Screener

Weighing in on 'The Lovely Bones'

Many of the people turning out to see The Lovely Bones on Friday will have read Alice Sebold's haunting book.  Told from the perspective of a dead girl, Susie Salmon, after she is raped and murdered, the book brought insight into the aftereffects of such a misunderstood and shrouded crime.  Profoundly nuanced, its shaded morality gave its characters emotionally complex reactions to the tragedy. 

After reading Alice Sebold's memoir of her own brutal rape, Lucky, I felt I understood The Lovely Bones even more: being a victim of such a terrible crime leads you to experience events as though they are outside yourself.  You can easily lose a sense of agency.  Instead, you often feel as though you are watching things happen from above.  Susie narrating the events going on in her family from heaven is not much different than how she might have experienced life had she been raped but not murdered.

Sadly, much of this is lost in Peter Jackson's interpretation of The Lovely Bones, which completely misses the tone of the book.  Most grating is his vision of heaven.  He seems more interested in giving his special-effects company a lot of work than motivating the move to fantasy.  The surroundings, rich and lush and detailed, stick out from the rest of the movie.

Many people have praised the performances in the movie (and I agree with the assessment that Stanley Tucci has a standout role), but some lines sounded really, really bad and misdelivered to my ears.  I saw the actor instead of the character.  I suspected part of this was related to the tone. When you're trying to make something wispy and ephemeral, and fail, it can lead to dialogue that feels quite odd.

Finally, there's the rape and murder scene.  Given that a child is involved, and the movie's PG-13 rating, it's not surprising that this vicious act is omitted.  But instead, Jackson moves quickly from the terror of anticipation to a confusing scene where at first she's actually fleeing, and then she's fleeing in her mind, before finally pausing for a brief moment when she realizes what's happened to her.  It missed the mark for me, to the point where I was sitting in the movie theatre in disbelief about how the movie was skipping over one of the most painful, but necessary, moments of the story.  What I really wanted was a still moment where the audience was forced to dwell on what was happening.  Though I already thought the tone was messed up by then, this really sealed it for me.

This omission will be a comfort to some, and for others it may be all they need to conjure up enough horror.  Hollywood Elsewhere, for example was happy with the decision, explaining "I really, really didn't want to go there, even glancingly," and liked Jackson's "decision to show her escaping from her own death, running away from something that has happened but is so horrible that she instantly imagines or wills herself into a fantasy-escape mode."  For me, it was not enough to carry through the rest of the movie.  In the book, the rape and murder is always on your mind, and it's always on the characters' minds.  I didn't feel that way watching the movie.

Given the subject matter, this is the kind of movie that people will see only if motivated by must-see reviews touting its artistic merit.  Not many people want to be subjected to a Schindler's List if critics are coming out calling it "so-so."  By comparison, Precious has garnered glowing reviews.  It, too, shows the rape of a child (much more graphically) and her escaping to a fantasy world.  Compared to the elaborate world created by Jackson, her escapist moments are downright spare, but the movie works by keeping us grounded in Precious' dismal reality.  Translating Alice Sebold's prose to film, which requires depicting these events on-screen instead of in one's head, is a tall order, so it's not a huge surprise that Jackson didn't succeed.  Those that have read the book should skip it or go in with managed expectations.

'This Is It' shows Michael Jackson as we want to remember him

I knew Michael Jackson first as someone photographed with scarves and clothes covering his head.  Magazine articles speculated about his appearance and plastic surgery, allegations were put forth about his sexual abuse of children, and his own children had mysterious paternity and maternity.

That's not the Michael Jackson you see in This Is It.  For a younger generation, many of whom filled the seats at my Wednesday night screening, the concert documentary offers an opportunity to see the King of Pop back in peak form.  He's guarded, not reclusive, and his exacting nature comes across as perfectionism, not diva behavior.

Because Michael Jackson is holding back on singing in the rehearsals to preserve his voice, the most stand-out songs are those staged with elaborate choreography.  The dancing has incredible energy, precision, and ingenuity.  Even surrounded by powerful dancers half his age, Jackson comfortably holds the lead.  The dancers also help cue our awe.  A casting session whittles down the hundreds of immensely talented dancers vying for a spot, and the ones that remain seem overjoyed by the opportunity to work alongside one of their idols.  They applaud during rehearsals and show an incredible amount of respect for the man who has influenced contemporary dancing.

