Tribeca Film Fest 2017 Wrap: Pushing the Boundaries

As the Tribeca Film Festival grows in stature and relevance, the films featured are proving to be more diverse and boundary pushing.

The festival boasts a ton of events, talks, etc., but for this journalist, the week is a mad dash to see as many films as possible.

Below are my thoughts on the (mostly) gems that I was able to fit in, and include the 4 major LGBT-themed films as well as two that peripherally deal with gay themes.

'Nobody's Watching'

Julia Solomonoff's excellent bilingual offering, "Nobody's Watching," is a rather timely film that deals with immigration and assimilation by following the rocky career of a popular gay actor from Argentina who decides to give it a go in the big, bad, lacerating land known as New York City.

Nico (a wholly endearing Guillermo Pfening) has walked away from his popular telenovela, after a spat with his sometimes lover Martin (Rafael Ferro), and is now barely making ends meet while he awaits word on a film he's supposed to star in. He also leads a bit of a "Looking for Mr. Gay Goodbar"-style life since by day he's a devoted nanny and by night he's usually fucking some stranger senseless.

Director Solomonoff does a nice job balancing Nico's manic struggles with his conflicting geographic and cultural feelings.

'Son of Sofia'

One of the oddest coming-of-age films in recent memory, Elina Psykou's "Son of Sofia," is a gritty fairy tale ("Pan's Labyrinth" and "Flowers in the Attic" reminiscent) centering on Misha (Victor Khomut), an 11-year-old boy, whose life is completely upended after the death of his father. The boy is forced to relocate from Russia to Greece and join his mother (Valery Tscheplanowa) who has remarried a cranky elderly TV star (Thanassis Papageorgiou).

Set in the summer of 2004, with the Olympics about to take over Athens, "Son of Sofia" is a curious, personal and truly odd blend of magical realism with satiric surrealism.

The most fascinating and disturbing moments in the film involve Misha's strange friendship with Victor (Artemios Havalits), a blonde teen hustler he meets at one of his stepfather's shoots. Misha seeks refuge via the Ukrainian Victor who cares for the boy, while advising him about all things related to male prostitution. There is a bizarre bond between the two and the final request Misha makes of Victor proves the old Sondheim lyric, 'Careful the things you say, children will listen' is scarily true!

"Son of Sofia" is another bilingual film about the immigrant experience, where people are trying to force cultural changes on a main character.

'Saturday Church'

One could describe Damon Cardasis's first feature," "Saturday Church" as a cross between "Moonlight" and "La La Land." This new work (from the producer of the underrated "Maggie's Plan") is a true gem that had me enraptured, until what felt like a forced ending.

The film revolves around Ulysses (a compelling Luka Kain) a gay, black teen discovering his own sexual identity, much to the shame of his mother, Amara (Margot Bingham) and, especially, his bully of an Aunt Rose (Regina Taylor). He's also picked on at school for being different.

But Ulysses soon discovers that there is indeed a nurturing environment for him outside the traditional definition of family when he stumbles upon an LGBTQ haven known as "Saturday Church," where he is allowed to explore who he is and who he wants to be.

One of the marvels of this film is how effectively we are led into Ulysses' inner world via the fabulous musical moments (that are truly well-produced considering this is an indie film). There is a fantastic blending of the boy's harsh reality with his fantasy life that any teen (and adult) can relate to.

The film pulls no punches in a severe scene where an older man takes advantage of the boy. But then the filmmaker opts for an inspirational ending. One that feels organically out of whack with everything that has come before. I understand the need for positive LGBTQ messages but the decision to happify (my word) Ulysses' journey just feels wrong, which does not take away from the awesomeness of everything else about "Saturday Church."

'Buster's Mal Heart'

Sarah Adina Smith's second feature, "Buster's Mal Heart" is a confounding, compelling and confusing film that almost begs a second viewing so you can try and piece together what you think is happening with the images you're seeing and what the voice over is telling you.

