Tribeca, 5/2.

"Whither American indie films?" asks Howard Feinstein at, appropriately enough, indieWIRE, where he finds signs of healthy evolution in Alex Holdridge's "masterwork," In Search of a Midnight Kiss, and signs of withering malaise in Kevin Connolly's Gardener of Eden. Also reviewed: Marshall Lewy's Blue State, Bryan Gunnar Cole's Day Zero, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld's The Hammer and Michael Kang's West 32nd.

More on Gardener from Steven Boone at the House Next Door; at Zoom In Online, Christina Kotlar interviews Connolly and Cinematical's Erik Davis talks with screenwriter Adam "Tex" Davis.

Also at the House, Keith Uhlich on the latest from Kira Muratova: "Two in One reminds of another late work by a proclaimed fringe master (Alain Resnais's Private Fears in Public Places), though Muratova's film is decidedly more torturous to get through (a personal reaction not meant to dissuade the curious - which should be all of us)." And Sheila O'Malley "was left strangely unmoved by Where God Left His Shoes. And I wanted to be moved."

In Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe, Glenn Kenny finds "a solid account of how the curator and patron Sam Wagstaff defined photography as an art form for the 20th century... he picture is good or better on the art-historical stuff, but when chronicling Wagstaff's 'dark' side it's a bit overemphatic." Also, "the air of hagiography" in Scott Walker 30 Century Man "is headier than maybe all but the most worshipful fan might want.... Still, I'm quite glad the picture exists. I think it might even warrant a sequel." Also for Premiere, Aaron Hillis: "Shotgun Stories may be the film to beat at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, an elegiac and exquisitely lensed portrait of buried resentment without a healthy outlet to vent."

Today's Reeler deluge:

• Vadim Rizov on This Is England ("a plaintive piano score" is "quite literally the only element keeping this film from genuine greatness"), The Gates (of all the Albert Maysles films documenting the work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, this one "rests comfortably near the top of the heap"), Fireworks Wednesday ("a perfectly calibrated chamber drama"), Taxidermia ("should be seen at least once by anyone who values sheer originality above all else"), Towards Darkness ("plays like an extended Columbian episode of 24"), Blackout ("way too schematic to succeed").

• Michelle Orange on Numb ("musters a fair share of charm"), Good Time Max (the "performances and direction are strong, but the material doesn't quite measure up"), In Search of a Midnight Kiss ("I enjoyed seeing that strange, picture postcard LA light subverted in the black-and-white photography"), A Slim Peace ("a rare look at how life is lived by the middle class" in Jerusalem), Autism: The Musical ("hopefully works like this (flashy title and all) will bring attention to the ramifications not just for the families but society at large") and Take the Bridge.

• Eric Kohn on The Air I Breathe ("not entirely bad, just awkwardly redundant until its final nosedive in the last five minutes"; related online listening: Christina Kotlar (Zoom In) talks with director Jieho Lee and screenwriter Bob DeRosa), The Cake Eaters (Mary Stuart Masterson's affecting debut"), Avida ("suggests Fargo through the lens of David Lynch by way of Edgar Allan Poe"), The King of Kong ("Intriguingly enough, the complicated Sundance entry Chasing Ghosts deals with the same group of characters and offers a superior glimpse into their private lives, but Kong nails the idiosyncrasies of their hobby"), Pete Seeger: The Power of Song ("The honesty of Seeger's vision makes the MTV years affect on popular music look crass and hopeless, of course, but that's no major eye-opener") and Rise: Blood Hunter ("mercilessly stupid").

• More Vadim Rizov on The Hammer ("executed with slightly more savoir-faire than could've been guessed, and intellectually it's years ahead of The Man Show"), On the Downlow ("an ad-hoc portrait of Cleveland's underground black gay scene... exactly the kind of well-assembled, meat-and-potatoes doc that festivals like SXSW thrive on"), The Polymath, or the Life and Opinions of Samuel R Delany, Gentleman ("eventually curdles into the equivalent of a claustrophobic party conversation with someone who at first fascinates and then just keeps going"), Why didn't anybody tell me it would become this bad in Afghanistan ("becomes a study in abstract textures as much as any kind of coherent narrative framework"), Santiago ("a doc that rises above others solely by virtue of the festival competition") and Hard as Nails ("belongs on HBO... not in an overpriced screening venue").

