16 Movies We Can’t Wait to See at Tribeca 2021
Coming up on its 20th anniversary — and after a year in which film festivals morphed into largely virtual and altogether different affairs — the Tribeca Festival has decided to drop the “film” from its name. It’s a sign of the times, cocreators Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal said in a press conference yesterday. The event now covers TV, and has expanded its longtime sidebars devoted to gaming and V.R. We just want to get people out of their houses and gathering together again, the duo reiterated. Maybe it will be at the movies, or at an installation type thing, or at one of the many live talks between artists. We just want them to come back to downtown, they said — a reprise of the fest’s original mission to enliven the neighborhood after 9/11.
Whether you think this dropping of a key word from their handle is smart rebranding, given our fractured and ever-morphing media landscape, or an act of total and utter idiocy that feels like a superficial move to appear relevant is your call. (Just don’t call whatever the fest is showcasing “content,” we beg of you.) Movies are, in fact, what made Tribeca something to mark your calendar in the first place. And though the event is offering a hybrid of virtual and in-person screenings — as well as many of the 2020 edition’s selections that missed out on the traditional roll-out-the-red-carpet experience — it’s movies that will get us to come downtown for the 19th annual Tribeca Festival from June 9th through the 20th. Here are 16 of them that we feel are worth highlighting: some we’ve seen, some we can’t wait to see. All of them remind us that, for all of the downtown institution’s faults and catch-as-catch-can programming, you can still find a handful of gems if you look hard enough. Here’s what we found this year.
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‘A-ha: The Movie’
You know them for “Take on Me,” and that groundbreaking music video — but the Norwegian trio with the exclamatory name was more than just a hit single, an MTV flashback and some extraordinary cheekbones. This look at the before and, more importantly, the after of A-ha’s moment in the Top 40/New Wave spotlight gets into how the band dealt with sudden success, their other high points (big up the theme to the Bond movie The Living Daylights!), and counteracts the notion that their story ended along with the decade that made them famous.
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‘All My Friends Hate Me’
Pete (cowriter Tom Stourton) is going to celebrate his 32nd birthday in style: at a large estate in the English countryside, with a group of old college friends who he hasn’t seen in years. He’s anticipating a little awkwardness, but hey, he was the life of the party back at university, so it should be a weekend full of drinking and reminiscing about their wild youth, right? When he arrives at the manor, Pete discovers that his old pals have invited along a local (Dustin Demri-Burns) to join them … and suddenly, the birthday boy starts to feel paranoid that he’s at the center of some elaborate, cosmic prank. Fans of cringe-comedy with a posh British accent, you may wanna earmark this one.
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‘All the Streets Are Silent’
If you were a New York kid skating in the late Eighties and early Nineties, you probably listened to a lot of hip-hop — the overlap between those two street cultures was massive at that moment, and they fed into each other in a way that would go way beyond the five boroughs. Narrated by Zoo York cofounder Eli Gesner, this time capsule looks back at how that pivotal coming together of skaterats and rhymeslingers would, over a 10-year period, influence the future of music, fashion and branding of the NYC underground. If the hearing the names of Harold Hunter, DJ Stretch Armstrong and Club Mars make you bow your head in reverence, this doc is for you.
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‘All These Sons’
Chicago’s south side has been plagued by an epidemic of gun violence for years, which has particularly scarred the city’s African-American communities. Two local residents, however, are taking the initiative by offering the neighborhood’s young men, all of whom have been affected directly or indirectly by living in the line of fire, a safe space to process their experiences. If they can change mindsets, they may be able to help break the cycle. Documentarians Joshua Altman and Bing Liu (whose Oscar-nominated work Minding the Gap also took on issues of masculinity and destructive environments) offer a moving, fly-on-the-wall perspective to the journey these teens are undertaking — and like Steve James The Interrupters, underlines the necessity of regional activism when the bigger-picture power structure has failed to keep your community’s future safe from social inequity and bodily harm.
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‘The Beta Test’
You are a high-powered agent in a big-time L.A. firm. Out of the blue, you receive a purple envelope that invites you to an anonymous sexual encounter. Even though you are engaged to be married soon, you RSVP. A hotel keycard shows up a few days later. You keep the date. And then afterward, you begin to suspect that something much bigger and far more nefarious than a simple illicit affair has just taken place. What do you do? Luckily, indie-movie triple-threat Jim Cummings (Thunder Road), along with his cowriter and codirector PJ McCabe, have answered the question for us — and delivered a seriously dizzying, unnerving conspiracy thriller to boot.
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‘Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James’
His name was James Ambrose Johnson, but you know him as Rick James: songwriter, R&B/funk icon, drug addict, ex-con, Chappelle’s Show legend, comeback kid and, of course, the superest of superfreaks. Director Sacha Jenkins — the first-rate documentarian behind Fresh Dressed (2015) and the invaluable Wu-Tang portrait Of Mics and Men (2019) — gives you the rises, the falls and the rest of Rick’s story, with an emphasis on both of those words in the subtitle. Bitchin’, indeed!
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‘Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road’
Who wants to go on a drive with Brian Wilson? The singer-songwriter behind “God Only Knows,” “Good Vibrations” and more or less every other great Beach Boys tune (i.e. some of the most vital, timeless pop music of the past 60 years) jumps in the car with Rolling Stone editor Jason Fine to visit some of his old stomping grounds in Los Angeles, and look back on one of the most storied, groundbreaking careers in rock history. You want insight into the Life of Brian? You’ve got it, right from the source himself.
