Tribeca Film Festival – Page 18 – LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

Tribeca 2012: LFM Reviews Cheerful Weather for the Wedding

By Joe Bendel. In 1932, the British economy was also rather depressed, but appearances had to be kept up, nonetheless. A well-to-do widowed mother is determined to see her eldest daughter married in proper style, even if it kills the rest of her family in Donald Rice’s Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, which screens during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.

Dolly Thatcham became re-acquainted with her rich, twittish fiancé during a grand tour of Albania. She was most definitely on the rebound, following the end of her affair with Joseph Patten, a promising young academic. He was somewhat self-centered, but there was real passion between them, as the audience sees in multiple flashbacks. Her controlling mother could make the rest of the family sufficiently miserable on her own, but when the sullen Patten shows up at the house, it puts everyone further on edge. The fact that the bride has locked herself in her dressing room with a bottle of rum hardly helps matters either.

Based on the novella by Julia Strachey, a member of the Bloomsbury Group whose work has gained popularity in recent years, Cheerful Weather could be considered a lite beer version of Downton Abbey, but Rice and Mary Henley Magill’s adaptation clearly lacks Sir Julian’s delicious wit. Of course, the presence of Elizabeth Montgomery in the rather thankless role of Thatcham’s overbearing mother further invites such comparisons.

Still, Cheerful Weather offers a number of memorable moments, largely courtesy of its snappy supporting cast. Indeed, Mackenzie Crook and Fenella Woolgar steal scene after scene as the bickering Dakins, who largely reconcile through their shared distaste for his family. Julian Wadham also adds a humane touch to the film as the not-as-dumb-as-he-looks bumbling Uncle Bob, while Zoe Tapper brings considerable allure and even a bit of depth to Evelyn Graham, Thatcham’s fortune hunting maid of honor.

Unfortunately, Cheerful Weather’s weak romantically-doomed leads undermine the audience’s investment in the actual wedding. Looking rather dazed, even in the flashbacks, Felicity Jones’ turn as Thatcham is a pale shadow of Michelle Dockery’s Lady Mary Grantham. More baffling is the complete lack of screen presence displayed by Luke Treadaway as the morose Mr. Patten.

Frankly, it is hard to understand why Thatcham or Patten would pine for each other, but it is easy to see how this family would annoy the Dakins. Yet viewers can enjoy elements of the picture once they have shifted their sympathies accordingly. An okay but hardly exceptional period drama, Cheerful Weather seems best suited for PBS’s Masterpiece. For diehard Anglophiles, it screens again this Saturday (4/28) as this year’s Tribeca Film Festival enters its final weekend.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on April 27th, 2012 at 12:14am.

A UN-Inspired Catastrophe? LFM Revews Baseball in the Time of Cholera @ Tribeca 2012

By Joe Bendel. The United Nations has long acted like one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse; in the case of Haiti, it is literally pestilence. Allegedly thanks to the UN peacekeeping force, a deadly wave of cholera has swept the dysfunctional country. Viewers witness the epidemic from the vantage point of a young ball player in David Darg & Bryn Mooser’s short documentary, Baseball in the Time of Cholera, which screens as part of the Help Wanted programming block during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.

Joseph Alvyns and his friends should simply be spending an innocent summer on the baseball diamond. They play as often as they can, but it is impossible to ignore the post-hurricane chaos around them. Yet when Alvyns sees the devastation of the 3/11 hurricane and tsunami in Japan, he is compelled to reach out in a spirit of solidarity. His efforts attract international attention, even earning him a VIP trip to Toronto, courtesy of the Blue Jays. Unfortunately, when he returns cholera strikes at the heart of his family.

Technically, Darg and Mooser do not conclusively establish the Nepalese “peace-keepers” are the source of the cholera outbreak. Still, the sight of raw sewage spilling from their latrine into Haiti’s central river – coupled with the Heisman pose the Nepalese commander gives their camera man – constitutes a pretty convincing circumstantial case. The film also asks a legitimate question: why are there peace-keepers stationed in a country that has not been at war for centuries? However, they largely let the successive authoritarian and socialist governments off the hook for bringing the Haitian state to the brink of complete failure.

Time boasts some unusually big names behind the camera, including executive producers Olivia Wilde and Tesla Motors entrepreneur Elon Musk (one of three POV figures in Chris Paine’s Revenge of the Electric Car, which screened at last year’s Tribeca). To its credit, the film community has rallied to Haiti’s aide, yet there has not been a similar celebrity rush on behalf of Japanese recovery efforts. Therefore, it is worth taking the time to note that those wishing to follow Alvyns’ example can also donate to the Japan Society’s relief fund (details here).

For a short documentary, Baseball in the Time of Cholera nicely balances muckraking and heartrending tragedy. It should screen at Turtle Bay, but instead it will screen again in lower Manhattan this Friday (4/27) and Sunday (4/29) as the Tribeca Film Festival continues throughout the weekend.

Posted on April 26th, 2012 at 11:39pm.