The deliberately enigmatic, non-linear narrative involves a mysterious bearded man who is being hunted by authorities. But the man wasn't always a wanted criminal. Just a while ago (how long I'm not sure) he was living a rather dull existence as a late night clerk in a cheesy hotel. Oh, and he had a wife and daughter.

The one thing that will keep you riveted is Rami Malek, even when the film meanders. Malek's immersion is extraordinary.

'Hounds of Love'

One of the more disturbing yet mesmerizing films I have seen recently is Ben Young's inventive thriller, "Hounds of Love," which boasts what should be a career-making performance by the brilliant Emma Booth.

Inspired by the real and horrific events that took place in 1987 in suburban Perth, Australia, writer-director Young fucks with his audience making them think they're watching a typical serial killer flick and then adding psychological nuance and then twists the sympathy knife. He's also a damn good visual storyteller.

John and Evelyn White (a sinister Stephen Curry and the remarkable, enthralling Booth) cruise the quiet neighborhood for distraught teenage girls, lure them back to their home and do horrific things to them. As the narrative unfolds it becomes more obvious that Evelyn is simply taking part to keep psycho John content.

"Hounds of Love" is chilling, nail biting, stylishly creepy and cathartic.

'Tom of Finland'

Finnish filmmaker Dome Karukoski has fashioned a hypnotic, poignant and stirring new film about the truly legendary gay-cult artist known as Tom of Finland who almost single-handedly started an entire subculture. The look of the film is as alluring as Tom's homoerotic drawings. The main issue I had with "Tom of Finland" is that it was a bit tame, especially considering its subject matter. There are naked boys running around in the water and WWII officers fucking in a park late at night but it's still super safe by ToF standards.

Tom, the artist, provided post-war queer men with a heightened masculinity that was borderline radial and invited risk into the sexual mix.

Touko Laaksonen's journey from closeted war vet to gay culture icon is a captivating one (although liberties have been taken) in large part thanks to the strong titular performance by Pekka Strang as well as a terrific turn by Lauri Tilkanen, who plays Tom's eventual lover, Veli.

At times, "Tom of Finland" feels like an old fashioned Hollywood biopic with an obvious gay sensibility. And the seemingly at-odds prurient nature of the protagonist's work with the almost-sanitary filmmaking style makes sense when you take the place and period into account.

The film is most powerful when we are given a glimpse into the creative process and see what inspired Tom to draw.

The ultimate irony is that so many of his unsuspecting subjects were homophobes and would become the object of so many gays men's desires (and the material for so many of them to masturbate to).

"I have to have a hard on and then I know it's good," Tom explains about his work. I'm sure many men will feel excited watching "Tom of Finland" because it gives this titan his due. (Now get your mind out of the gutter -- actually never mind, keep it there -- Tom would be proud!)

'Holy Air'

The bizarre comedy, "Holy Air," written, directed and starring Shady Srour, works best when it's at its most outrageous. The oddball film focuses on the travails of Adam (Srour) who is an Arab Christian living in Nazareth with his wacky, newly pregnant wife (La�titia E�do). Adam is searching for that one idea that will bring him big money fast. And he thinks he's found it with a concocted plan to sell bottles of holy air to the daily tourists that visit the biblical hilltop Mount Precipice.

The enterprise is fraught with complications, though, since he needs the permission of representatives from the Catholic, Jewish and Muslim hierarchy. This is where the film is most scathingly funny.

Despite a few dull spots, "Holy Air" is worth the sit, especially if you enjoy clever satire.

'The Dinner'

Laura Linney's best roles have been on television ("John Adams," "The Big C," "Tales from the City"). On the big screen she's given many better-than-good performances in really good films ("You Can Count on Me," "Kinsey," "The Squid and the Whale") but she's usually relegated to smallish parts where she shines, but they only scratch the surface of what she's capable of ("Mystic River," "Sully," "The Truman Show").

Oren Moverman's "The Dinner" cooks her up a delectable character she can truly bathe in and an arc that is truly gripping and altogether frightening. It's a powerhouse turn that you're not likely to forget. And one that, like her performance in "Mystic River," will bring to mind a certain Shakespearian character from... the Scottish play.

