Cinematical

It consistently amazes me that, despite all the stuff we complain about living here in the United States, that we still have it so much better than most of the other countries on the planet. We're so used to our freedoms that any perceived infringement on them seems like an affront. But imagine if you lived in Iran, where all you're craving is more information than the government-run TV stations are giving you. Satellite dishes, though, are illegal, mainly because of programming that the government thinks is immoral. Many internet sites, especially those that are in opposition to the fundamentalist Muslim government, are blocked. Western music and movies are banned. How would you deal with all the restrictions?

That topic is examined in Head Wind, a fascinating documentary from Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof. In the film, he shows that Iranians are starving for information and entertainment, and in this digital age, the government, as hard as they try to, is having a hard time stopping the tide.

Something about Yonkers Joe bugged me.

Don't get me wrong; it was a very well-made and well-acted film, with a very touching story about fathers, sons, and the difficulties of raising special needs kids. It's got two stars, Chazz Palminteri and Christine Lahti, that give their usual solid performances. And it even has a story that's got some nice tension and is emotionally satisfying.

But something bugged me. And I couldn't put my finger on why until the very end, but when I did, it made my discomfort crystal clear: This guy's a crook. Why should I care about him at all?

One of the best things about covering a film festival in New York is that there are about a billion different dining options available to you, even if you just have a half-hour between screenings. And, while I'm pretty good at exploring the dining scene in my home state of New Jersey (and yes, Jersey has a dining scene), I rarely get a chance to get more than a one-shot opportunity to sample what the Big Apple has to offer. So I made sure I used my time wisely.

I think I did a good job: last Friday, after my set of screenings, I met a friend and his sister and went to Resto, a Belgian place whose waiters wear t-shirts that say "I'm bringing the fatback." Oh, they love their fat there; my entree was a beef cheek carbonnade that was softer and tastier than any normal stew beef you can think of. Oh, and they had frites (fries) and beer there. Lots of frites and beer.

Life in Flight should prove to any aspiring screenwriter that you don't necessarily have to have an original story in order to get a screenplay made. In the film, which debuted at Tribeca on Sunday, first-time writer / director Tracey Hecht tells the tale of a man who's supposedly living the good life, but it's not the one he wants. And it takes meeting a young, vivacious woman for him to fully realize it.

Heard that story before? Sure you have, probably dozens of times. You've seen it in goofy romantic comedies from The Seven-Year Itch to Joe Versus the Volcano as well as "indie" dramas like Garden State. But good writing and acting always trumps originality of story, and Life in Flight has both, though there's still room for improvement.

When I sat down to watch the excellent documentary Head Wind (review coming soon), I didn't realize that I'd be subjected to the mental torture that was the short called Beginning Filmmaking. I don't think the rest of the sparse crowd expected to see the short, either, because we all kept asking each other in very loud voices, "Why aren't we seeing Head Wind?" and "Why the hell doesn't this guy leave his kid alone?"

In this short, filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt chronicles a year of trying to teach his four-year-old daughter Ella how to become a filmmaker herself, based on something she babbled when she was eighteen months old. He even goes so far as getting Ella a brand new camcorder for her fourth birthday.

Did I say she was four? Well, I can't say that enough, because throughout the 23 mind-numbing minutes of this film, Rosenblatt tries to teach Ella how to be an auteur, giving her lessons in composition, focus, light, and story. He's talking to her like she's an NYU film student, and all she wants to do is play with her toys and flick boogers (well, she doesn't do that last thing on camera, but don't most kids that age do that?).

Ah, the road film. The formula is tried-and-true: usually two people, taking to the back roads of America in order to get somewhere by a certain time or for a particular reason. Along the way, cars break down, trains are jumped, and quirky characters are encountered. It can be funny, sweet, or darkly dramatic. But the formula rarely strays. Because of this, the key to a good road film is what happens during the journey. You want to see lessons learned, growth, and bonding. But you also want to see interesting characters and maybe a good car chase thrown in, too.

Tribeca seems to have at least one of these films every year. Last year it was Chasing 3000. This year, it's Tennessee, a slow-moving but sweet story of two brothers who go back home to find their abusive father; what they find, though is that there's more than one reason to go home.

I couldn't get to any of the press screenings for Man on Wire, so I decided to get on a Rush Ticket line and (gasp!) actually pay to get into a public screening. I was third on line, and I thought I was in good shape. I mean, it was 4:45 on a Tuesday; who was going to see a documentary about the guy who walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers almost thirty-five years ago?

Turns out that people in New York aren't as busy as you think, since the screening was packed to capacity. But they were in for a good show, as this documentary combined archival footage, interviews, and appropriately cheesy reenactments to tell the story of how in 1974, Philippe Petit, a French juggler and tightrope walker, managed to sneak a crew and a bunch of equipment to the top of the World Trade Center, extend a tightrope between towers, and walk across without a net.

Give Joshua Seftel some credit; he didn't pull any punches on War, Inc. In his first feature film, written by star/producer John Cusack, Jeremy Pisker, and Mark Leyner, Seftel attempts to make a scathing commentary on the War on Terror, the privatization of the military, the commercialization of societies all over the world, and other shenanigans. In a former life, Seftel was a former network news producer, and became known around Hollywood circles for directing documentaries like Breaking the Mold: The Kee Malesky Story.

He was nice enough to speak to me about the experience from a very blue room at the Tribeca Film Festival press office. Text and video are after the jump.

What do you say when a film is so bad that you actually feel physical pain for everyone involved? You literally sit there for an hour-and-a-half and feel sorry for everyone who put such a hard effort into the making of the film, only to see it lay there like a lox when it's finally projected on the big screen. As a reviewer, there's not much more you can do than just endure it and hope to see a fleeting moment or two of quality, just so you don't think you've completely wasted your time.

That's all the thoughts that were going through my head as I watched War, Inc., an ambitious film that fails miserably at everything it attempts to be. As a comedy, it's not funny. As a satire, it's as subtle as a sledgehammer. And as a treatise on war, the corporatization of the military, and the horrors of pop stardom, it doesn't tell you anything that you don't already know if you just watch the 24-hour news channels or read the news online even a little bit.

Even if you don't have any idea who Che Guevara is, you probably know what he looks like. His face has graced everything from t-shirts to bikinis to cigarette packs to beer. You know he's a symbol of ... something. But you're just not quite sure what.

So, who is Che Guevara? And how did that picture of him become so damned famous? Those questions, and other issues, are addressed in the excellent documentary Chevolution, which debuted at Tribeca on Friday.

In the documentary, producer/director Trisha Ziff and director Luis Lopez explore the Che phenomenon from all angles, including the revolutionary's early life, his fateful encounter with Castro, the Cuban revolution he helped make happen, to his life trying to foment revolutions in other countries. But it also examines how he crossed paths with photographer Alberto Korda, the fashion photographer/photojournalist who took the famous picture of Guevara that was the basis for the icon we know today.