucky, see something worth cheering about.