Based on the celebrated novel by Herman Koch, the film itself succeeds in fits and starts and is at its most compelling when the four central characters are left alone together to show their true nature to one another.

The basic plot has two battling brothers, Stan and Paul (Richard Gere & Steve Coogan), and their respective wives, Claire and Kate (Linney & Rebecca Hall) meeting at an expensive restaurant to have a very important and highly vexatious conversation that involves their children. "The Dinner" works best as a showcase for its four courageous actors.

This is the third screen incarnation of the Koch novel. I have seen the terrific Italian version by Ivano De Matteo, which was far more penetrating and satisfying. But this "Dinner" certainly serves up a lot of food for thought.

A few years ago, it was announced that Cate Blanchett would make her directorial debut with this film. It wasn't to be...

And speaking of Cate Blanchett...

'Manifesto'

Just when you wondered, is there anything this actor cannot do? Blanchett goes and confounds the question by portraying 13 characters in a stupefying stunt of grand filmic achievement.

Julian Rosefeldt's "Manifesto" will surely divide audiences. It's filmed theatre meets performance art. It's certainly original, truly captivating and a showcase for the great Cate's seemingly infinite gifts as a performer.

Based on Rosefeldt's celebrated and controversial Armory installation (which Blanchett was central to), the film draw on "manifestos" about the true nature of art via great minds ranging from Karl Marx to Jim Jarmusch to the Lars von Trier Dogme 95 manifesto (the list at the end of the film seems endless). All the dialogue is taken from the thoughts of so many great artistic figures and philosophers.

From that, Rosenfeldt weaves the most engaging and unique scenes that bombard the viewer with artistic philosophy. It's impossible to absorb it all, and that can be either alienating or embracing.

Rest assured, though, the film is not all serious and intellectual. It's rather hilarious, too, since it's meant to be satire (I think). "Dada is still shit but sometimes we want to shit in different colors."

You have to experience this film to understand the legion of delights it provides and how it brilliantly (and accidentally, since the film was completed before the election) comments on today's Trumped up times.

And its central muse, cult figure and fearless leader Blanchett always keeps us entertained, enraptured and perplexed.

"Art requires truth not sincerity," she proclaims. But "Manifesto" gifts us both. Or at least creates the illusion it's doing so (I think).

'Rock 'N Roll'

Guillaume Canet's uber-cine-meta "Rock 'n Roll" reminded me of a male version of "Death Becomes Her," only grounded in a darkly comic realism, which makes the satire even more penetrating.

Canet, a popular French actor, is married to Oscar winner Marion Cotillard in real life and they both dare to play caricatures of one another. Forty-two-year old Canet is shooting a film where he plays the father of a hot young model-turned-actress (Camille Rowe). He lusts after her. She sees him as someone who is tame and a bit of a settled down fuddy-duddy. So begins a mid-life crisis that escalates as Canet's tries to prove that he's hip and daring ("rock 'n roll").

Meanwhile, at home, Cotillard is preparing for the new Xavier Dolan film where she will play a Quebec woman who stutters and limps. So she begins to speak only in Canadian dialect and, immersive actor that she is, stutters and limps. She is completely oblivious to Canet's ego-annihilating descent.

Mega kudos to both actors for lampooning themselves in such a delectable manner. Canet isn't afraid to take things to the most ludicrous extremes when it comes to just how obsessive men can be about their appearance and their vain need to hold onto their looks.

I suspect that French audiences will get a lot more out of the inside jokes but the film is still uproariously funny and biting. And the opening tribute to "Birdman" is priceless.

'My Friend Dahmer'

Midway through Marc Meyers' "My Friend Dahmer," is a rather genius segment where the young, future-serial-killer Jeffrey Dahmer (Ross Lynch) and a few fellow classmates are on school trip in Washington, D.C., but are bored. Dahmer suggests they meet the Vice President. They laugh his suggestion off. He then slides into a pay phone and calls up the then-Veep Walter Mondale, and speaks to one of his reps who, miraculously, agrees to see the kids. Cut to them getting a tour of Mondale's office as the Vice President himself emerges and meets them, personally shaking each hand.