Blond Noir: LFM Reviews Headhunters

By Joe Bendel. Right now, Norway’s economy is a lot like our own. There are way more job-seekers than open positions to fill. At such times, if a recruiter sends you on an interview, you go, even though you might be leaving a few stray valuable objects d’art lying about your home unguarded. That is Roger Brown’s racket, but it turns unexpectedly deadly in Morten Tyldum’s Headhunters, which opens this Friday in New York and also screened yesterday as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Brown is a man slight of stature, married to his bombshell wife, Diana. Suffering from a king-sized inferiority complex, he has allowed them to live beyond their means by burglarizing the homes of his executive search clients. With his house of cards on the brink of collapse, Brown’s prayers appear to be answered in the person of Claes Greve. Not only is the former tech CEO the perfect candidate for a plum position Brown must fill, he also owns a genuine Rubens painting of rather dodgy providence. Win-win, right?

However, when Brown starts to suspect the younger man and his wife are carrying on an affair behind his back, he sabotages Greve’s campaign for the position. At this point, Greve reacts more forcefully than Brown anticipates. Mouse, meet cat.

Headhunters is quite a nifty one-darned-thing-after-another thriller. Tyldum has a good handle on the material, constantly ratcheting-up the tension, but periodically using black comedy to release some steam. In his hands, the frequent twists are entertaining rather than forced or exhausting.

Tyldum also has a nice looking cast to focus on. Especially bankable is the presence of Game of Thrones alumnus Nikolaj Coster-Wladau, now world famous for playing Lena Headey’s brother (and other things), Ser Jaime Lannister, here perfectly cast as Greve. As Diana Brown, former model Synnøve Macody Lund certainly looks the part, but she also has some nice dramatic moments as well. In the lead, Aksell Hennie’s Brown holds the film together while coming to grief quite effectively.

Based on Norwegian mystery writer Jo Nesbø’s first book outside of his bread-and-butter series, Headhunters engages in some of the same far-fetched anti-corporate humbug undermining so many recent domestic crime dramas. However, Tyldum keeps the rollercoaster loop-de-looping at such breakneck speed, it is not so distracting. Definitely a dark but thoroughly enjoyable exercise in skullduggery, Headhunters is easily recommended and opens theatrically this Friday (4/27) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.

Posted on April 26th, 2012 at 11:38pm.

Tribeca 2012: LFM Reviews Journey to Planet X

By Joe Bendel. If Ed Wood finally had an epiphany telling him to step up his technical game, imagine what he would have produced. That is sort of-kind-of the challenge two amateur filmmakers looking to go pro (or at least semi-pro) set for themselves. The production of their ambitious, new zero-budget science fiction short film is well documented in Myles Kane & Josh Koury’s Journey to Planet X, which screens during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.

Eric Swain and Troy Bernier are genuinely credentialed, buttoned-down scientists. Like many of their colleagues, they have always been attracted to science fiction. For years, Swain was essentially a hobbyist filmmaker, employing cheesy 1990’s technology. An invitation to appear in one of Swain’s films led to a fast friendship and a close creative collaborative relationship between the two. However, cognizant of the advances in digital technology, Bernier is no longer content with their current level of professionalism. He convinces Swain that it’s time to produce a film that can compete on the film festival circuit.

Swain and Bernier (or Bernier and Swain) proceed to make that film, to the best of their abilities. The plot of Planet X (a.k.a. Planet X: The Frozen Moon, a.k.a. Planeta Desconocido, a.k.a. who knows what) remains rather baffling even after watching the co-directors shoot nearly every scene. However, they do seem to improve on a technical level, upgrading to HD and switching from an old blue screen to the more digital friendly green. They have a legitimate casting call and hire a small but professional crew. Whether they pull it off or not, they are really going for it, which is cool to witness.

Simply the notion of producing a feature length documentary about the behind the scene making of an upstart short film will sound odd to many people. Frankly, it also rather sporting of Tribeca to select Journey, considering both co-directors are co-founders of the Brooklyn Underground Film Festival and Bernier’s efforts courting South Florida’s Geek Film Festival factor prominently in the third act. Good for them, but they are missing out by not scheduling a special screening of Planet X (or whatever it’s called now) as well, because anyone who sees Journey will immediately want to watch Swain and Bernier’s film, on the big screen, in all its raging glory.

Kane and Koury (or Koury and Kane) capture a lot of drama in Journey, but it is the right kind of drama. The audience sees a lot of lunacy going down, but it never feels intrusive or voyeuristic. Ultimately, it is a film about two only slightly mad filmmakers’ friendship and their shared passion for sci-fi and movie-making. An endearing documentary, Journey is enthusiastically recommended for genre fans and those fascinated by the filmmaking process when it screens again this Saturday (4/28) as part of the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on April 24th, 2012 at 12:47pm.

Tribeca 2012: LFM Reviews Whole Lotta Sole

WholeLottaSole2 — Yaya DaCosta and Brendan Fraser in "Whole Lotta Sole."

