Tribeca 2023 Wrap-Up

Maybe it’s always more fun to cover a film festival in person! Thanks to an erratic schedule and a wide variety of films, 2023’s Tribeca Film Festival was one of the most fun for us to cover to date. Check out our full coverage of the lineup after the jump, including our personal top ten favorite films from the fest!

Films

THE ADULTS

The Adults is in every way the stereotypical festival fare one would envision—pretentious and small-scale, with occasionally stellar performances. From the second the film begins, writer/director Dustin Guy Defa goes for a quirky vibe that attempts to emulate notable indie dramedies, such as The Skeleton Twins. Michael Cere plays Eric, a poker-obsessed weirdo who still refuses to acknowledge his mother’s death even five years later. His short trip back home keeps extending more and more in duration. He reforms his old poker crew, while accidentally rebuilding his relationship with his two equally bizarre sisters, Rachel (Hannah Gross) and Masgie (Sophia Lillis). They want to spend more time with Eric, rather than the “tiny breadcrumbs” of commitments he actually provides. One scene where Eric stutters and stumbles his way through a conversation over poker winnings, and another when he tearfully recounts Mufasa’s death in The Lion King are definite acting highlights for Cera. The rest range from close-up scenes that go on for way too long, and uncomfortably awkward weird voices and accents that constantly permeate the sibling relationship. To call these characters annoying would be an understatement. Topping the movie off with a total non-ending all but ensures it will be forgotten completely in a year’s time.

ANTHEM

Full review at the link.

BLOOD FOR DUST

Determined to put the “slow” in “slow burn,” Blood for Dust is the festival’s big crime thriller. Starring Kit Harrington as drug-selling arms dealer Ricky, Scoot McNairy as a jobless traveling salesman in need of a new way to make money for his family, and a mild-mannered cartel leader played by Josh Lucas, the top-lining cast is admittedly pretty stacked. What feels like it’s missing in action is everything else. There are really only two or three brutally violent sequences competing for audience attention. A shocking opening scene seems to promise a grim, gritty thriller—aside from some excellent gore, Blood For Dust fails to live up to its potential.

CATCHING DUST

Following an unfortunate trend for Tribeca this year, Catching Dust has exceptionally good acting hidden underneath a pale, empty script. Beyond the character work and the performances, there is nothing to this movie. A trashy couple (Erin Moriarty, Jai Courtney) seemingly on the run from the law are unexpectedly joined by two city folk (Dina Shihabi, Ryan Corr) who have planned to vacation at Madison Commune in Texas—a place they had assumed would be a thriving community. Secrets bubble to the surface as rising tension between the two couples threatens to reach a boiling point. With Catching Dust, what you see is what you get. Here, that just happens to be a good cast and beautiful cinematography, but not much else.

COLD COPY

Full review at the link.

DOWNTOWN OWL

Full review at the link.

ERIC LARUE

Full review at the link.

ELEMENTAL

Full review at the link.

THE GOOD HALF

Full review at the link.

HE WENT THAT WAY

Full review at the link.

I.S.S.

An International space station (or I.S.S.) becomes a center for tense negotiations and complicated power dynamics in Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s new sci-fi thriller. After they glimpse multiple strange flashes from a distance on earth, the mixed United States/Russian crew aboard the vessel are informed that an act of war has occurred. With no radios online, the camaraderie soon devolves into chaos as panic breaks out. The most impressive aspect of this film is its stacked cast, which includes Chris Messina, Ariana DeBose, Pilou Asbaek, and John Gallagher Jr., but too often this feels half-baked. There is barely anything that would make the film worth watching outside performances, as it lacks visual flavor and thematic cohesiveness. Even the characters are nothing special, leaving this space station thriller practically empty and abandoned.

THE LINE

For Kappa Nu Alpha fraternity, pledging and being accepted as a member means “trying to fuck the most girls” and “having the most fun.” Despite claiming to be all about the foundation of brotherhood and community outreach, KNA isn’t exactly a pillar of positivity. As the newest wave of pledges enters for initiation, Tom (Alex Wolff) takes charge as the pledge master (Lewis Pullman) frequently goes absent. Tom’s incessantly annoying wealthy roommate, Mitch (Bo Mitchell), goes overboard with taunting new prospective Gettys (Austin Abrams), who himself is admittedly pretty awful. When the boys aren’t vulgarly chatting about having sex with women or making off-color gay jokes, they are snorting lines of coke and partying hard. Though KNA has been forbidden to proceed with hazing this year, that doesn’t stop it from happening anyway. The Line overflows with unlikable characters, yet remains entertaining throughout. With stellar acting and solid direction, the only real issue with The Line is a lack of originality. We have seen so many nearly-identical iterations of this same story—hazing is awful, and our window in is through the student perspective. A couple years back, Siobhan Fallon Hogan’s Rushed actually tried something different by positioning the mother’s point of view in her anger over her son’s “accidental” death by hazing. The Line goes back to the drawing board, seemingly content to dwell in the same bleak realm of cyclical toxic masculinity and anti-fraternity sentiment. The Little Mermaid’s Halle Bailey is wasted in a smaller role as Annabelle, a collegiate with long armpit hair crudely dubbed “Armpit Girl;” Denise Richards too gets only one dinner scene as the swanky mother of Mitch. On the other hand, Wolff and Abrams are given the most to do, and both are believable as frat-douches. While the performances are quite good, The Line is another decent frat-bro movie that merely skims the surface of the real problems at hand.

