Review: “Scrapper”

“It takes a village to raise a child.” This sentence that appears across a black screen disappears within an instant, scratched out by yellow, crayon-like markings, a new sentence scrawled beneath it in clumsy handwriting: “I can raise myself thanks.” This playful intro kicks both the style and tone of Scrapper into motion. Writer and […]

Review: “Brother”

“Think on every step before you take it. Put it to memory, remember that the whole way up. And if you can’t use your memory right, you lose.” Francis (Aaron Pierre) utters those words to his younger brother Michael (Lamar Johnson) as they stand staring up at a transmission tower in their Scarborough, Toronto neighborhood. […]

Review: “Once Upon a Time in Uganda”

A camera sweeps over the imposing Kazakhstan landscape, tracing the path of a lone figure walking amid the rock formations, a falcon flying overhead. The music swells as the camera pushes in close on this man, grandly philosophizing through his solemn voiceover narration. It’s an opening scene fit for an epic action movie, but Once […]

Review: “L’immensità”

In Emanuele Crialese’s L’immensità, Andrew (Luana Giuliani) is a 12-year-old boy wresting with his gender identity. Born Adriana, his parents Felice (frequent Crialese collaborator Vincenzo Amato) and Clara (Penélope Cruz) still call him by that name, and address him as “young lady.” They aren’t exactly hostile, and yet, their inability to understand or, in the […]

Tribeca Review: “Öte”

“Wait—you’re here alone?” That’s a question I’ve received a lot over the years, the almost guaranteed first reaction of strangers when I strike up a conversation with them in a city that isn’t my own. I’ve mostly gotten used to it, first from traveling for work, and then from traveling on my own for pleasure. […]

Tribeca Review: “Cinnamon”

Writer/director Bryian Keith Montgomery Jr.’s stylish debut feature film Cinnamon is described as recalling 70s Blaxploitation films. Naturally, this requires some unpacking of that subgenre, whose name was coined literally from a portmanteau of the words “black” and “exploitation.” As much as Blaxploitation movies—whose stories usually revolved around crime and graphic violence—centered around empowering Black […]

Tribeca Review: “Smoking Tigers”

When we first meet 16-year-old Hayoung (Ji-Young Yoo), she’s wandering around the neatly-appointed furnishings of a clearly upper-class home. She finds the bathroom, sits in the bathtub, stretches out. But as much as she seems at ease with making herself at home here, this house isn’t hers. As we glean from the next scene, in […]

Tribeca Review: “Hey Viktor!”

Chris Eyre’s 1998 coming-of-age road trip movie Smoke Signals is more than just a beloved indie comedy and favorite on the film festival circuit. Considered the first Native American directed, written, produced, and acted movie to reach the mainstream not only in the United States but also abroad, it marked a watershed moment in representation […]

Tribeca Review: “The Future”

In writer and director Noam Kaplan’s The Future, the world—or at least, the city of Jerusalem—is recognizable, yet rendered ever so slightly, ever so unsettlingly, off-kilter. Israel is on the cusp of launching a manned mission to the moon. Upbeat commercials advertise new tech of the bleakest sort: a program that uses an algorithm to […]

Tribeca Review: “Break the Game”

Narcissa Wright is more than just an avid gamer. You could say that video games are her life. She’s set speed run records in many games (that’s when you beat a game as fast as possible in one go), competing in competitions and winning awards. Thousands of followers watch her Twitch streams. But as supportive […]