Tribeca Review: A Wandering Librarian in “Darkest Miriam”

By Abe Friedtanzer 

Librarians make for interesting protagonists because they spend most of their waking hours in a place where silence is meant to be upheld but surrounded by such vast troves of knowledge. Temperaments can vary, and some may prefer to remain quiet while others will eagerly engage visitors in warm conversation or ply them with recommendations about what to read next. Darkest Miriam presents a character who tends towards the former, chattering nonstop in her head but sharing very little of that with the world…

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Tribeca Review: Medical Malaise in “A Mistake”

by Abe Friedtanzer 

No one really wants to think about the idea of medical malpractice since anyone could end up on an operating table following an accident or other unexpected scenario. But things do go wrong, for a variety of reasons, and those stories can be worth telling. Prospective audiences of A Mistake should be well aware that the film features a great deal of graphic surgery within its opening minutes, setting up an uncomfortable and deeply unsettling chain of events that seek to assign blame for a wrongful death…

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Nicole Kidman Tribute: The Stepford Wives (2004)

by Christopher James

You never forget your first. My first Kidman - The Stepford Wives.

Is the movie good? I will always have a soft spot for it, but it does not fully work. There are glimpses of a great movie, thanks in large part to genuine laugh-out-loud joke lines in Paul Rudnick’s script. Not many people would recommend this as a first Kidman viewing, but it perfectly illustrates one of the qualities that I think makes her one of our greatest actresses - fearless commitment to one’s character. I take that back. The introduction of Joanna Eberhart is a perfect introduction to Nicole Kidman...

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Tribeca Review: Lost at Sea in “Beacon”

By Abe Friedtanzer 

Sailing around the world is a bold adventure that few are equipped to undertake and even fewer would even seriously contemplate. The likelihood of survival given unpredictable factors isn’t high, and that’s especially true for someone choosing to do it alone. Beacon presents one scenario where a young and driven woman tries to accomplish the feat only to find herself stranded somewhere with a man who seems nice enough but who she really isn’t sure she can trust…

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1974: An Ode to "Female Trouble" and Taffy Davenport

by Nick Taylor

As regular TFE commenter par pointed out in the comments for my Tina Holmes piece last week, there’s a lot of supporting actresses from 1999 who I could honor this Pride month. It’s a very tempting idea, and though many of those women will likely get their flowers later in the year - who wouldn’t want to pick over Election as the nonsense of the US Presidential race really starts heating up? - I think this is a terrific opportunity to hop across major eras and remind folks that, hey, queers have been around and making films for a long fucking time. We’ve been rubbing our grubby hands all over cinema since its inception.

If we’re talking about queer cinema, and if we’re talking about a peak among peaks, there’s really nowhere else to go but Female Trouble, John Waters’ inspiring ode to troubled teen flicks from the ‘50s, and the perfect performances of Mink Stole and Hilary Taylor as Taffy Davenport . . . .

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