For those curious about the challenges of staging big concert productions, plenty of behind-the-scenes moments abound.  The audience at my screening got a big kick out of Jackson's direction to let a song intro "simmer," and shouted the phrase back at the screen with a joyful glee--"Let it simmer, Mike!"  One of Jackson's accompanists, after getting grilled by Jackson about the "simmering" pace, goes on to convey his respect for a pop artist who is such a perfectionist.  He actually knows all his records and exactly how everything should sound.  In the age of Auto-Tune, Jackson is a welcome anomaly.  Though it seems he was planning on using echo effects live, judging from one performance, he brings with him a history of pop singing independent of the technological crutches standard in today's music world.

This Is It is worth going to the theatre for the crowd, but not necessarily for the IMAX.  While the quality is far better than you would expect, the aspect ratio sometimes shifts to something smaller and grainier.  Director Kenny Ortega, who was in charge of both the stage and film production, puts together an engaging two-hour experience.  He expertly conveys half-completed effects, and instead of feeling like you missed something, you fill in what could have been.  By showing us the strength of Jackson's would-be stage performance, This Is It seals his reputation as an icon.

'Food, Inc.' is worth digesting

If you're one of the millions of people who eagerly consumed Fast Food Nation, and followed it up with Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, the documentary Food, Inc. will drive home the points of these books in an easily digestible, tear-jerking, visual experience. 

At the screening I attended, the critics (usually a quiet bunch) occasionally let out an "mm-hm" or sympathetic scoff to punctuate some of the documentary's points: Preacher, meet choir.  Food, Inc.'s tri-city release on June 12th will distribute the film to the sympathetic, liberal cities of New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, so it remains to be seen whether this documentary would be a successful conversion device if you were to drag along a reticent relative or friend.

Food, Inc. focuses on the whole range of food politics: legislation, corporate practices, local farms vs. factory farming, food safety, nutrition, the effects of fast food, and the class issues surrounding food consumption.  While most of us are familiar with the basics of these debates, the examples offered by Robert Kenner, who has directed episodes of PBS's "American Experience," make all the difference.  While many people are sickened by food, I was sickened by the story of a mother whose son was killed by a burger tainted with E.coli.  Sadly, although testing at the plant turned up the virus, the meat was not recalled until weeks after her son had already eaten the burger.  Her pursuit of the passage of Kevin's Law, which would require speedy notification of food contamination, is one of the most touching vignettes of the film. 

Because Food, Inc. looks at food from the farm to the table, it's able to showcase unusual solutions to problems like E.coli contamination in meat.  Turns out, fixing this isn't just about plant cleanliness, but grazing practices that promote the virus.  According to the food scientists interviewed in the film, E.coli multiply in the gut when cows are fed corn instead of grass.  Feeding cows grass a week before slaughter will remove the majority of E.coli from their gut, but the expensive practice simply isn't part of the corporate slaughterhouse process.

Factoids like these are the kind of things evangelists like to share over dinner with friends (perhaps to their consternation), and there's plenty more in Food, Inc.  It never felt too didactic to me, but rather took the role of a microphone, amplifying and neatly laying out the arguments of prominent activists.  The interview with the CEO of Stonyfield Farm yogurt, Gary Hirshberg, is one such standout segment.  The former radical now sells his products in Wal-Mart, and sold the company to the corporation that produces Dannon yogurt.  While these choices have made his liberal friends aghast, he sees the growth of organic companies as a way to reduce the net amount of pesticides and negative byproducts in our ecosystem.  With most of the organic upstarts (like Kashi, for example) being acquired by the big food companies, the question floating around is, will these companies be able to scale up the organic, free-range movement and improve the quality and safety of our food?  Or will growth compromise the core tenets of these companies, like locally sourced food?

Food, Inc. is a thought-provoking documentary, though even a convert like me found a few moments that relied more on emotion and exaggeration than statements backed up by firm research.  With food politics such a hot topic, this documentary is required viewing for anyone who's ever reached for organic milk, or drawn back once they've viewed its price.

Food, Inc.'s website can be accessed here.
A NY Times article about the bottoming-out of the organic milk market can be read here.
Sneak-peek clips of Food, Inc. viewable here.

Advance buzz: '(500) Days of Summer'

Yesterday I saw (500) Days of Summer, the Sundance sensation that's already captivated bloggers and prompted people to count their calendars down to its July 17th release.  The sweet, self-aware film--the screenwriters call it "postmodern"--can come off as smug or earnest, though I lean towards the latter interpretation.  Fox Searchlight picked up the film, a sure sign that it will follow in the footsteps of the studio's other indie successes, Garden State, Juno, and Little Miss Sunshine.

