Tribeca Film Festival 2016: Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Taika Waititi's Hunt for the Wilderpeople is told from the point of view of a chubby, self-confident orphan, Ricky (Julian Dennison), with a rich inner life who composes haikus for fun. As the film begins, he's delivered to the last foster home willing to take him in, a small farm carved out of the edge of New Zealand's bush country. Ricky has a bit of trouble in his past and fancies himself an outlaw, but he's really a goodhearted kid, as his enthusiastic and intuitive foster mother, Bella (Rima Te Wiata), sees from the start.

The Meddler

In Lorene Scafaria's The Meddler, the recently widowed and adrift Marnie (Susan Sarandon) tries to fill the hole in her life, first by launching an extreme invasion of her daughter's privacy, and then by offering random acts of generosity to near-strangers, who subsequently become her friends. Perhaps to embody Marnie's penchant for running from her own problems, Sarandon pumps the character full of raw, aimless energy, never walking when she can trot along briskly and talking fast in a broad, supposed-to-be-Brooklyn accent. The actress's frenetic need to keep busy betrays the loneliness and rootlessness underlying Marnie's impulsive acts, but even Sarandon's innate warmth and the sympathy she generates for her character can't make some of Marnie's stunts come across as anything other than unintentional cruelty.

Tribeca Film Festival 2016: Don't Think Twice

Writer-director Mike Birbiglia condenses years of experience in live comedy into this smart, affectionate take on the rivalry, love, ambition, and creative juices that fuel the lives of professional comedians. When one of members of a New York City improv group called The Commune gets hired at Weekend Live, an SNL-like kahuna of a TV show that represents the ultimate in ticket-punching success for a professional comic, his coup sends most of the other members into a frenzy of self-doubt, frustration, or attempts to ride his coattails into the limelight.

But Don't Think Twice isn't about success or failure as much as it is about the creative life, as experienced by a group of youngish comedians who've achieved a certain level of success, but still need day jobs or indulgent parents to support their comedy habit. As thirtysomething Bill (Chris Gethard) puts it: “I feel like your 20s are all about hope, and then your 30s are all about leaning how dumb it was to hope.” And most of the group's members are in their 30s.

There’s a real sense of family within The Commune, as evidenced not just in the ritual pre-performance group hug, but also in mind-meld moments like the group’s trip back from visiting Bill’s father in the hospital after the man suffers from a stroke, in which they get Bill to laugh by competing for the best impression of the one halting phrase his father managed to croak out. No wonder Samantha (Gillian Jacobs), perhaps The Commune’s most talented member, wants nothing more than to keep performing with her friends in their shabby little theater.

But everyone else in the group—including Sam’s boyfriend, Jack (Keegan-Michael Key), its most scene-stealing member—has at least one eye on Weekend Live. Their obsession with the show keeps putting them into comically embarrassing situations, like when guest host Ben Stiller comes to see their show, after one of them has joined Weekend Live, and they blow their big chance to connect with a star, peppering him with awkward questions when he comes over to their table in a bar afterward to congratulate them. It’s just one of many slightly painfully funny and truthful moments in this surefooted film.

The Tribeca Film Festival runs from April 13—24.

Written for The House Next Door

Tribeca Film Festival 2016: The Family Fang

There are a lot of surface similarities between The Family Fang and Arrested Development, another tragicomedy about an extravagantly dysfunctional family in which Jason Bateman's character reacts against his parents' high-handed neglect by trying to become a model of emotional health and stability. But where Arrested Development used a light dusting of sorrow to add shading to a gleefully absurdist romp, The Family Fang is an earnest story of redemption with a wacky veneer that doesn't quite fit.

Girls recap: Season 5 Episode 10: "I Love You Baby"

Several characters make significant psychological progress in tonight's season finale of Girls, which begins and ends with Hannah (Lena Dunham) jogging. The first instance is played for laughs, as she plows doggedly up and down her block, in workout clothes that couldn't be less flattering, while her parents (Becky Ann Baker and Peter Scolari), camped out on her stoop, try to get her to acknowledge them. The second is played straight, with a determined Hannah running toward the camera in the great outfit her mom bought for her reading at the Moth's creative writing slam. But whether it's presented as comedy or drama, the jogging is another sign that Hannah is learning how to take care of herself.