MAGGIE MOORE(S)

Full review at the link.

OUR SON

Full review at the link.

THE PERFECT FIND

Full review at the link.

PERPETRATOR

Perpetrator was sold as a campy horror film featuring Alicia Silverstone and the absolutely adorable Christopher Lowell, with a female writer/director behind the project in the form of filmmaker Jennifer Reedner. What could possibly go wrong? My only warning was the director telling the audience “let’s get weird” before her film screened—calling Perpetrator simply “weird” may be an understatement. I will pay it one compliment though: Perpetrator is certainly ambitious, attempting to jam many different concepts into one film. After beginning with a fun Halloween homage, the movie seems to be setting up a classic slasher, or at least one with a killer on the loose targeting women. Then, it shifts gears into something decidedly different. Poppy (Avery Holliday) lives with her ill father, stealing drugs for him to help keep him alive. As Poppy’s 18th birthday looms overhead, she goes to stay with her mysterious Aunt Hildie (Silverstone, who has perhaps never had a wonkier accent onscreen), and attend school nearby. So far, three girls from her new school have gone missing, and no one seems to know why. At the same time, the film attempts to make this a coming-of-age film involving lesbianism and a bizarre power called “forevering” wherein Poppy acts as a surrogate for spectral energy in a sort of reverse-possession. Each time this strange power is tapped, the character’s face weirdly half-morphs into another face. Several off-color miscarriage jokes and lots of blood later, Perpetrator careens toward a conclusion packed with multiple silly twists. I almost get what they were going for here, but the whole thing is so off-the-wall that none of it works. Except for maybe Lowell’s performance—he seems to be the only one who knows what type of movie he is in, hamming it up as the misogynistic Principal Burke.

POISONED: THE DIRTY TRUTH ABOUT YOUR FOOD

I love a good food documentary, whether it be 2008’s eye-opening Food, Inc. or classic Super Size Me. Netflix title Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food had all the potential to deliver captivating revelations and eye-opening segments to make viewers second guess their reliance on meat products. Certainly, several interesting tidbits come up: 48 million people worldwide get sick from foodborne illnesses each year, and the nastiest detail for me was that each pound of ground beef can contain parts from up to 400 different animals. An overload of empty percentages are commingled with grieving parents who lost loved ones to these illnesses. Most we learn is nothing we have not seen or heard about before, and the clinical way the information is presented feels more akin to an early 2000s television special than a cherry-picked festival selection.

ROCK HUDSON: ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWED

Full review at the link.

THE SECRET ART OF HUMAN FLIGHT

When one-half of a children’s-book-writing couple unexpectedly passes away, the woman’s husband, Ben (Grant Rosenmeyer), is left to pick up the pieces. A detective becomes convinced he could be responsible for her murder, and Ben’s concerned sister desperately tries to understand where his head is at. An internet video comment on a flying man plunges Ben down a rabbit hole of unexpected possibilities. Some kind of bizarre spiritual guru (Paul Raci) beckons Ben to leave his world behind and “follow me.” As Ben tries to follow the step of “human flight,” including shaving all body hair from the neck down, no orgasms, and speaking only in bird sounds for a full week, this strangely-shot film just gets more confounding by the second. The Secret Art of Human Flight feels too much like a student film to make any statement. This indie seems to be attempting a statement about mental health and grief, yet lacks the budget or narrative coherence to do so effectively.

THE SEEDING

While photographing the solar eclipse, an unnamed hiker (Scott Haze) discovers an abandoned child deep in the California desert. No service and no way out traps the hiker, locking him into a twisted game with locals who very much do not want him there. The further he plunges into unexplainable nightmares as the different moon phases whir by, the more baffling it becomes. I wanted Wrong Turn, and got something I cannot entirely explain. With frustratingly minimal dialogue and a barely-there plot, The Seeding both confounded and confused me. Gorgeous cinematography does not make a good movie.