The movie opens by telling us it's not a love story, even though, well, it kind of is.  Tonally, the best comparison is  Annie Hall: it's telling you a love story that won't have a happy ending, but somehow makes you leave the theatre thinking about the lobster pot-like moments in the movie, not the break-up.

(500) Days of Summer is incredibly playful stylistically.  The morning after Tom's first night with Summer, for example, he checks himself out in the car window and sees Harrison Ford in Star Wars.  Everyone moves to his beat, and the scene eventually turns into a dance sequence, and a straight-from-Disney animated bluebird flies through the foreground.  So how is this not obnoxious?  The sequence seems to come from Tom's subjective point-of-view.  He's sentimental, he works for a greeting card company, so it makes sense that he would have these fantasies.  Music-video director Mark Webb does a great job keeping the style in check.  He avoids hard shifts to fantasy sequences, the kind where the character looks around to see an empty park where a legion of dancers were a moment before, but keeps them slighly loose and open: fun "what ifs" that allow you to share Tom's excitement.  Another particularly effective device was a split-screen sequence of Tom attending a party hosted by Summer.  The left-hand side shows "Expectations," the right-hand side "Reality," and for a couple minutes we see the scene evolve in different directions.  It's a playful style that comes straight from music-videos, but used sparingly, effectively conveys Tom's disappointment.  Tom even interacts with the soundtrack.  He explains, as "She's Like the Wind" swells in the soundtrack, that he just can't help feeling the music.  To me, the style and reflexivity work because Webb is careful to tie each use to Tom's emotions, instead of going willy-nilly just because something would look cool.

With an original, challenging screenplay by Michael Weber and Scott Neustadter, and expert direction by first-timer Webb, (500) Days of Summer is going to be the kind of film people love to love, to the point where I wouldn't be surprised to see one of those Garden State-like backlashes where some get annoyed with the film's self-aware cleverness.  It's definitely a film that people will want to talk about afterward, and if the reaction is like the standing ovation the film received at Sundance, it looks like it's going to be a particularly happy summer for Fox Searchlight, which is already on a winning streak with Slumdog Millionaire.

Behind the scenes with Selick on 'Coraline'

Coraline releases this Friday, and, its creepiness level is right up there with director Henry Selick's 1993 movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, a film I found a little too disturbing and unsettling when I saw it on the upper side of grade school (to be fair, I was much more fright-averse than average).  For an adult, however, Selick's tone conjures up just the right amount of heebie-jeebies.  In the age of computer animation, it's astonishing to see the meticulous, detail-oriented work that goes into such a production--of note, it's the first stop-motion film to be filmed in 3D.  Our Maria Garcia interviewed director Selick here about the filmmaking process, and our Executive Editor Kevin Lally reviewed the final product here, and both stories are worth checking out.

In Garcia's interview, Selick touches upon that stop-motion, Chucky-like quality of puppets:

"the puppets 'make the creepy things in the story more charming' and 'add creepiness to the charming stuff'"

In Coraline, puppets not only depict the action, but have a sort of role in the film itself.  Coraline's Other Mother and Other Father have buttons for eyes, giving them unchanging, penetrating expressions.  Over at Wired, they have a slide show of the production process.  Pink cherry blossoms, for example, are hand-painted pieces of popcorn--that took eight hundred hours to paint.  Grass is painted fake hair, facial expressions (which number 25,000) come from 350 types of eyebrows and 700 types of mouths, and steam is cotton that defies gravity through hair spray.

After the jump, more photos from the Coraline production.

'Twilight' a romance of meaningful glances

Like a teenage daydream ignited by the examination of each possible meaning of that look your lab partner gave you in biology, Twilight imbues meaningful glances with more smoldering romance than one would think possible in this millennium.  Caught in a romance that transcends time, Edward and Bella just have to search each other's pale, slender-chinned, slow-motion, extreme close-up faces, and make eye contact.  The audience shrieks, sighs, and they know, we know, that it doesn't matter that Edward is a vampire and Bella is a human.  They will be together, forever.  Repeat this moment every couple scenes (in a tree, in a house, in a parking lot, in biology class!) like a fugue, and you have the thrill and electricity of Twilight.