Girls recap: Season 5 Episode 9: "Love Stories"

The first half of Girls' two-part season finale includes several kinds of love: romantic, platonic, and that sparkly feeling somewhere in between that can spring up in the glow of a new friendship, like the one between Hannah (Lena Dunham) and her old classmate and nemesis, Tally (Jenny Slate). It's surprising to see Hannah connect so deeply with a new potential friend, especially someone whose success used to trigger such jealousy in her. Maybe it helps that Hannah hasn't been writing—or doing much else—for so long that she no longer feels as if she's in competition with Tally. As she says, when she accepts her offer to hang out: “I'm not really headed anywhere particular at the moment.”

Then again, maybe being open to Tally is another sign of the emotional maturity Hannah's fitfully tumbling toward. Or maybe she's just open to a new friendship because her old friends have been busy or evasive lately. Whatever the reason, Hannah and Tally do some serious bonding, confiding in one another, dancing to Beyoncé, and getting so high on falling-in-friendship endorphins that they briefly consider making love before dismissing it with a mutual “nah.”

On the romantic side, Hannah still seems totally over Fran already, telling Tally she was “just using him to get over Adam, who’s probably the only person I’ve ever loved.” But she can’t stop ruminating about Adam (Adam Driver) and Jessa (Jemima Kirke), feeling left out and confused as her lost love and estranged bestie get lost in one another. As she tells Tally: “The worst part is, I miss them both, you know? I love them both so much I don’t know who to warn about the other one.” Meanwhile, Elijah (Andrew Rannells) does his best to close his open relationship with Dill (Corey Stoll), only to get a devastating rejection when Dill thanks him for helping him realize that he is ready for a committed relationship, but with someone a little less “aimless.”

The only bright note in all this heartache is the reunion between Marnie (Allison Williams) and Ray (Alex Karpovsky), after her “love dream” about him makes her think that he might actually be the one for her. Ray welcomes her back with a graceful ease and delight that feels like true love. “It can’t be you!” she says, to which he gently replies: “I think it might be me, Marnie.”

Another of Ray’s old loves, Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet), also comes back into his life, this time in the form of savior. When she sees what a wasteland the coffee shop he manages has become, Shosh springs into action—and provides some classic moments of Dadaesque humor. First she reminds Ray and his boss, Hermie (Colin Quinn), of her marketing skills: “What do you think I was doing in Japan? Other than origami and eating candy that tastes like other candy.” Then she scopes out the competition in a trench coat and hat before declaring that they must brand Ray’s shop as “the destination for the anti-hipster,” selling coffee to “people with jobs.”

One important part of “Love Stories” has nothing to do with love. When Hannah quits her job as a teacher, Principal Toby (Douglas McGrath) is still supportive and understanding, even as she packs up her stuff and gives him an explanation for her departure that combines pompous self-righteousness with clueless entitlement and smug condescension: “I’ve been trying to stay more open to signals from the universe, and I don’t know if I can be open to those signals if I’m tuned into another song. This job being the song.” But Toby, that most patient of men, sees past Hannah’s patronizing bullshit to the essence her students—and Girls’s audience—respond to. He admires her, he says, because “with all your setbacks and your issues, you live your life with such joie de vivre.” Maybe he’s more of a sage than a sap.

Written for The House Next Door

Tribeca Film Festival 2016: Adult Life Skills

If it had bigger stars and a less quirk-dependent plot, Rachel Tunnard's Adult Life Skills would be right at home at the multiplex, probably starring someone like Kate Hudson. The romance here is relegated to comically awkward background, sparing us the trope of the hapless heroine whose messy life is all tidied up by the love of a good man, but the rest is dispiritingly predictable. Anna (Jodie Whittaker) is a kind of English Zoe Deschanel, a wide-eyed free spirit who doesn't realize how loveable she is. She lives in a shed in her mother's backyard, which she has crammed full of artsy detritus like pinwheels and homemade tinfoil rocket ships. When she's not working at a community center, she likes to draw a rudimentary face on each of her thumbs and then shoot video of them having a conversation.