By Joe Bendel. If you haven’t heard, there are a fair number of Catholics in Belfast who are serious about their faith. As a result, a couple of luckless lowlifes think it would be a good idea to hold-up the fish market on a Friday night. Naturally, the caper quickly descends into chaos in recent Academy Award winner Terry George’s thoroughly entertaining Whole Lotta Sole, which screens during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.

It was Joe Maguire’s profound misfortune to marry the manic daughter of a Boston mobster bearing a strong resemblance to Whitey Bulger. Fearing for his life, he is hiding out in Belfast, minding his uncle’s antique shop. Though still quite jumpy, he starts cautiously courting Sophie, a beautiful Ethiopian refugee managing the record store across the street. Sad sack Jimbo Reagan thinks Maguire might be a figure from his past, but he is more concerned with the 5,000 pounds he owes the local paramilitary-turned-gangster Mad Dog Flynn.

Out of desperation, Reagan holds up the fish market, Whole Lotta Sole, but this turns out to be a bad idea. If you remember the Fulton Fish Market’s pre-Giuliani reputation, you will get the idea. With both the cops and Flynn out to get him, Reagan takes Maguire and Sophie hostage. From there, plenty of complications and miscommunications ensue.

Like Goldilocks, George (who just walked away with the Oscar for his gently forgiving short film, The Shore) maintains a tone than it light but not inconsequential. He injects plenty of humor into the story, but resists saccharine sentiment and self-conscious quirkiness. His sensitive treatment of Maguire and Sophie’s budding relationship is particularly refreshing, keeping them fully clothed throughout, while generating real sparks between them.

As Maguire, Brendan Fraser looks a wee bit young for the part, but he exhibits a kind of world weary everyman presence (really not seen in his prior films) that works quite well, nonetheless. Indeed, he establishes some genuine chemistry with the luminous Yaya DaCosta, whose smart, down-to-earth turn as Sophie ought to bring her to a new level of international recognition. Capping the picture off, Colm Meaney is perfectly cast as cranky but honest and decent Det. Weller. Sure, he has played many roles like this before, because he has such a flair for them.

Whole Lotta Sole is just a pleasure to watch. For a pure, broad-based crowd-pleaser, it is probably the pick of this year’s Tribeca. Highly recommended, it screens again tomorrow (4/25) and Saturday (4/28).

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on April 24th, 2012 at 12:46pm.

Tribeca 2012: LFM Reviews Francophrenia

By Joe Bendel. Prepare yourself for an act of slumming as performance art. If you were somewhat bemused by James Franco’s decision to play a recurring guest-starring role on the soap opera General Hospital, you will wonder why you wondered after watching Francophrenia (Or: Don’t Kill Me, I Know Where the Baby Is), the actor’s latest extended middle finger to his ever more beleaguered fans, co-directed with Ian Olds, which screens during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.

Evidently, a baby has been kidnapped from the famous fictional hospital, but Franco (and presumably Olds) considers that plot line too trite to bother explaining for Francophrenia’s audience. All we need to know is that James Franco magnanimously lent his prestige to the soap, as long as he played a killer also called Franco. Ostensibly, Francophrenia documents the production of an extra special episode filmed on location at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, but anyone expecting a candid behind-the-scenes look at the show will be sorely disappointed.

Instead, we watch long sequences of the clearly disinterested subject signing autographs and sitting in make-up, while voiceovers try to pose a dichotomy between Franco the actor and Franco the character, calling into question which is ascendant in any given scene. The problem is that neither ‘Franco’ is sufficiently established to create any dramatic or aesthetic tension between the two. All we know is that Franco the construct is a murderer, whereas Franco the NYU film school grad co-directed Francophrenia – which is absolute blue murder to watch. Essentially, this film is like the old Airplane! sunglasses gag. When you peel away one Franco smirk, you only find another smirk underneath.

Frankly, Francophrenia never deconstructs or subverts soap operas (or documentaries) in any meaningful way. We simply watch Franco float above it all on his cloud of hipster superiority. While allegedly an experimental film, Francophrenia suggests that the co-directors have only a cursory familiarity with the genre. The mere fact that Franco would deign to associate with such low brow daytime dramatic fare is thought to be sufficiently intriguing in and of itself. Indeed, the only real take-away from the film is the nauseating contempt Franco (the actor or the construct, it hardly matters which) so obviously has for fans of the show. However, he might just miss those rubes when they are gone.

Ultimately, Francophrenia is not a film, nor is it a concept. It is simply another manifestation of Franco’s continuing fascination with his own celebrity. Franco’s fans should be strongly dissuaded from seeing it, because it might be a rather bitter experience for them. They will find the joke (if it can be called that) is at their expense. Of course, there is no reason for the rest of us to endure it either, but for those looking to masochistically stoke their anti-Franco resentments, Francophrenia screens again tonight (4/24) and Saturday (4/28) as part of the Tribeca Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: F

Posted on April 24th, 2012 at 12:44pm.