Overwrought emotion is frequently dismissed as melodrama, but with Twilight the sustained palpablity of emotion is a compliment.  Some moments of dialogue may inspire a too-good-to-be-true laughter among more jaded audience members, but that doesn't mean they're not enjoying it.  What kind of person would throw away a love note just because it's too earnest in some points?  For fangirls in the throes of a relationship with Edward and Bella (Stephenie Meyer's series now numbers four) there are private jokes.  A scene in which Edward calls himself a lion and Bella a lamb inspired gasping shrieks among the fangirls seated below me, melting over the enunciation of the pet name they had only ever read.

Like arty vampire picture Let the Right One In, Twilight takes time to show us the "rules" and the day-to-day life of vampires.  We get to visit Edward's house, the residence of several vampires.  The modern space has a large, framed, modern color block painting.  Upon closer examination, we see dozens of graduation caps acquired by the perpetually high school-age Cullen family.  "Yeah, it's kind of a family joke," notes Edward wryly.  Bella remarks on the lack of a bed in Edward's room (he doesn't sleep), in an exchange remarkably devoid of innuendo.  We learn the powerful vampires love to play baseball, but only in a thunderstorm, when the cracks of their bats blend in with the thunder.  The rendering of the game is no Quidditch, and I bet producer Summit Entertainment wished they had spent a little more on special effects, which could have been more robust and drawn out.  But because we are so emotionally invested in Edward and Bella, the thrilling escape scene in a Jeep that follows surpasses, for a brief moment, the emotional impact of Quantum of Solace.  Ouch.

Twilight will undoubtedly do well at the box office, so the question everyone is asking now is HOW well.  Over 2,000 screenings are sold out, more than many of the previous Harry Potter movies.  The word-of mouth among the series' devotees is effusive:  as soon as the girls at the advance screening could rip their embargoed cell phones out of the manila envelopes (I screened the film on Tuesday, and Summit required we relinquish all cell phones during the film, even wanding audience members to check), their fingers started sending gushing texts.  Forget word-of-mouth, Twlight will succeed based on Facebook statuses and Twitters. 

As far as numbers, I'll enter my "superstar" prediction here: $100 million in four weeks.  This summer's Sex and the City, with its older, but still devoted, fan base, passed the $100 million mark in its third week (it made $99 million through its second week).  Most of this year's animated pictures have passed $100 million in two weeks.  The cautionary comparison is live-action HSM3: Senior Year, an aging franchise, but still one with a devoted legion of Zac Efron fans.  That film has earned $84 million through its fourth week--I see that as Twilight's worst-case scenario, which would still vastly exceed the film's sub-$40 million production budget.  Summit Entertainment still claims they  only expect $40 million in returns, but the numbers $50 and $60 million have also been floated around.  If Twilight can earn $50 million in its first week, and drop less than 50% each subsequent week (exponential decay, the subject of Twilight girls' math homework!), it will make $100 million in four weeks.  However, as much as I would like to see this film succeed, vaulting the stars, the series, and Summit into a big deal, I don't see girls successfully dragging their relatives to Twilight over next week's Thanksgiving weekend.  Time will tell.

Who wants to see a 'Slumdog Millionaire'?

Slumdog Millionaire releases today in NYC/LA, and Fox Searchlight has done an incredible job activating the blogosphere with the well-deserved buzz over this film.  "Breathless" seems to be Slumdog's collective adjective, used variably to describe the editing, the story and pacing, and the cinematography.

The premise has a cheesy feel to it that requires reassurance of its quality: a boy on the Indian version of the game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?," suspected of cheating, must tell police investigators stories of his life experiences.  Each story, which cues a flashback, explains why he knew the answer to a particular question.  In the hands of Boyle, each story poses as many questions as it answers, surprising the viewer with the frenetic and poignant turns in the boy's life, as well as the stunning and grotesque images of a developing India.

As a director, Danny Boyle has assembled an impressive oeuvre of "genre" films that mix in conventions from other genres.  He made 28 Days Later, his "horror" film, entirely in digital, while still managing to make the film look better than the average horror film.  Nor was he afraid to give his characters dynamic relationships.  He even changed the film's enemy halfway through the story, making the story not so much about escaping the zombies as escaping the militaristic "refuge" established in the wake of the world's zombie infestation.

