Tribeca 2018: The Dark

by Jason Adams

The creepy housekeeper in Shirley Jackson's classic The Haunting of Hill House gives an ominous warning to her newly arrived guests at that titular mansion - that nobody's coming to save them, not "in the night, in the dark." Turns out she was right! (Creepy housekeepers are always right in the movies.) It's a warning that's echoed across scary storytelling ever since, and there's an echo of it in the title for the Tribeca creeper The Dark, premiering tonight at the fest...

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YNMS: Give Us "Permission"

by Jason Adams

Raise your hand if you're a Rebecca Hall fan! I feel as if I can see a virtual sea of hands waving in front of me, as well I should in a post-Christine world where she's shown us just exactly how much she's capable of putting on-screen. If only more awards bodies had taken notice last year... or this year too, actually, where she turned in another very fine piece of work in Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. Shame she's getting over-looked, but lucky for us she's not going anywhere.

Next year's she re-teaming with the man who gave her her big break in the movies (that would be Woody Allen, so I hope she's got her talking points in order) but before that she's got Permission coming out, a romantic drama about longtime partners opening up their relationship that co-stars Dan Stevens...

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Tribeca 2017: The Drama Queens of "Blame"

Nathaniel R catching up with Tribeca Film Festival

photo by Jacqueline Harriet for Constellation Magazine

These women pictured above, left to right, are Quinn Shephard and Nadia Alexander. You should probably learn their names. They're the leading ladies of Tribeca hit Blame. Nadia Alexander picked up the festival jury's Best Actress prize. Not that Quinn Shephard is a slouch in that department. Or any department. Get this -- Shephard wrote, directed, produced, stars in, and edited Blame. Whew. More impressively, she did all of those things well! Will the cinema's leading 20something DIYer Xavier Dolan feel threatened or be all 'plz, she didn't have the energy to do the costume design, too? Slacker!'

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Tribeca 2017: The Endless

And here's Jason Adams finally report from Tribeca Film Festival though Nathaniel has a few more to go...

If you loves puns as much as I love puns you'll understand when I find myself in a bit of a mental pickle when a film I don't particularly enjoy comes along and it's called The Endless. On the one hand it's just far too easy, riffing on how "endless" you found the experience of sitting through the film to be. On the other... it's the base level humor of puns that we're talking about here. This ain't precisely elliptical rocket science stuff. You can go low when they go low.

But even worse for this pun-lover is it's not particularly true either, that The Endless feels endless, and so we're stuck somewhere in between. Kind of like the characters in The Endless find themselves! Whoa. If that blew your mind then have I got a movie for you...

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Tribeca 2017: Permission

Here's Jason Adams reporting from the just wrapped Tribeca Film Festival.

I really thought I knew what I was going to get going into Permission, Bryan Crano's light New York drama about love and relationships. The film stars Dan Stevens and Rebecca Hall as a pair of high school sweethearts deciding they need to find out what it's like to be with other people before they commit to each other for the rest of their lives. Don't you feel like you know what that movie's going to be after reading that description? 

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