Category: Tribeca Film Festival

LFM Review: Romantics Anonymous @ Tribeca 2011

By Joe Bendel. Chocolate is the food of romance and indulgence. Two social misfits still love it anyway. They might just love each other too, if they can psyche themselves up enough to take a chance. That would be a very big “if” in Jean-Pierre Améris’ Romantics Anonymous (trailer above), which screens during the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.

Isabelle Carré in "Romantics Anonymous."

Angélique Delange is a gifted chocolatier, but she is paralyzed with shyness. Through sheer force of will, she manages to apply for a job at a down-market chocolate company, run by the gruff but ragingly insecure Jean-René Van Den Hugde. Sensing a fellow chocolate devotee, Van Den Hudge hires her on the spot. Unfortunately, it is for a sales position she is spectacularly unsuited for. Having accepted already, Delange tries to timidly carry on as best she can. Eventually though, Delange realizes she must use her true talents to save the floundering company.

Working under a veil of secrecy, Delange once made confections that delighted French gourmets. However, when her protective boss died, the secret of his chocolatier “hermit” died with him.  Yet, resurrecting the old hermit cover proves relatively easy. Going on a date with the boss is devilishly difficult, for both of them.

Like chocolate, Anonymous is a sweet film with a hint of bitterness to make it real. While everyone plays it for laughs, Améris and co-writer Philippe Blasband never minimize the challenges of the would-be couples’ extreme social awkwardness. They are not portrayed as freaks or loons, but as people who need a little more encouragement to come out of their shells (granted though, Van Den Hugde certainly has his eccentricities). Continue reading LFM Review: Romantics Anonymous @ Tribeca 2011

LFM Review: Cinema Komunisto @ Tribeca 2011

By Joe Bendel. It was a country that never really existed with an economic system that never worked. Obviously, Communist Yugoslavia needed constant distractions. Avala, the now decrepit Yugoslav state film studio responded with a constant stream of propaganda pictures, varying widely in quality. Mila Turajlic revisits the films and filmmakers who brought Tito’s version of reality to Yugoslavia’s movie-houses in Cinema Komunisto (trailer above), which screens during the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.

It was good to be the Marshal. A lifelong film buff, Josip Broz Tito had a private screening almost every night of his reign. Unlike other Communist strongmen, he enjoyed Hollywood films as well as the Avala productions he took such an active interest in. According to his personal projectionist, one of his favorite actors was none other than John Wayne. He probably appreciated the Duke’s World War II films.

Indeed, the war was nearly ubiquitous in his state propaganda pictures. According to actor Bata Zivojinovic, many of his films simply consisted of him killing Germans from beginning to end. While not exactly ambitious, there is something to be said for the red meat approach. However, Avala also produced some legitimate prestige pictures, including the epic Battle of Neretva, featuring major stars from the West, including Yul Brynner, Orson Welles, and the Zagreb-born Sylva Koscina. A darling on the international festival circuit, Pablo Picasso was convinced to create the film’s poster.

Neretva was not an aberration. Western studios co-financed several productions with Avala and shot a number of films on location in Yugoslavia, often because of the country’s ready supply of vintage WWII era military hardware and their willingness to blow it up when required by the script. The Hollywood-Avala connection arguably reached its pinnacle when Richard Burton agreed to play Tito in the first sanctioned bio-picture of the soon to be declared President-for-Life. (With Elizabeth Taylor in tow, he looks distinctly woozy in vintage publicity footage unearthed by Turajlic.) Continue reading LFM Review: Cinema Komunisto @ Tribeca 2011

LFM Review: My Piece of the Pie @ Tribeca 2011

By Joe Bendel. Steve Delarue is a financial shark. France Leroi is a single mother, who is laid-off when her factory abruptly closes (but what a name she has). The former is so obviously the villain and the latter is so clearly the victim, we can surely put our brains on auto-pilot. Yet, Cédric Klapisch’s latest film is surprisingly more interesting than that (perhaps unintentionally so, but it still counts). Drawing on three year-old headlines, Klapisch tells a messy morality tale in My Piece of the Pie, which screens during the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.

Karin Viard and Gilles Lellouche.

France Leroi is indeed a victim. That is not a subjective judgment; it is the essence of her identity. A union worker thrown out of work by her factory’s financial collapse, she attempts suicide during a birthday party, with her home filled with children. Fortunately she soon recovers, leaving Dunkirk to seek employment in Paris. Through a friend of a friend, she lands a gig working as the cleaning lady for Steve Delarue, a Bonfire of the Vanities style Master of the Universe recently returned to France the country after a long stint in London. Delarue is the kind of guy who administers the death knell to struggling enterprises, like Leroi’s former employer. In fact, unbeknownst to Leroi, he was exactly that guy.