Slumdog Millionaire, generically a "coming-of-age drama," adds crime, romance, Bollywood, and comedy to the mix to make it sparkle.  Like many of his other films (Millions, The Beach, Trainspotting), Boyle plays with the idea of money, including a character's disavowal of money even as he constantly highlights its importance.  India, with its extreme poverty, juxtapositions of wealth, and dynamic growth, could not be a better backdrop to explore this subject.  In Slumdog Millionaire, Jamal (Dev Patel) cares little for money, going on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" only to find his lost love.  His older brother, however, understands the importance of money and propels the duo through an impressive array of hustling professions, each set in a hypnotizing intersection of rich and poor: the economy of foreign tourists visiting the Taj Mahal; an adult-led farm of child beggars; teens squatting in an abandoned luxury high-rise; a helicopter touching down in a cardboard slum.

The film should be noted for its use of music.  One long "hustling" montage (on a train) is accompanied by M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes."  Not only is M.I.A., born in former British colony Sri Lanka, a poster child for the political and economic implications of colonialism, the lyrics of the song include references to hustling, trains, and Third World democracy.  Rarely does a song fit so snugly into the narrative, mood, and thematic concern of a film.  If only American audiences hadn't heard the song first in the Pineapple Express trailer.  Besides "Paper Planes," M.I.A. collaborated with the film's composer, A.R. Rahman, on another one of the film's songs, and NYMag reports Fox Searchlight will push the soundtrack for an Oscar.

FJI profiled director Danny Boyle, and you can read Executive Editor Kevin Lally's review of the film here.

Upcoming Release: 'Let the Right One In'

The Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In, about two twelve-year-old neighbors, one of them a vampire, recalls the 1970s wave of prestige horror movies.  Largely based on novels, films like Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, and The Silence of the Lambs focused on the shadings of good and evil, curiously examining their characters' motives and thoughts.  Yes, there were moments of violence and fear, but the films drew energy from the atmosphere of horror, the bleak sense of doom that never receded.

In a 1982 Sweden during winter, where the sun sets in mid-afternoon, blond, bowl-cut Oskar endures relentless tormenting from a group of boys, his somber introversion both caused by and the cause of his teasing.  He finds friendship in Eli, a dark-circled, mature companion he meets perched on a jungle gym.  As her pale complexion suggests, she is a vampire.

In the context of this friendship, an exploration of their characters unfolds.  I spent much of the film tenuously moving Oskar and Eli's characters back and forth from the "good" to "bad" categories.  Eli hates killing people, but she also wants to live--she "needs" to kill people.  Oskar wants friendship, but as he grows closer to Eli he changes from a potential victim to an accomplice.  The film likes to throw little wrenches into the machinery we have constructed for the character.  We accept that Eli needs to kill to live, but later we see another vampire choose to die rather than live a life with her "infection." Suddenly, we must examine Eli's survival as a choice, and possibly a selfish one.

The film accomplishes much with the details.  The dried traces of blood on Eli's lips manage to convey both innocence and alluring déshabille, bringing to mind smeared lipstick or a young child who does not yet know how to wipe her mouth properly.  There's also a pleasure in learning the "rules" the vampire must follow.  Eli has a special set of skills, taboos, and enemies (watch out for hissing cats), and these are presented to us more as artifacts or curiosities than foreshadowing.

FJI wrote a review of the film here that prompted my own viewing.  The film opens in limited, NY/LA release this Friday, October 24th.  In true Hollywood style, Cloverfield director Matt Reeves has already announced plans to remake the film, but I can't imagine native dialogue improving my viewing experience.  The English language is not needed to experience the dazed, creeped-out sensation I felt after the screening, nor the attitude of smug satisfaction I will feel having seen "the real deal" once the remake releases.

Animated Waltz with Bashir’ defies expectations

This is the age of “reality” television, where everything from "Man vs. Wild" to "The Hills" claims they depict the truth, only to be besieged by scandals when, for example, the public finds out a survivalist stages his “life or death” situations and goes home to a hotel every night.  In this context, seeing a documentary that makes a point to include its subjectivity is incredibly refreshing.

Waltz with Bashir, screening Oct. 1 and 2 at the New York Film Festival, exists on another plane from how mainstream culture represents reality.  An animated documentary, the film uses a combination of flash, classic, and 3D animation to explore director/writer/producer Ari Folman’s quest to find out what really happened during the 1982 Israel-Lebanon war, which he had completely blocked from his memory (watch the trailer to get a sense of the graphic novel-esque visuals).  The film goes back and forth between his interviews with people who were there, often with him, and the recreation of events based on these memories.

