Critics Rank the Best Movies and Performances at the Tribeca Film Festival

1. Daniel Patrick Carbone, Hide Your Smiling Faces

1. Let the Fire Burn 
2. Powerless
3. The Kill Team
4. Big Men
5. Alias Ruby Blade

1. Oxyana
2. Big Joy
3. The Kill Team
4. Red Obsession
5. Powerless

1. Tomasz Wasilewski, Floating Skyscrapers

1. FOOL’S DAY–funniest short film I’ve seen since SPIDER.

2. FLOATING SKYSCRAPERS–I saw the 9:45 am P&I show; I wanted to see it again at 10:30 that same night. It excited me that much.

3. OYXANA–took my breath away with it combination of image and story; so much better than the excruciating BOTTLED UP, which tackled the same topic as a narrative feature.

4. SIX ACTS–can’t stop thinking about this film which pushed buttons and envelopes.

5. WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME–a charming, whimsical, feel good film; a true sleeper.

1. Before Midnight  
2. The Pretty One
3. A Case of You
4. Prince Avalanche
5. Trust Me

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

1. Lil Bub & Friendz 

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Richard Linklater, Before Midnight

2. David Gordon Green, Prince Avalanche

3. Clark Gregg, Trust Me

4. Jenee LeMarque, The Pretty One

5. Phil Morrison, Almost Christmas

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Zoe Kazan, The Pretty One 
2. Paul Giamatti, Almost Christmas
3. Julie Delpy, Before Midnight
4. Clark Gregg, Trust Me
5. Ethan Hawke, Before Midnight

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Saxon Sharbino, Trust Me
2. Paul Rudd, Almost Christmas
3. John Cusack, Adult World
4. Jake Johnson, The Pretty One
5. Emile Hirsch, Prince Avalanche

BEST ENSEMBLE

1. Trust Me

2. Before Midnight

3. The Pretty One

4. A Case of You

5. V/H/S 2

BEST FIRST FEATURE

1. Jenee LeMarque- The Pretty One

2. Lance Edmands- Bluebird

MOST ANTICIPATED (BUT MISSED IT AT TRIBECA)

1. Some Velvet Morning

2. Greetings from Tim Buckley

3. Byzantium

4. Frankenstein’s Army

5. Teenage

BEST SCENE

1. The opening scene of Before Midnight

2. The “who’ll blink first” scene in Trust Me

3. The funeral scene in The Pretty One

4. The “birth” scene in V/H/S 2

5. The final scene in Almost Christmas

BIGGEST SURPRISE

1. The Pretty One

2. My vague disappointment in Almost Christmas

3. How little I wound up seeing

Kristy Puchko, Cinema Blend

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. Wadjda
2. The Rocket
3. The Pretty One
4. Whitewash
5. Prince Avalanche

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

1. The Kill Team 
2. Mistaken For Strangers
3. Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me

4. Bending Steel

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Haifaa Al-Mansour, Wadjda
2. Dan Krauss, The Kill Team

3. Jenée LaMarque, The Pretty One
4. Kim Mordaunt, The Rocket
5. Tom Berninger, Mistaken for Strangers

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Thomas Haden Church, Whitewash
2. Zoe Kazan, The Pretty One

3. Maxine Peake, Run & Jump
4. Waad Mohammed, Wadjda
5. Sitthiphon Disamoe, The Rocket 

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Jake Johnson, The Pretty One
2. Emile Hirsch, Prince Avalanche
3. Loungnam Kaosainam, The Rocket
4. Brendan Morris, Run & Jump
5. Gemma Arterton, Byzantium

BEST ENSEMBLE

1. G. B. F.
2. Run & Jump

BEST FIRST FEATURE

1. Wadjda
2. The Pretty One
3. Whitewash

4. Mr. Jones
5. Run & Jump

MOST ANTICIPATED (BUT MISSED IT AT TRIBECA)

1. Before Midnight. Haven’t gotten around to it yet. I know, I know.
2. Flex is King. I hear it’s insanely amazing. I just missed it again and again.
3. A Single Shot. Sam Rockwell plus buzz of a high tension finale makes me kick myself for having missed this one.
4. Six Acts, I heard only great things about.
5. Teenage. 

