Not too much of interest in my recent non-Tribeca reviews, unless you count Mark Ruffalo's misguided directorial debut, Sympathy for Delicious or the pro-choice drama Lebanon, PA in which Planned Parenthood - here known as "Planned Parenting" - comes to the heroic rescue of a pregnant teen living in rural Pennsylvania.
This year's Tribeca Film Festival is underway. Slant Magazine's huge and ever-growing coverage is, as usual, the definitive guide to a confusingly vast and generally inconsistent event. Among the six films I reviewed, my faves are definitely The Miners' Hymns and the bizarro Underwater Love, but unlike in past years, I haven't found that one great movie (Still Life, Still Walking, The White Meadows) that makes the fest. I also wrote Slant's intro.
Below are links to my reviews of three of this week's releases - the obvious keeper being Bertrand Tavernier's The Princess of Montpensier. View the other two titles at your own risk (although, to be fair, neither is without its merits).
Two of the more significant cinematic events of the past week are the theatrical release of João Pedro Rodrigues' outstanding To Die Like a Man, last seen in these parts way back at the 2009 New York Film Festival, and Criterion/Eclipse's release of the box set Silent Naruse, containing all five extant silents from the Japanese Master.