SOMEWHERE QUIET

In one of the most obvious metaphors for grief and trauma I have seen in quite some time, writer/director Olivia West Lloyd tries her hand at the horror/thriller genre in Somewhere Quiet. Occasionally, this means glimmers of eerie atmosphere, effective sound design, and a recurring image that grows less creepy the more things are explained. In the aftermath of a horrifying kidnapping (the likes of which we only glimpse at the beginning), clearly-scarred Meg (Jennifer Kim) cannot seem to shake her past. When her husband, Scott (Kentucker Audley), takes her deep into the countryside, his twisted cousin, Madeline (Marin Ireland), stokes the flames of Meg’s thin grasp on sanity. As Meg’s headspace unspools, so too did my patience with Somewhere Quiet. At one point, the film literally spells out its full intentions in a lengthy dialogue dump. There is nothing quiet or subtle here.

STAN LEE

A definitive documentary on Marvel legend Stan Lee, creator of so many iconic characters from Spider-Man to the Fantastic Four, was an easy must-see. After a vintage Stan Lee introduction, the film from David Gelb wisely lets Lee himself actually recall most of his own story through crisp narration. Little figures and miniature sets often stand in for genuine footage of events. While I wanted more of a deep dive on late-stage Stan and how his life changed during the success of his most popular characters, Stan Lee laser-focuses on the comics and not much else. Which is certainly okay too—the camera dynamically follows comic panels and vibrant cover artwork that showcases many greats including work by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. We learn about Stan’s journey from piccolo-playing intern to editor, art director, and head writer of Marvel Comics. The film flips through years at an inconsistent pacing, taking us all the way back to Stan’s birth in 1922. Jarringly, I was not prepared for the jump from 1972 to 2010 without covering anything in between. Did Stan just not accomplish anything notable during those missing decades? That seems highly unlikely. The best part for me was the backstage footage for all of Lee’s Marvel Cinematic Universe cameos. Though it sometimes feels skeletal in diving deep, documentary Stan Lee still accomplishes plenty of detail when it comes to its central subject.

SUITABLE FLESH

Full review at the link.

YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME

You’ll Never Find Me is probably the most frustrating horror entry at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, simply based on how great certain elements of its production are, including the acting. In the middle of a violent storm, a woman referred to only as “The Visitor” (Jordan Cowan) shows up at the doorstep of old curmudgeon Patrick (Brendan Rock) requesting a lift into town. Patrick first claims his car has been “playing up” for the last couple days, and invites her inside. He offers up tea but no phone, stating that the closest pay phone is at the front of the park. The gates, which lock at midnight, will need to be unlocked by Patrick, and he is not willing to brave the storm to let her out. As thunder booms loudly outside, the two share stories with one another as The Visitor grows more suspicious of Patrick by the second. Should she wait out the storm and try to make a run for it, or just settle in completely carefree? You’ll Never Find Me posits itself as something of a mystery, and certainly has a couple scenes in the final act that are well-executed. However, it is going for bleak ultra-realism, yet fails to keep consistent internal logic. A later moment when one character screams for help makes no logical sense when the film has gone out of its way to establish both the loudness of the storm, and the remote location of the house. Who would even be out there to hear the scream? Another thing that really bothered me is that the movie has about four different endings—each time You’ll Never Find Me seems to have finally arrived at its conclusion, the viewer is then assaulted by a relentless cacophony of noise before continuing past its natural end. In spite of decent performances and an occasionally tangible atmosphere, You’ll Never Find Me is unable to overcome the obnoxious characters and surface-level takeaways.

YOUR FAT FRIEND

Full review at the link.

Short Films

SHADOW BROTHER SUNDAY

Beautiful Creatures and Han Solo star Alden Ehrenreich makes his directorial debut with Shadow Brother Sunday. Oddball name aside, this 14-minute short is surprisingly engaging—in fact, I would go so far as to say it would make for an interesting drama at full-length. Ehrenreich also stars as struggling musician Cole. Home for the premiere of his famous actor brother’s new movie, Cole desperately needs money to stay afloat. As he explains to Jacob (Nick Robinson, Love, Simon, Jurassic World), Cole has been paying for band expenses out of his own pocket. Cole begs to borrow six thousand to pay his debts, but Jacob insists that “I don’t want the exchange of money to be part of our relationship.” The brothers clearly have a complicated rapport. Ehrenreich’s script delves into brotherly love and complex familial relationships, culminating in an emotionally riveting letter. Cole, the pariah of the family, has been tasked with stealing private info from Jacob’s laptop for money. Ehrenreich builds tension well, and crafts an engaging story that I honestly did not want to end.