Movie Reviews: Six From Tribeca Festival 2024
by Eric McClanahan
1–800-ON-HER-OWN
At such a crucial time in our country’s history for women, marginalized people, and frankly every person who values love and inclusivity, this film is an urgent call for action as well as an action plan for those who give a damn.
I was an Ani DiFranco fan going into it, but it’s still enormously accessible to those who aren’t. For all its social consciousness, it’s also a fun rock-n-roll documentary about a spunky rebel who wrote her own rule book and found a nation in the process. Recommended for 90s nostalgia and post-pandemic activists.
Adult Best Friends
That tells you right away how personal their story is, and though it deals with friendship, arrested development, generational trauma, and the allure of cynicism and the ultimate redemption of growth, it’s surprisingly funny. I laughed out loud at this film more than any other at the festival, and I hope it’s just the first of many from this duo. I found myself genuinely moved by its resolution, perhaps because I related to so many of the themes and archetypes throughout. I hope the viewer can see their own relationships in the finer points of Katie and Delaney’s.
Bang Bang
When his grandson is unceremoniously dumped in his lap, he sees the promise of a prizefighter in him, or perhaps just a glimmer of his old self. He trains the boy and puts him in the ring, filling him with grand thoughts of overflowing purses and heroes’ parades.
Bang Bang’s character growth is nil, and though he seems to soften an edge or two, he remains bitter and burnt, a broken man keen to blame anyone but himself for the tragedies that had befallen him. Nelson’s performance is award-worthy, and Vincent Grashaw’s direction pulls us directly into Bang Bang’s claustrophobic changing world.
#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead
That’s what I thought going into #AMFAD, but I was assured from the opening titles that what I was about to see did, in fact, have some fresh ideas. By spanning decades, the film succeeds in being hyper-modern without fear of instant obsoletion. The cast are young and lively, the comedy is fresh, the kills are creative, and the twist is original. The filmmakers stretch a thin budget impressively, and while it’s not at the sleek production level of its more serious ancestors like Scream or Saw, it bravely carves out a currency of its own.
Darkest Miriam
Britt Lower’s central performance is vulnerable and powerful, and Tom Mercier’s portrayal as the unlikely suitor Janko gives the overall film a worldly, balanced nature. It’s a slow burn meditation of grief and the ghosts that follow those they’ve left behind, set to the soundtrack of Verdi’s Rigoletto and the small breaths we conserve as the world presses in around us.
Don’t You Let Me Go
After everyone has moved along, she sits quietly in her car, searching for feeling, when a bus pulls up advertising its destination as a place from her past. She boards the bus and soon is back there, back in time, where a very alive and vivacious Elena is obliviously enjoying her weekend.
The film plays with time and our own passage through it. Adela transports to places they speak of being, flies through sleep and her trips to bus stations and markets. It’s clear that the trip isn’t real; it’s a memory, and she can gloss through it or hold moments as long as she wants. By its end, it’s an exploration of what it means to dwell on the past, or allow oneself to be arrested by grief rather than sail forward to new memories.
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Originally published at http://behindtherabbitproductions.wordpress.com on June 20, 2024.