The brilliance of this sequence is it shows just how much potential Jeffrey Dahmer had, if only that potential was nurtured, positively, and lovingly.

What the scene also shows is how Dahmer had the charisma and skills to get what he wanted. That would also explain how he eluded police for so long.

What "My Friend Dahmer" sets out to do is create the milieu that helped to mold the notorious serial killer. He wasn't always a monster. He was once just another oddball, outcast teen that was made fun of and picked on at the end of the "Me" decade.

One of more disturbing hypotheses the film puts forth is the notion that perhaps we all went to school with someone who had Dahmer potential.

The film glaringly depicts Dahmer's stormy home life with his self-absorbed crackpot mother (perfectly embodied by Anne Heche) and ineffectual father (Dallas Roberts).

At school, the usually-alienated Dahmer becomes a cool cat when his "spazzing out" is encouraged and applauded by fellow students making fun of him.

The film only scratches the surface of Dahmer's complicated sexuality (which is my only beef with it). But it does show his crushing on the doctor who jogs by his home every day (Vincent Kartheiser) and how the teen has no clue what to do with the feelings he's feeling. Later, in the doctor's office, he's aroused after a routine hernia check and the doctor recoils in horror.

"My Friend Dahmer," adapted from the true-life graphic novel by John Backderf who went to high school with the real Dahmer, is a very complicated and layered film that introduces many thoughts, ideas and questions about how the idiosyncratic boy became the evil man.

Significant to the success of the film is the astonishing performance by Disney star Lynch. Not only does he look scarily like a young Dahmer but he chillingly and fearlessly embodies this teen pariah to macabre perfection. With his distinctly awkward walk and hunched over posture, Lynch presupposes a boy who will one day need to express himself and his desires. Lord help those who he decided were desirable.

'A Thousand Junkies'

Tarantino homage meets heroine withdrawal in Tommy Swerdlow's "A Thousand Junkies," an entertaining enough indie with clever dialogue (the screenplay was penned by movie co-stars Swerdlow and TJ Bowen) and a director who obviously has a knack for the visual medium.

The problem is that even at a running time of 75 minutes, the film runs out of steam early. Perhaps with more of an inventive plot and characters who weren't JUST junkies in need of a fix these talented writer/actors could have provided more than an entertaining trifle.

Swerdlow knows about addiction since he was an addict for two-decades so the film rings true, so true as to become rather mundane.

Swerdlow and Bowen are believable enough but it's Blake Heron who delivers the best, funniest and most intriguing performance. I wanted to see a film just about him.

'Tilt'

Kasra Farahani's "Tilt" finds its groove in the final reel.

Joe (Joseph Cross) is a documentary filmmaker married to a pregnant Kendra (Jessy Hodges), who is either going through some kind of less-than-mid-life crisis or is truly psychotic.

Joe is working on a doc about the 1950s America's Golden Age. He loathes Trump and everything he stands for (the film takes place during the 2016 election campaign).

Kendra (a terribly underwritten part) wants Joe to get a real job so she can go to med school once the baby arrives, which climaxes in an excellent scene between the two characters about their initial agreement. The subtext to the sequence is that she has no idea that her hubby might be slowly going insane.

Cross finds just the right blend of menacing frustration and true psychosis.

The film builds to a surprisingly bold and risky finale that had me staring at the screen with my jaw somewhere near my ankles.

"Tilt" happily, if alarmingly, lives up to its creepiness.

'Paris Can Wait'

A tonic to all the unpleasant themes at TriBeCa this year, Eleanor Coppola's "Paris Can Wait" is a lovely and sweet morsel that will surely result in audiences racing to the nearest French restaurant post-screening.

At age 81, Coppola (the wife of Francis Coppola) has made her narrative feature film debut with "Paris." She previously directed "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Journey" about the making of "Apocalypse Now."

The luminous Diane Lane stars as Anne, a slightly bored wife of a famous film producer (Alec Baldwin) who accidentally embarks on a journey with her husband's French associate Jacques (a charming Arnaud Viard) from Cannes to Paris.

