The curtains have closed on the Tribeca Film Festival — another year, another slate of films that can be whittled down to just a handful of good ones. There were a couple of films that were not great but I loved for purely personal reasons — “The Garden Was Eden,” about my favorite basketball team, the New York Knicks, and “Regarding Susan Sontag” — but, for the most part, the best films I saw at the festival immediately jumped out from the pack. Here is my list of five, with the added bonus of the worst film I saw at the festival, just to ruffle some feathers.
The best film of the festival for me was undoubtedly Aaron Katz and Martha Stephens’s “Land Ho!” Ex-brothers-in-law Colin and Mitch, both divorced and feeling the perils of late-adulthood, decide to go on a relaxing vacation in Iceland. Colin is the calm one, coming off another failed relationship and seeking the tranquility of the trip; Mitch the aging playboy with the lacquered voice, hoping for a wild week on the town to challenge the doors of life closing on him. A buddy comedy emerges between these two personalities, and the film wears its influences on its sleeve — Scottish rock band Big Country’s 1983 hit “In a Big Country” is a prominent feature on the soundtrack, and the rest of the score seems directly influenced by the song. A quiet and affecting film, and one that you’ll be hearing a lot more about in the coming months.
I said pretty much everything I wanted to say when I reviewed the film last week, but would like to add that Reichardt is one of the most exciting American narrative filmmakers working today and I would like to propose that next year we take all the money that would go into the terrible films screening at Tribeca and just give it to her and let her make whatever she wants. It will be worth it.
We reviewed the film last week, praising its observational qualities; it’s study of a vision, not a person. The more I think about the film, the more I realize how beautifully executed it was, its focus not on the big dramatic moments that go into making art but the quiet, contemplative moments in between. This film is about more than ballet, and is essential viewing for any artist.
Tsai Ming Liang’s long-take interpretation of the classical Chinese story by Wu Cheng’en features the actor Denis Lavant and Lee Kang-sheng (reprising his role as the monk from 2012’s “Walker”), forging a simple a delicate path through the city of Marseille. The film, which is based on Lee Kang-sheng’s walking performances at Taipei’s National Theatre, brilliantly absorbs the viewer in its hypnotic rhythms.
Full disclosure up front: the director, Eva von Schweintz, is a friend and former roommate. Biased as I may be, “Film is a Film is a Film” was still one of the best things I saw at the festival, and definitely the best short work on the screen. The film is a meditation on the move from film to digital, using a combination of found and original footage that includes an actual burial for celluloid and a Western staring actual film projectors as characters — the filmmaker is a projectionist by trade — and a document of a disappearing medium.
Worst Film of the Festival: “Palo Alto”
This has not been a very good month for James Franco. First, he is accused of hitting on young girls on Instagram. Then, via the same social media platform, he called the New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley a “little bitch” after he gave the Franco-starring “Of Mice and Men” on Broadway a bad review. Add to this his new show at Pace Gallery, which New York Times critic Roberta Smith said “comes across as uncomprehending cynicism,” adding that the actor “remains embarrassingly clueless when it comes to art.” We feel bad piling on the guy, but his new film, “Palo Alto” — directed by Gia Coppola and based on Franco’s book of short stories of the same name — is laughably absurd, its portrait of teen life thoroughly thickheaded.
