The 10 Best Movies Complex Saw At The 2012 Tribeca Film Festival

This past Saturday night, a small art-house action movie called The Avengers had its New York City premiere, complete with all of the red carpet hoopla and throngs of fans dying to sneak into the venue and watch Hulk smash aliens into bits. The event wasn’t your typical gala movie debut, though—it was actually the closing night screening of the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, capping off eleven days’ worth of independent cinema with one of the biggest movies ever made.

If you stop and think about it, though, the decision to unveil The Avengers to wrap up this year’s Tribeca festivities has an interesting subtext. Marvel’s superhero extravaganza, which opens everywhere this Friday, is, outside of the NYC fest, the summer’s first official blockbuster, meaning that we’re about to be inundated with huge, loud, and expensive motion pictures for the next four months. Granted, indie stalwarts will have plenty of smaller options to choose from, but the popular emphasis will be placed upon the big studio tentpoles.

Thus, last week’s Tribeca slate nicely put the city’s focus on do-it-yourself, humbly made films, the kind that we particularly love. So before we all bask in the summer’s impending onslaught of box-office-crushing fare, let’s celebrate the little guys with our countdown of The 10 Best Movies Complex Saw At The 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.

Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)

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Director: Ian Olds and James Franco

Francophrenia is, hands down, the strangest thing that James Franco has done yet—let that sink in for a moment. Remember, we’re talking about the same guy who once made a cerebral art-house drama out of old Three’s Company clips.

So what exactly is Francophrenia? In the simplest terms, it’s a hilarious and abnormal mockumentary in which documentarian Ian Olds frames on-set footage from Franco’s already bizarre gig as an actor on ABC’s soap opera General Hospital as an absurd and self-aware faux reality.

Through Olds’ demented voiceovers, wacky visual distortions, and straight-faced lunacy, Francophrenia imagines Franco’s last day working on General Hospital as me-against-the-world horror show, one where he suddenly realizes that the soap is beneath him yet he’s unable to break free from “the machine.” Hate on the guy all you want, but James Franco certainly knows how to poke fun at himself in compelling ways.

Director: Andrew Semans
Stars: Will Rogers, Eléonore Hendricks, Rebecca Lawrence, Santino Fontana

If someone had an important book of yours and refused to give it back, would you be able to let bygones be bygones and move on with your life? Or would you let the otherwise minor infraction rip apart your sanity, career, and personal life? That’s the seemingly mundane but increasingly paranoid idea behind first-time director Andrew Semans’ fascinating character study Nancy, Please, a tonal see-saw during which co-writer Semans sprinkles comedy atop alternately dramatic and psychologically uneasy tensions.

Put it this way: What starts off as an academic dramedy akin to a darker Good Will Hunting takes a hard left turn into quasi-horror once an out-of-nowhere shock hits, one that’s a lesser version of Audition’s body-in-a-sack moment but nonetheless jarring. Similar to Takashi Miike’s shocker, Semans’ well-done debut heads into unforeseen directions in its final act, and that’s when Nancy, Please really earns its kudos.

Director:Petter Ringbom

Nowadays, when you're watching anything "reality-based," you can't help but be hyper-aware of the fact that, while it's purported as presenting a situation plainly, there are producers in editing rooms manipulating the story for tantalizing dramatic effect. But with the documentary The Russian Winter, a record of the musician John Forté's travels across Russia, all doubt about its total authenticity (as well as your cynicism) melts away within the first few minutes, when the former Fugees producer candidly recounts the story of his past incarceration that led him to take positive advantage of his newfound freedom.

Director Petter Ringbom acts more like a landscape photographer than a filmmaker, letting the story of Forté's redemption tell itself rather than contriving drama. Audiences experience the harsh cold of the foreign country with Forté, struggle to understand the new language with Forté and discover new, local talent with Forté. Ringbom is simply there to capture it on video.

It's difficult to resist being charmed by the artist after screening The Russian Winter, given the film essentially plays out like Forte's personal diary. His unrehearsed honesty about his frustration (displayed by a scene in which he fights for sole authorship on one of his singles), his openness about his past drug conviction, and his generous talent (exemplified by his seamless collaboration with Russian artist Alina Orlova) can turn those who bought their ticket barely knowing anything about Forte into a die-hard fan by the time credits begin to roll. — Tara Aquino

Director: Chris Sullivan
Stars:Robert Levy, Nancy Andrews, Chris Sullivan, Chris Harris, Judith Rafael, Mary Lou Zelazny

To complete the truly one-of-a-kind animated oddity Consuming Spirits, filmmaker Chris Sullivan dedicated 15 years of his life; once you see the film (hopefully sometime this year, fingers crossed), you’ll want to shake the man’s hand and salute his perseverance. Consuming Spirits was conceived through a mish-mash of unconventional animation tactics that, when seen as a somber, haunting 130-minute package, is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.