BEST SCENE

1. The finale of Wadjda. Because of its subject matter (gender disparity in Saudi Arabia), I feared horrendous soul-crushing tragedy would be a given for its third act. But instead Al-Mansour gave her heroine a happy ending that the narrative earned, and left me elated. When the credits rolled, I was a mess of tears and smiles.
2. Chris Schoeck’s Coney Island performance at the end of Bending Steel was extraordinary. We’ve watched this shy strong man come out of his shell over the course of the film, and before he attempts his final feat of strength—one we’ve only seen him fail at—he gives a speech about overcoming his fears, laying himself bare before the audience. I literally held my breath in hopes he’d succeed. Fantastic, simply fantastic.
3. In Run & Jump there’s a spectacular sequence that crosscuts between the teen boy Lenny as he proudly outs himself at a swim meet, with his mother and father attempting to connect through sex for the first time since his father’s brain-devastating stroke. It’s contains a heady mix of emotions, defiance, hope, ecstasy and despair.
4. James Gandolfini talking about his relationship with Elaine Stritch in Elaine Stritch: Just Shoot Me: “If we had both met when we were 35, I’m sure we would have had a passionate love affair that would have ended very badly.” Beyond being hilarious, this comment is evocative, beautifully capturing Stritch’s brassy allure.
5. The final freaky and funny shot of Gareth Evans “Safe Haven” contribution to V/H/S/2. 

BIGGEST SURPRISE

1. How terrific the slate overall was. I was not only felt spoiled for choice, but also deeply enjoyed most of what I saw.
2.  Mistaken For Strangers. I almost skipped it because I didn’t know a thing about the band The National, but was urged by fellow critics to give it a shot. I’m ecstatic I did. It’s a thoughtful and entertaining look at brotherhood and the creative process.
3. V/H/S/2. I completely hate the first one, finding it frustrating misogynistic and painfully lacking in scares. These troubles didn’t bleed in to this sequel.  

Stephen Saito, The Movable Fest

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. The Pretty One
2. Stand Clear of the Closing Doors
3. Whitewash
4. Bluebird
5. Lily

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

1. Lenny Cooke
2. Oxyana

3. Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me

4. The Kill Team
5. Bending Steel

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Jenée LaMarque, The Pretty One

2. Sam Fleischner, Stand Clear of the Closing Doors
3. Emir Baigazin, Harmony Lessons
4. Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais, Whitewash
5. Josh and Ben Safdie, Lenny Cooke

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Thomas Haden Church, Whitewash

2. Naomi Watts, Sunlight Jr.
3. Amy Morton, Bluebird

4. Zoe Kazan, The Pretty One
5. Maxine Peake, Run & Jump

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Tess Harper, Sunlight Jr.
2. Andrea Suarez Paz, Stand Clear of the Closing Doors
3. Marc Labrèche, Whitewash
4. Jake M. Johnson, The Pretty One
5. Amanda Peet, Trust Me

BEST ENSEMBLE

1. Trust Me 
2. Bluebird
3. The Pretty One
4. Hide Your Smiling Faces
5. Almost Christmas

BEST FIRST FEATURE

1. Jenée LaMarque, The Pretty One

2. Sean Dunne, Oxyana
3. Lance Edmands, Bluebird
4. Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais, Whitewash
5. Steph Green, Run & Jump

MOST ANTICIPATED (BUT MISSED IT AT TRIBECA)

1. Before Midnight
2. The Rocket
3. Before Snowfall
4. The Broken Circle Breakdown
5. Cutie and the Boxer

BEST SCENE

1. Lenny Cooke climax – Wouldn’t want to spoil, but what could be an incredibly corny moment near the end becomes eerily effective with some movie magic. 
2. Bluebird – Amy Morton’s bus driver, filled with regret over an incident on her bus, feels the whole school is judging her when she attends her daughter’s concert and retreats to the bathroom. The unique framing of the scene of scene as she collects herself in the bathroom is Edward Hopper-level and could easily be taken as a still and placed in a gallery.
3. Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me – The legendary actress/singer is taking her medicine, insisting to the cameraman that it would be more interesting if he got the shot in a certain way, an incredibly funny moment that shows that even in spite of a weakened state, she still wants what’s best for her audience.
4. Stand Clear of the Closing Doors – Although director Sam Fleischner shot the majority of his film on the subway system and braved Hurricane Sandy in the middle of production, one of the film’s most striking images is when a cleaning lady (Andrea Suarez Paz) is forced to spend time back at home after her son goes missing and wipes away the dust off her own TV set, never having the time to do so before.
5. The Pretty One – Zoe Kazan and Jake M. Johnson spend an evening in their neighbor’s pool, imagining themselves as a married couple in a swooningly romantic moment.