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‘Italian Studies’
Over the course of two scrappy independent features — Gimme the Loot (2012) and Tramps (2016) — write-director Adam Leon has quietly established himself as filmmaker with a flair for offbeat character studies and someone who knows how to work with actors. His latest feels like a level up on all counts: A writer (Vanessa Kirby) leaves her New York apartment one afternoon to walk her dog and suddenly, inexplicably forgets who she is. Dazed and confused, she wanders around the city and attaches herself to a chatty, socially awkward teen (Simon Brickner). There are movies that portray people in dissociative states, and then there are ones that almost make you feel like they’re replicating the experience of one — and this intriguing, woozy drama falls clearly in the latter category.
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‘Like a Rolling Stone: The Life and Times of Ben Fong-Torres’
He’s one of the major Rolling Stone O.G.’s — someone as associated with this magazine as Hunter S. Thompson, Cameron Crowe and any other writer who spilled ink for this music rag back in the day. Ben Fong-Torres helped shape the voice of the Sixties counterculture’s version of CNN, and his pieces on Ike and Tine Turner, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Jim Morrison and many, many others remain the gold standard for interview features. A docuportrait has been long overdue. Filmmaker Suzanne Kai traces how the young Fong-Torres discovered early rock & roll in Texas as a way of overcoming anti-Chinese prejudice and fitting in during the 1950s; how he began writing as a way of finding his voice in the Bay Area, right at the moment that America was imploding; and how both of those elements led Ben to become part of the foundation of the very entity you are reading right now.
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‘No Man of God’
The F.B.I.’s profiling division was barely a glint in the intelligence community’s eye in 1984 when special agent Bill Hagmaier (Elijah Wood) volunteered to interview Ted Bundy (Rectify‘s Luke Kirby). The idea was to get the serial killer, who would soon be executed via the electric chair, to weigh in on some outstanding cases regarding other murderers’ possible motives and pathologies. If Hagmaier could also get the notoriously evasive Ted to talk about his own crimes in the name of closure, all the better. Based on transcripts, recordings and the agent’s own “recollections” about his conversations with Bundy, this look at the odd relationship between the two men looks to add yet another wrinkle to this particular true crime story.
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‘No Sudden Move’
1950’s Detroit. Steven Soderbergh. An all-star cast, playing men in hats who commit crimes. What else do you need, people? Making its premiere at this year’s festival, The Limey director’s latest concerns a group of thieves who are hired to steal some sensitive information from an auto manufacturing executive. Simple job, right? Only there’s more to this robbery than meets the eye, as these hapless crooks soon find out. Dig this lineup: Don Cheadle, Benecio Del Toro, Kieran Culkin, David Harbour, Ray Liotta, Jon Hamm, Amy Seimetz, Brendan Fraser and Uncut Gems‘ breakout star Julia Fox.
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‘The One and Only Dick Gregory’
Before there was Pryor, before there was Chappelle, before there was Paul Mooney and Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy and dozens of other comics, there was Dick Gregory. The comedian initially made his name as one of the few African-American stand-ups to play nightclubs and appear on The Jack Paar Show. Then, at the height of his success, he risked his showbiz career to help register voters down south and stump for civil rights. He later became a nutrition activist, a diet guru, a political raconteur for several other causes and, in a full-circle move, an eminence grise comedian. Throughout all of this, Gregory was a genuine original and a grade-A American hero. Don’t just take our word for it: This documentary spells it all out for you.
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‘Ricky Powell: The Individualist’
“Hey, man … mind if I get a flick?” If you heard that back in the day, whether you were kicking it at Danceteria or just walking down West 4th Street, it meant that Ricky Powell — self-proclaimed “lazy hustler,” unofficial fourth Beastie Boy, cable-access TV show host, epitome of downtown NYC cool — was in the house. If you’ve seen those famous pictures of Basquiat and Warhol standing together outside a gallery, or a young Laurence Fishburne glancing over his shoulder, or the Beastiers and Run DMC onstage during the “Raising Hell” tour, you know Powell’s work. Josh Swade’s documentary on the legendary street photographer chronicles the life and times of the late, great Rickster, detailing how a handsome young kid growing up in Seventies Greenwich Village with a knack for being at the right place at the right time became a hip-hop Weegee.
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‘Roaring 20’s’
Filmed in between national lockdowns, Elisabeth Vogler’s extraordinary tour of Paris pays tribute to its residents by following around a cast of everyday folks, kooks and freaks — a romantic couple or a boho-artist here, a daffy runaway bride or some teenage shoplifters there — as they talk about sex, spirituality, race, love, work, amateur porn, online chess and everything else under the sun. Bonus: The whole thing happens in a single, unbroken shot, with the narrative baton being deftly (or, if you will, virally) passed from person to person. Imagine Slacker in the City of Light, only with the added weight of these social interactions and breezy excursions happening during a pandemic, and you get the picture.
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‘Stockholm Syndrome’
It was just supposed to be a night out in Stockholm with some friends while A$AP Rocky was in Stockholm for a festival date. After an altercation, however, the rapper found himself in custody and in danger of facing jail time in Sweden. This look at Rocky’s experience overseas, directed by the duo known as The Architects, goes into detail about the incident and the aftermath. But it also traces how a kid from Harlem became a big-time hip-hop star and why he almost found himself in the middle of an international incident.
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‘Untitled Dave Chappelle Documentary’
Tribeca’s closing night selection is quite the programming coup: A doc on Dave Chappelle’s 2020 pandemic summer. Living in a small town in Ohio, the comedian wanted to do something to help lift the spirits of his friends and neighbors, keep local businesses going and pass the time during a moment of national crisis. So he decided to throw some grassroots stand-up shows. Like, literally grassroots — he would perform socially distanced sets in a field on a nearby farm. Fellow buckeye state residents Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar (American Factory) captured a lot of the ins and outs of these events for posterity. A great way to close out what looks to be a significant year for for the downtown film festival.