Tribeca: Intoxicating Experiences in ‘Good Girl Jane’

By Abe Friedtanzer

 

Everyone’s experience of high school includes something they wish they hadn’t done. It’s much easier to reflect back on what that might have been as an adult; you have more distant to consider the impact and meaning of a moment or relationship that might not have problematic or regrettable at the time. For some, there’s a great deal of regret from a repeated pattern of behavior that had an undeniable effect on their lives. With time, humor can also be found in deeply disturbing events, and Good Girl Jane does that exceptionally well.

Sarah Elizabeth Mintz describes her directorial debut (she also wrote the screenplay) as loosely based on her own life but with considerable liberties taken and modifications made...

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Tribeca: Facing the Certainty of Death in ‘Pink Moon’

By Abe Friedtanzer

 

There is one thing that is true for everyone: we’re going to die. Some worry that talking about it will make it happen sooner – that’s a quote that my wife, who works in the end-of-life space, often uses to dispel the stigma around the idea of planning for a good death. Just because one person might be ready to open up about it, doesn’t mean others in their immediate vicinity will be. In Pink Moon, a Dutch-Slovenian film premiering at this year’s Tribeca festival, one 74-year-old father, Jan (Johan Leysen), decides he’s ready to end his life, something his children, particularly his daughter Iris (Julia Akkermans) are not okay with at all...

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Tribeca 2022: David Lynch is The Man Behind the Curtain in "Lynch / Oz"

by Jason Adams

Like many of you I have deeply embedded childhood memories of watching The Wizard of Oz on television as a child. And probably also like many of you the film was presented to me as a generational hand-off, a passing of the cinematic baton. My mom was a lifelong fan, and now twas my turn to become the latest Friend of Dorothy (if she only knew). That yellow brick road stretches in one ear and out the other across eighty entire years of movie-lovers, mother to son to son to daughter and on to every Auntie Em adjacent, with something in there for everybody. I can trace my love of Horror Movies right to it – how many nightmares have those short-jacketed cater-waiter flying monkeys stormed through? Others, probably you, can trace your love of the Movie Musical from sepia-toned Kansas where Judy first regaled us of rainbows...

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Tribeca 2022: Ray Romano’s Directorial Debut ‘Somewhere in Queens’

By Abe Friedtanzer 

Nearly two decades after the end of his beloved, Emmy-winning sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray Romano continues to churn out consistently solid work. His follow-up TV shows include Men of a Certain Age and the just-cancelled Made for Love. He also starred opposite Mark Duplass in the underrated Paddleton, which you can stream on Netflix. And now he’s stepped behind the camera to direct himself in the very funny Somewhere in Queens, featuring a very loud family of Italians with plenty of spoken and unspoken issues.

The role Romano plays is one that tracks with his resume, that of a moderately awkward husband and father who hasn’t achieved much success in his life...

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Tribeca 2022: "Land of Dreams" Gives Sheila Vand The Star Turn She Has Been Deserving

by Jason Adams

A splendidly surreal spin on the immigrant experience, Land of Dreams stars the always-great Sheila Vand, best known as the burqa-rocking vampire in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. In the new film she plays Simin, an Iranian-American artist turned census worker in the near-ish future.

She's been tasked with recording the dreams of the people the government’s keeping track of. Not dream as in “The American Dream,” not dream like, “One day I hope I will become a doctor.” But the actual literal dreams that these people dream as they sleep at night...

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