BIGGEST SURPRISE

1. Gasland 2 – A followup that’s easier to digest as a narrative and harder to watch for what it says about fracking, Josh Fox’s sequel is both necessary and more impressive in all respects than its 2010 forebear. 
2. Hide Your Smiling Faces – A really nice debut from Daniel Patrick Carbone, who has an easy way with a young cast and a great eye for locations.
3. Frankenstein’s Army – After a rough beginning, a really pleasant, unexpectedly inventive surprise.
4. The English Teacher – If you can’t get past some very pronounced logical gaps, some of the most charming work any of the actors have done in a while in a confident debut that plays like a poor man’s “Election” from Craig Zisk.
5. Kiss the Water – Eric Steel’s profile of Megan Boyd, who dedicated her life to making the perfect flies for fisherman to use as bait, never once shows its late subject onscreen, but has friends and relatives tell her story. Both unusual and low-key, it sneaks up on you.

Don Simpson, Smells Like Screen Spirit

 

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. Lily
2.
Bluebird
3. Hide
Your Smiling Faces
4.
Taboor

 

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

1. The Kill Team
2. Bending Steel
3. Let the Fire Burn
4. Oxyana
5. Teenage

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Matt Creed, Lily

2. Dave Carroll, Bending Steel

3. Dan Krauss, The Kill Team

4. Lance Edmands, Bluebird

5. Jason Osder, Let the Fire Burn

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Amy Grantham, Lily
2. Amy Morton, Bluebird
3. Johan Heldenbergh, The Broken Cycle Breakdown
4. Veerle Baetens, The Broken Cycle Breakdown
5. Nathan Varnson, Hide Your Smiling Faces

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Nell Cattrysse, The Broken Cycle
Breakdown
2. John Slattery, Bluebird

 

BEST ENSEMBLE

1. Bluebird

2. Hide Your Smiling Faces

3. The Broken Cycle Breakdown

BEST FIRST FEATURE

1. Lily

2. Bluebird

3. Bending Steel

4. The Kill Team

5. Hide Your Smiling Faces

 

MOST ANTICIPATED (BUT MISSED IT AT TRIBECA)

1. Lenny Cooke

2. A Birder’s Guide to Everything

3. Before Snowfall 

4. The Machine

5. The English Teacher

 

Anne-Katrin
Titze, Eye for Film

In
2013, the Tribeca Film Festival has succeeded triumphantly with the MoMA PS1
collaboration for Michelangelo Frammartino’s Alberi and how to bring nature
into an urban setting through films like Bruno Barreto’s Reaching for the Moon,
Reha Erdem’s Jîn, Whitewash, directed by Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais, Hisham Zaman’s
Before Snowfall, and Red Obsession, directed by David Roach and Warwick Ross. (Interview with Artistic Director Frédéric Boyer)

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. Reaching for the Moon – Bruno
Barreto’s exquisite Reaching For The Moon tells the grand love story between
the Pulitzer prize-winning American poet Elizabeth Bishop, and the Brazilian
architect Lota de Macedo Soares. Barreto adeptly investigates the art of losing
and living with demons. Style is a trigger for communication, and the green
layers of nuance are lush.

2. Whitewash

3. Sunlight Jr.

4. Byzantium

5. Some Velvet Morning

 

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

1. Michael H. Profession: Director – Cat
lover and Academy Award winning director Michael Haneke is profiled in Yves
Montmayeur’s penetrating Michael H. Profession: Director by frequent
collaborators including Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert, Juliette Binoche,
Jean-Louis Trintignant, Béatrice Dalle, and Josef Bierbichler. The documentary
about the filmmaker’s career shows Haneke at work, starts with the word
“coward” spoken in his 1992 feature film Benny’s Video and ends with
his statement, that love is a difficult thing and not given to everybody. 

2. Lil Bub & Friendz

3. Kiss the Water

4. Red Obsession

5. Gore Vidal: The United States Of Amnesia

 

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Michelangelo Frammartino, Alberi – Playing
in an endless loop in the dome at  MoMA PS1, Alberi accomplishes something
extremely rare very quickly and profoundly:  it allows spectators to
breathe, relax and think, about nature, myth, and how good it feels when
someone awaits your arrival. Frammartino invites us to remember and forget.

2. Bruno Barreto, Reaching for the Moon

3. Yves Montmayeur, Michael H. Profession:
Director

4. Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais, Whitewash

5. Eric Steel, Kiss the Water

 

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Thomas Haden Church, Whitewash – Thomas
Haden Church plays Bruce with great strength and impeccable timing.  He is
a Samuel Beckett character and winter athlete rolled into one, while he juggles
a past of glass eyes, a present of strong beer, and an inevitably icy future.

