Tribeca 2019: "Knives and Skin"

Team Experience reporting from Tribeca Film Festival. Here's Jason Adams

If someone you had a crush on in high school suddenly handed you a crude anatomical drawing of your genitals how might you have reacted? I, uhh, sure can think of a few reactions I might have had. But several of them would have involved a smile, a chuckle - anything but utmost sincerity, which in this instance would have a tinge of the absurd. And that tinge turns trickle turns ten-fold flood in Knives and Skin, writer-director Jennifer Reeder's surreal small-town murder-mystery that feels beamed in from another planet; one where the reactions are all upside down.

It all starts with a missing blonde girl, tipping its Twin Peaks cap right off the bat...

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Tribeca 2019 "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project"

Team Experience reporting from the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. Here's Jason Adams...

I always think of Amy Poehler's funny line on SNL about "soggy board-games and cat skeletons" when I think on the concept of hoarders. Sad people beside blackened sinks. But what if the hoarder's instincts turn out to be less a mental illness -- something more, grander? Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project uncovers that exception in a woman who obsessively recorded 35 years of news programming, from the Iran Hostages through 9/11 and up to Sandy Hook. And in the process the film argues that, as with superstition being science we just haven't yet confirmed, perhaps some of Marion's documentarian's madness wasn't madness, but prophecy...

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Review: The Curse of La Llorona

by Tony Ruggio

Latino audiences are the leading demo for moviegoing so Hollywood ignores them at their own peril. Cynical though it is, somebody at Warner Bros said "no mas" and rang James Wan to add one more wrinkle to his ever-expanding Conjuring universe.

Serving as producer, Wan's fingerprints are everywhere. From swooping dollies and immaculate crane work, to an early scene of kids frolicking to 70's tunes, La Llorona often flatters the original with homage. The simple foreboding of a dark corner in the room or a hazy reflection in the mirror, it’s all there and it works for the most part...

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Stage Door: Burn This, Hadestown, and King Lear

by Eric Blume

It’s pre-Tony Awards time here in New York, which means new shows are opening left and right.  Here’s a quick look at three of them…

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Review: Gugu Mbatha-Raw in "Fast Color"

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

When it comes to great actresses who haven’t become household names despite terrific performances, Gugu Mbatha-Raw is at the top of the list. In 2014, she was headlining Belle and Beyond the Lights, both to much acclaim. I’ve been a fan of hers since the 2010 NBC series Undercovers, a quickly-axed show that I’m pretty sure only I liked. Shortly after it was cancelled, she had a role in the Tom Hanks-Julia Roberts comedy Larry Crowne and it looked like her career might really be taking off. After supporting parts in projects as diverse as Miss Sloane and A Wrinkle in Time, she’s now taking the lead role in a superhero movie, which Chris first reported on more than two years ago.

As 90% of movie theater audiences hold their breath waiting for the 181 minute Avengers: Endgame to be released, this is something completely different...

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