Delarue dates supermodels, but treats them little better than servants like Leroi. Not surprisingly, he’s terrible father material, but fortunately Leroi is there when Delarue’s three year-old son Alban is dumped in his lap. In fact, as she assumes the duties of a nanny, employer and employee start to warm toward each other. However, a perceived betrayal launches Leroi on a reckless course of action. Continue reading LFM Review: My Piece of the Pie @ Tribeca 2011

ANNOUNCEMENT: Libertas Covers The 2011 Tribeca Film Festival! + LFM Reviews Rabies

[ANNOUNCEMENT: We’re proud to announce today that Libertas’ Joe Bendel will be covering The 2011 Tribeca Film Festival in New York. Joe did tremendous work covering this year’s Sundance Film Festival for Libertas, and we’re thrilled to bring you his coverage of what promises to be an exciting 10 days at Tribeca.]

By Joe Bendel. A country surrounded by homicidal maniacs probably does not have much need for horror movies. Perhaps that is why it took over sixty years for the Israeli film industry to produce its first slasher film. It was worth the wait. Considerably more inventive than the genre standard, Navot Papushado and Aharon Kashales’ Rabies (see the trailer here) is a highlight of the Cinemania (formerly Midnight) selections at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

A funny thing happened on the way to the tennis match. A car thick with sexual tension breaks down in a secluded forest. All three of Shir’s teammates (two guys and a girl, Adi) seem have a thing for her. Their lingering jealousies and resentments continue roiling below the surface, but the quartet face more pressing problems, like the twitchy dude they find covered in blood.

Ofer and his sister Tali were running away from home for scandalous reasons implied but never outright stated when she fell into a Hannibal Lecter-worthy mantrap. Obviously this was no hunting accident. Having the drop on Ofer, the psycho responsible bloodies him up good, but not good enough. Waking in the morning, Ofer starts tearing through the forest in search of his dear sister, running straight into the four lost tennis players.

Unfortunately, when they call the cops, no good deed goes unpublished. Emasculated and humiliated by his presumably ex-girlfriend, Danny is sort of the good cop. Yuval on the other hand, is definitely the bad cop. A raging misogynist with simmering class resentments and well-documented anger management issues, his only interest is in sexually harassing Shir. With the guys off wandering through the forest with Ofer, Adi goes Thelma & Louise on the creepy copper. Things get bloody from there.

Israeli hottie Yael Grobglas in "Rabies."

Continue reading ANNOUNCEMENT: Libertas Covers The 2011 Tribeca Film Festival! + LFM Reviews Rabies

Teacher Unions vs. Kids: The Lottery

By Joe Bendel. In New York City, parents who want their children to receive a decent education have to rely on chance.  For this sad state of affairs, they can thank the local teachers’ union, the UFT, which consistently places its own special interests above those of New York’s children at every opportunity.  Indeed, one can draw no other conclusion after screening Madeleine Sackler’s documentary The Lottery (trailer above), opening today in the city perhaps most in need of its reformist message: New York.

Eva Moskowitz was one of the few relatively moderate Democrats in the New York City Council (and my local council person).  After earning union enmity for holding hearings on the teachers’ contract, she was defeated by a vastly less talented candidate for the Manhattan Borough Presidency.  Supporting her opponent might have been the union’s biggest mistake.  After the election, she moved back up-town, where she opened the Harlem Success Academies, a series of public charter schools that dramatically out-perform the local zip-code schools.  Much to the embarrassment of the union and local administrators, over five thousand parents attended the legally mandated lottery to enroll their children in Harlem Success.  The Lottery tells their story.

There are many differences between the parents featured in Lottery.  Some are single parents, some are immigrants, and some are union members themselves.  However, they have two things in common: they all want their children to have greater opportunities in life than they did, but they do not think that is possible if their children attend their failing zip code-zoned public school.  In order for their children to be successful, they will have to be lucky in the Harlem Success lottery.

As a charter school, Harlem Success cannot choose its students.  There is no skimming cream off the top.  By law, if total demand exceeds their total registration, they must hold a lottery for all new incoming students.  Of course, that demand is enormous, overflowing the cavernous Harlem Armory Center.

None of this pleases the union, though they declined to explain why on-camera.  The only interview participant willing to shill for the UFT is former New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, but she does not make a good spokesman for their interests.  Appropriately, we also see the “community organizers” formerly known as ACORN show up to intimidate Harlem Success parents and staff at public hearings.  (Karma seems to have caught up with them.) Continue reading Teacher Unions vs. Kids: The Lottery