Jacques is bent on forcing Anne to stop and smell the roses and literally, enjoy the food and wine along the French countryside. "Let's pretend we don't know where we're going or even who we are," he emphatically suggests. She does.

Things never become too intense between the two leads, which is actually a shame, because that might have made for a more thorough and exciting journey. But Coppola drew her inspiration from a real life road trip she took with one of her husband's friends so perhaps she was just being faithful to the actual events.

'The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson'

A true LGBTQ leader's life (and mysterious death) is examined in David France's revealing documentary, "The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson." But also recognized and celebrated is a second and equally important hero of the movement, Sylvia Rivera.

These two icons, key figures at the Stonewall riots, insisted on being exactly who they wanted to be at a time when it was not politically correct to do so. Johnson and Rivera founded were Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), a trans activist group based in Greenwich Village.

Johnson was found dead in the Hudson River, off Christopher Street in 1992 and it was immediately ruled a suicide. Horrifically, this was at a time when trans people were literally washing up on the streets. And no one seemed to care.

Twenty-five years later, a very, unlikely Miss Marple-ish sleuth, Anti-Violence Project activist Victoria Cruz takes it upon herself to investigate Johnson's mysterious death. The police refuse to cooperate. Evidence has vanished. But none of that stops the intrepid Cruz who discovers a few questionable details that were never followed up including a possible link between Johnson and the mob!

France's filmic account shows just how trans people were maltreated and continue to be maltreated and dismissed by our world! And he uses extraordinary footage of both Johnson and Rivera to tell his story.

In one of the most powerful scenes in the doc, Sylvia Rivera is fighting to speak at a 1973 gay rights rally and when she finally grabs the mic, she is heckled and boo'd by the LGBT audience who didn't want someone like her representing them. Rivera ended up turning her back on the movement, which she felt betrayed the drag queens and street people -- the actual pioneers of the LGBT rights evolution.

This vital film raises many questions about the circumstances surrounding Johnson's death and is a testament to another historical hidden figure that will begin to get her due. It's just sad that it must be posthumously.

'The Lovers'

I loved "The Lovers!"
Azazel Jacobs has written and directed a piercing and thoroughly satisfying genre-blend (it's at times clever, satiric, stirring and devastating) that showcases Debra Winger in a way I have never seen her before. She's uncharacteristically understated, naturally sexy and heartbreakingly confused.
Mary (Winger) and Michael (the amazing Tracy Letts) have been married way too long and no longer like one another. Both are having affairs with partners they've both promised to leave their respective spouses for. But, one night, they share a strange, passionate moment that grows into a rekindling of long dormant feelings. Before you know it they're sneaking around with each other!

Azazel has a gift for unearthing painful truths and allowing the viewer to gather empathy and respect for characters they initially dismissed as morally bankrupt.

The two leads deliver Award-worthy performances
Aiden Gillen and Melora Walters are both superb as the other man and woman. And Tyler Ross kills in his few scenes as their angry son. The look on Ross's face when he peeks at his parents and sees them showing genuine affection for one another is so affecting, so moving...so painfully real.

'"The Godfather" Event'

One final note about the once-in-a-lifetime event, the 45th Anniversary showing of "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part Two" (exquisite prints) at Radio City Music Hall followed by an extraordinary reunion that boasted writer-director Francis Coppola and actors, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Talia Shire and Robert DeNiro.

It was a true treat to see these movie legends gather to discuss the film, via a Talk Back moderated by too-chatty director Taylor Hackford. Each spoke at length about being cast in the film (Pacino was not wanted by the studio) and Coppola regaled the audience with tales of how he was almost fired. Keaton stole the show when she described recently watching the film on her computer: "I couldn't handle it, it was so astonishing, it was so beautiful, and everybody is so great in it... And I was totally surprised because I didn't expect it. And on a fucking computer!"

I was a bit annoyed by the fact that Hackford dominated the talks with his own musings, barely spoke with DeNiro, nor did he have many questions about "Part Two." And "The Godfather Part Three," which may not be considered a classic, but is still a damned good film didn't even register a mention.