• Tobi Elkin talks with Wazhmah Osman about Postcards from Tora Bora.

• ST VanAirsdale interviews The Man of Two Havanas director Vivien Lesnik Weisman.

• Jennifer Merin talks with Lisa Katzman about Tootie's Last Suit.

• On Reeler TV: Marc Klein (Suburban Girl) and Zak Penn (The Grand).

Jenny Jediny at Not Coming to a Theater Near You: "Intentionally structured after Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, Aimee Jennings's So finds a filmmaker questioning her sense of self on a trip to Australia."

"My 1.9 seconds with Eva [Mendes] were special," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "I understand that there may be other guys in her life. But whatever else happens, we'll always have 8:17:04 pm." As for the film, "Live! has all the hyperbolic meanness that was pretty much lacking from Jake Kasdan's similarly themed The TV Set." Also: "Zak Penn's cheerful improv-comedy film The Grand, which is, God help us, another mockumentary and another attempt to spoof the unspoofable inanity of TV." And: "There's nothing remotely original about the plot of West 32nd... But Kang depicts the complicated social world of Korean immigrants and their American-born kids with subtlety and almost no sentimentality.... A Dirty Carnival is the kind of sub-Shakespearean drama of ambition and betrayal that has been told in many languages and many countries, but not often with this much richness."

"[Jon] Reiss's most recent work, Bomb It, digs into the global graffiti movement and the drainpipe-scaling, subway-skulking writers who obsessively assert their existences on public space." For the Voice, Camille Dodero "caught up with a visibly frustrated Reiss the morning after he'd learned that the city wouldn't allow live painting outside an after-party for Bomb It's Tribeca Film Festival premiere."

Daniel Kasman on RAZZLE DAZZLE: The Lost World: "The film may never coalesce - if it was even meant to, though one with so few parts so carefully played with suggests a strong, concrete deliberation - and definitely overstays its welcome, but the amount of visual variety and mystery to be found in an early silent film and the degree to which new technologies can root out and find new pleasures and meanings in an old, perhaps forgotten film is a pleasure to see."

At Filmmaker, Jason Guerrasio has quick takes on Taxi to the Dark Side ("as chilling as what was done in the prisons, what's more horrific is seeing the blatant disregard of the Geneva Conventions by the Bush Administration") and Chops: "Comparisons could be made to Spellbound or Wordplay as director Bruce Border follows the gifted students of the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts as they practice for the competition. But what's different is it not only shows their talents but how feeding off on another's abilities makes them create unbelievable music."

Back to Howard Feinstein: "Tribeca always screens a number of films from and/or about the Near and Middle East, so it's almost a given that docs about the Iraqi and Afghan wars would be among them. The most revelatory is I Am an American Soldier: One Year in Iraq with the 101st Airborne." With Taxi to the Dark Side, Alex Gibney "has mapped out for posterity the nasty road to legitimate torture." Ido Haar's "fine 9 Star Hotel reveals his empathy for the Palestinians under occupation.... Eytan Fox did a nice job with Walk on Water, but his Tribeca film, The Bubble doesn't gel.... In the strong doc The Devil Came on Horseback, American directors Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern do an excellent job of capturing Brian Steidle's emerging awareness of the genocide committed against black non-Arabs in Darfur by the Janjaweed militia of Arabs on horseback supported by the Sudanese government." Also touched on are the narrative features The Optimists and Black Butterfly. "You Needn't Bother": Postcards from Tora Bora and The Year My Parents Went on Vacation.

Ryan Stewart: "I can't recommend [Eye of the Dolphin] to general audiences, since it's a terrible film, but I would probably recommend it to my friends for comedy purposes." Also at Cinematical, Erik Davis: "If you can't find a place inside you that buys into the idea that a network would actually attempt to create this type of show (and succeed [Russian Roulette on live television, that is]) then Live! will most likely aggravate you to no end."

Film Panel Notetaker's got good set on Cinema 2.0: Me, Myself and iPod.

Karina Longworth hops several parties for the SpoutBlog.

Posted by dwhudson at May 2, 2007 3:20 PM