2. Miranda Otto, Reaching for the Moon

3. Emmanuelle Devos, Just A Sigh

4. Naomi Watts, Sunlight Jr.

5. Stanley Tucci, Some Velvet Morning

 

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Glória Pires, Reaching for the Moon – Lota
de Macedo Soares is played by Glória Pires with every response a marvelous
surprise. The way she meets the world in general and how she slowly changes
around Elizabeth Bishop is masterfully subtle. She wonders why their guest is
so “stuck-up and defensive” and has already deeply entered a new
chapter in her life, without knowing it. Glória Pires conveys all this in a
gesture and a movement of her shoulders.

2. Tim Roth, Mõbius

3. Greg Kinnear, The English Teacher

4. Heather Graham, At Any Price

5. Vince Vaughn, A Case of You

 

BEST ENSEMBLE

1. Reaching for the Moon – The
extraordinary yarn begins at the boat pond in New York’s Central Park, on a
bench, where Elizabeth Bishop (Miranda Otto, translucent and captivating)
suffers “weekly attacks” on her poetry and her virtue by good friend
Cal (Treat Williams). Former ballet dancer and friend from Vassar, Mary Morse
(Tracy Middendorff, a limber Cassandra in a complex role), and right-wing
politician Carlos Lacerda (Marcello Airoldi) who wants to be president of
Brazil and supports the military coup that ends Brazilian democracy console the
central love story.

2. Lil Bub & Friendz

3. Teenage

4. Sunlight Jr.

5. At Any Price

 

BEST FIRST FEATURE

1. Whitewash – Tribeca Film Festival
Best New Narrative Director Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais wins for his chillingly
unique snow thriller. On a very snowy night, Whitewash, blows us into the icy
world of a man at a crossroads. Bruce’s life changes forever after encountering
Paul, whose personality couldn’t be more different from his but whose situation
is no less urgent. He has to confront the basics of survival – food, warmth,
shelter.

 

MOST ANTICIPATED (BUT MISSED IT AT TRIBECA)

1. Bluebird

2. Jîn

3. Cycling with Moliere

4. Odayaka

5. Before Snowfall

 

BEST SCENE

1. Bub in Lil Bub & Friendz meeting the
tiger at the Exotic Feline Rescue Center.

2. Erica’s (Kate Hudson) art opening in The
Reluctant Fundamentalist.

3. Paul (Marc Labrèche) stealing dolls’
eyeballs in Whitewash

4. Haute Cuisine – Monsieur le Président de la
République (played by Jean d’Ormesson) endears himself to Hortense (Catherine
Frot) when at the first lunch she prepares for him, we learn that he eats the
carrot top. Any wise bird can tell you about it. 

5. Gore Vidal in Gore Vidal: The United States
Of Amnesia explaining JFK.

 

BIGGEST SURPRISE

1. Michelangelo Frammartino’s World Premiere
of his breathtaking 28 minute continuous cinematic installation Alberi in the
VW Dome at MoMA PS1.

 

Daniel Walber, Film School Rejects

 

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE

1. Wadjda
2.
Floating Skyscrapers
3. Ali
Blue Eyes
4. Dark
Touch
5.
Fresh Meat

 

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

1. Cutie and the Boxer
2. Alberi
3. Big Joy
4. The Kill Team
5. Raw Herring

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Haifaa al-Mansour, Wadjda

2. Zachary Heinzerling, Cutie and the Boxer

3. Tomas Wasilewski, Floating Skyscrapers

4. Big Joy, Stephen Silha & Eric Slade
& Dawn Logsdon

5. Alberi, Michelangelo Frammartino

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE

1. Waad Mohammed, Wadjda
2. Mateusz Banasiuk, Floating Skyscrapers
3. Bartosz Gelner, Floating Skyscrapers

4. Nader Sarhan, Ali Blue Eyes
5. Riz Ahmed, The Reluctant Fundamentalist

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE

1. Marta Nieradkiewicz, Floating
Skyscrapers
2. Reem Abdullah, Wadjda
3. Karel Roden, Frankenstein’s Army
4. Ahd, Wadjda
5. Joyce Payne, Prince Avalanche

 

BEST ENSEMBLE

1. Fresh Meat

2. Ali Blue Eyes

3. Dark Touch

4. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

BEST FIRST FEATURE

1. Wadjda

2. Cutie and the Boxer

3. Big Joy

4. The Kill Team

5. Frankenstein’s Army