Sullivan’s poignant tale of a small rust belt community’s inner workings captivates with the force and long-form development of a great American novel, only, here, the images in Consuming Spirits are potent enough to match even the most imaginative reader’s in-the-mind visual manifestations. At times, Consuming Spirits looks like the drawings of a madman who's proficient with colored pencils; through it all, though, Sullivan's methodical storytelling and his daringness to hinge an animated movie around, of all things, a nun getting run over by a school bus keep the overall narrative grounded in a haunting sense of pathos.

Director: Chris Kenneally

It sounds like the kind of documentary that film school professors would use in classes and casual moviegoers would equate to paint drying on celluloid: With a partially educational mission, Side by Side, directed by Chris Kenneally, details the behind-the-scenes revolution brought upon by the rise of digital technology. Nowadays, within circles of directors, cinematographers, and editors, the debate pitting digi advances against old-school photochemical film types is as polarizing as it exciting. But should Joe Popcorn Eater really care?

As this highly entertaining and informative documentary (produced by on-camera guide Keanu Reeves) makes perfectly clear, they sure as hell better. Thanks to deep insight from an esteemed lineup of professionals (including Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, George Lucas, and David Fincher), Side by Side pulls the curtain back and reveals the inner mechanisms of cinema, in such a way that both film buffs and folks who call Michael Bay’s Transformers blockbusters “brilliant” can appreciate its messages.

Director: Frederic Jardin
Stars: Tomer Sisley, Serge Riaboukine, Julien Boisselier, Joey Starr, Laurent Stocker, Birol Unel

The best action movies hit the ground running and never stop for air, which describes French filmmaker Frederic Jardin’s Sleepless Night, a breathless and hard-edged adrenaline rush cut from Die Hard’s narrative cloth. A dynamite performance from leading man Tomer Sisley drives the mostly single-location flick, about a dirty cop (Sisley) trying to maneuver around both his fellow officers and drug-pushing criminals while also attempting to rescue his kidnapped son inside a wall-to-wall-packed nightclub.

With several super-charged fight scenes and uniquely staged chases, Sleepless Night is visually potent, yet its Jardin’s twisty script that ultimately powers the film to an elite action film status. Don’t be surprised if Hollywood tosses Jardin a big-budgeted job in the near future. Hopefully not one starring Mark Wahlberg, though.

Director:Lucy Mulloy
Stars:Dariel Arrechada, Anailin de la Rua de la Torre, Javier Nuñez Florian

The central premise of first-timer Lucy Mulloy’s Una Noche isn’t anything revolutionary: Set in the impoverished streets of Havana, Cuba, the NYU graduate’s debut feature follows a day in the life of three teenagers (all of which are strongly acted by Dariel Arrechada, Anailin de la Rua de la Torre, and Javier Nunez), two of which are determined to defect from their homeland on a self-made raft directed toward Miami.

The real sources of impact throughout the subtly powerful Una Noche, rather, are Mulloy’s ground-level capturing of real-life Cuba. The assured and, most importantly, gifted director presents a vibrant yet faintly dangerous city that, while not as viscerally resonant as the Rio de Janeiro of 2002’s City of God, is incredibly authentic.

Director: Justin Benson and Aaron Scott Moorhead
Stars: Peter Cilella, Vinny Curran, Kurt David Anderson, Emily Montague, Skyler Meacham, Zahn McClarnon

In a loose sense, Resolution is a horror movie, thus making it the Tribeca Film Festival’s best “scary” film this year. But first-time directors Justin Benson (also the screenwriter) and Aaron Scott Moorhead had too many wild influences in their heads while assembling this bizarre, clever, and meticulously ambiguous genre mash-up to simply lump it into the horror lane.

Besides, lead actors Peter Cilella and Vinny Curran—the former playing a worried friend who forces his drug-abusing best friend (Curran) into a makeshift rehab inside a run-down cabin—are too damn funny to leave viewers permanently unsettled. That task is left to Benson’s subversive script, a sneaky baffler complete with allusions to Lovecraftian mythos, Native American customs, and meta supernaturalism.

A do-it-yourself indie that’s low on finances but high on ambition, Resolution deserves a chance to confound art-house and mainstream viewers alike. IFC Midnight or Magnolia Pictures, the time is now.

Director: Sarah Polley
Stars: Seth Rogen, Michelle Williams, Luke Kirby, Sarah Silverman

When was the last time a romantic comedy stuck with you days—hell, even hours after the closing credits rolled? Take This Waltz, the quietly devastating though often very funny love-gone-south dramedy from actress turned writer/director Sarah Polley, does exactly that. At the emotionally profound film’s center is Michelle Williams, in pristine and exceedingly sympathetic form as a married woman (her beau is played by a restrained and on-target Seth Rogen) tempted by the forbidden fruit of a charming, free-spirited neighbor (Luke Kirby).

The film smacks your heart around with every one of Williams’ impactful reactions and moments of internalized anguish, and how it all plays out is a testament to Polley’s honesty as a filmmaker. Come to think of it, Take This Waltz isn’t actually a “rom-com”; though, on a surface level, it does resemble one of those schmaltzy flicks, it’s human drama of the utmost clarity. More concerned with treating her characters with unsafe honesty, Polley never takes the easy way out, leading to quick, unforeseeable swerves into impure joy and raw heartbreak.