Tribeca Film Festival 2016: All This Panic

Jenny Gage’s All This Panic is a somewhat meandering but engaging documentary about a handful of girls from a private high school in Brooklyn and a couple of their younger sisters. Talking about how girls her age are objectified, Sage says: “People want to see you, but they don’t want to hear what you have to say.” The film is a response to that insidious tendency. Gage and her husband and director of photography, Tom Betterton, appreciate the girls’ beauty, employing magic-hour lighting that bathes them in a soft glow, but the filmmakers are far more interested in the girls’ inner lives.

Sweaty Betty

Made on the cheap by residents of the neighborhood it depicts, this shaggy pig story offers a lo-fi snapshot of Hyattsville, Maryland, a low-income, predominantly African-American town just outside D.C. As seen through the eyes of teenage friends Scooby (Seth Dubois) and Rico (Rico S.), it’s a lively yet mostly aimless place, peopled with loving parents, loyal friends, and local characters the rest of the community appreciates and supports—like Floyd (Floyd Rich), who’s trying to get his beloved Washington Redskins to make a mascot of his gigantic pet pig, Charlotte.

Girls recap: Season 5 Episode 8: "Homeward Bound"

Hannah (Lena Dunham) finally breaks up with Fran (Jake Lacy) in tonight's episode of Girls, but it doesn't register as drama, let alone tragedy. Instead, it plays out as absurdist, almost slapstick comedy. Looking slightly ludicrous, as always, in PJs and cowboy boots, Hannah escapes the RV Fran rented for the summer, which she insists on calling a “house car,” and runs away from him at a rest stop—until she trips on a tree branch and lands ass up on the ground. It's a fitting end to a relationship that always felt fated to fail, his bland sweetness and respect for the status quo fatally out of balance with her sharp tongue and reflexive rebelliousness. Their breakup doesn't appear to be a particularly big deal even for Hannah, who tells a kind stranger who gives her a ride later that day that she's more upset about the fact that Jessa (Jemima Kirke) and Adam (Adam Driver) are fucking.

Interview: Joachim Trier

A third-generation filmmaker (his grandfather, Erik Løchen, was a well-known avant-garde director, and his parents both worked in film), Norwegian writer-director Joachim Trier makes intelligently constructed movies, like Reprise and Oslo, August 31st, about the sometimes agonizing inner turmoil of characters whose lives seem deceptively calm on the surface. The plots of these films may sound uneventful, even banal, but Trier and his screenwriting partner Eskil Vogt's empathic understanding of their characters' emotions infuses his films with deep feeling. His latest, Louder Than Bombs, centers around a renowned war photographer, Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert), who died before the film opens. Still recovering from the shock and grief of losing Isabelle, her husband, Gene (Gabriel Byrne), and sons, Conrad (Devin Druid) and Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg), are intermittently trying, and mostly failing, to help one another as they stumble separately toward emotional equilibrium. Trier met with me in New York this week to talk about the film, what skateboarding taught him about filmmaking, and why he loves revenge movies.

Girls recap: Season 5 Episode 7: "Hello Kitty"

Because it's about the emotional lives of a group of young women, Lena Dunham's Girls is also very much about friendship—real friendship, not the wish-fulfillment kind you see on TV shows where a tight little group of besties go through life in lockstep, anatomizing every triumph or frustration over cocktails or coffee. So one of the most poignant motifs of the show's last couple of seasons is how Hannah, Marnie, Jessa, and Shoshanna often grow slowly, almost imperceptibly apart as their interests change or they head out of town for a while—whether it's the Iowa Writer's Workshop or rehab or Tokyo.