Tribeca dispatch #5

[Pierre-Alexandre Despatis suffers for his cinema. Now covering his second edition, our official festival reporter and multi-function human cyborg will provide us the sights (plenty of cool pics!), the sounds, the reviews and the occasional interviews of the still very young 5th edition of the Tribeca film festival. Below are some of Pierre-Alexandre’s reviews in easy to read, insightful capsule form. Enjoy!]

BOY CULTURE
Based on the acclaimed novel by Matthew Rettenmund, Q. Allan Brocka's second feature BOY CULTURE relates the story of mr. X, a very successful hustler, or rather, 'a hustler with morals' as he labels himself. At age 26, and after a 10-year long career that started with his dentist at the time, mr. X is faced with a new complications … emotions! From the opening credits the style of the film is very sleek and original, while being down-to-earth enough to make us feel uncomfortable as the main character is slowly falling apart and loosing grip on everything he has. The tag line of the film is "Sex pays . Love Cost". More complex than most gay romances that are often based on a guy-meets-guy, guy-loses-guy, guy-gets-back-with-guy schema, BOY CULTURE has a very complex and multi-faceted narrative that is greatly enhanced by the almost continuous narration of the film.

CIVIC DUTY
In this suspense a la ARLINGTON ROAD, a 'middle eastern guy–as he's labeled by the main character–rents an apartment in a building where Terry lives. He quickly starts to notice strange things about him and quickly thinks he's a terrorist. Unfortunately for him, his wife and the FBI are rather skeptic! As the films progresses and the drama/suspense intensifies, things get nasty. The narrative is for the most part very strong, except for a few parts-including a rather déjà vu/cliché "knock on the door and the door opens itself" scene. The film's cinematography, sleek use of depth-of-field and noir environment go hand-in-hand with the main character's twisted mind. Director Jeff Renfroe never lets the viewer know whether the 'middle eastern guy' is a terrorist or not – aided by various devices which confuse the viewer. For that, and for the extreme suspense in the final act, CIVIC DUTY is truly worth watching.

FREEDOM'S FURY
Remember those dreary documentary films you were forced to watch in your yesteryear (high school). Those very long docs about some political subject you didn't care about? Well, FREEDOM'S FURY comes across like that. Colin Keith Gray presents the Russian occupation of Hungary in the fifties and ads an interesting twist to make the film thoroughly engaging. The conflict is shown through a water polo match. The film is thoroughly researched and the interviews with the former water polo team, which got caught in all that political turmoil, give the viewers a good insight at what was really going on back then. Framing the occupation around the water polo team gives a very humanist look at the conflict, exactly what many historic documentaries lack.

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