Waltz with Bashir deviates from genre and tone expectations of a “war” film.  In moments where you are trained to expect bravery and heroics, there is fear and disorganization.  In one scene, the commander of a tank is shot.  The soldiers seem puzzled by why he has stopped moving.  Then, their whole tank comes under fire, and they flee without weapons, all dying save one soldier hiding behind a rock, who watches the supporting tank roll away in the distance, abandoning him.

So Waltz is not a “war” film, but it’s also not an “anti-war” film.  Folman most wants to recover his memory of the Massacres of Sabra and Shatila, and when that memory finally comes to light—the moment where the Israelis found themselves playing the role of the Nazi—he leaves the emotions of guilt and complicity unaccented.  Nodding to the bureaucratic stagnation that perpetrated the action, he shows the numbness and matter-of-fact attitude of a soldier carrying out orders.  Whether his reaction or atonement is enough, right, appropriate?  Beside the point.  By defying our expectations of a war or anti-war film, or that of a hero searching for redemption, Waltz with Bashir develops more emotional nuance.  The climax includes a break with animation to include archival video footage, a final jolt that places the film within the evening news and expands its scope and reach.

The film has already swept the Israeli Oscars, the Oshir awards, and will likely be in the Oscar running for Best Foreign Film—and possibly Best Animated Feature, so make a point to see this unique documentary when Sony Pictures Classics opens it in late December. It deserves the buzz.

Tribeca Wraps Up, With A Few Gems In Its Wake

As the Tribeca Film Festival prepares to wrap up this weekend, leaving some of us to obsess over summer movie releases and the rest to trot off to Cannes, I can't help but breathe a sigh of relief. Even with a film festival not particularly known for standout films, there's immense pressure to go and see and do. You're a film writer! You're supposed to go nuts when there's so many out there to see, even if all you want to do is go home and catch up with last week's episode of "The Office," which you missed because you were watching some glum drama about life in the heartland.

The films I've seen have been a jumble of earnest indies hoping for a distributor, big studio projects brought in for the glamour factor, studio orphans that might get a bit more attention here than they will when they're unceremoniously dropped into theatres, and a handful of high-profile foreign efforts making their attempts to land on these shores with aplomb. Tribeca is known for its variety in programming, but either through my own bad luck or the curse of indies, most of the movies I've seen have been distinctly depressing, plumbing the lower reaches of humanity and coming up with not much positive to say.

As a result, probably, the films I've liked the best have been the ones with a sense of humor. The standout by far was Bart Got a Room, which I promise I liked a lot before I chatted with director Brian Hecker the other day. As I mentioned in that article, it's a rare teen comedy that actually has something to say, and thanks to Hecker's insistence on helping teens realize that there's more to life than prom dates, it goes in a good number of surprising directions with its classic story. Bart went into the festival without a distributor, but given that it's one of the unqualified hits of Tribeca, it will doubtlessly be returning to theatres quite soon.

Another movie that dared to have a sense of humor was Man on Wire, a lively documentary set for release from Magnolia Pictures later this year. Documenting Frenchman Philippe Petit's daring walk on a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers in 1974, it's a bold choice for a festival that was founded immediately after those two towers collapsed. But mild discomfort at seeing the towers again quickly turns into delight, as director James Marsh tells the story of how Petit got up there to begin with as if it were a zippy heist film. It doesn't hurt that Marsh got amazing access to Petit and his fellow collaborators-- or should we say accomplices?-- including intimate archival footage and extensive interviews with all the participants. Stylized black-and-white re-enactments of the event risk cheesiness, but Marsh plays them for comedy, illustrating the lively story told by Petit and his friends. Culminating with photographs of Petit on his walk, set to Erik Satie's piano, the film is inspiring, not to mention vertigo-inducing.

Two foreign dramas explore the perils of romance, though in completely different contexts with very different endings. Eden, an Irish drama based on a play by Eugene O'Brien, meets a couple in their tenth year of marriage and probably fourth year of unhappiness. With two children and a nice, neat house, Breda and Billy should be happy, but his boredom and her resentment only build up as they approach their anniversary. Though it feels a bit claustrophobic thanks to its theatrical roots, Eden benefits from two stellar lead performances and clear-eyed direction from Declan Recks, who never lets the film be too overly sentimental. The same goes for Simon Brand, who dramatizes the perils of immigration in Paraiso Travel, about two Colombian lovers who make the dangerous trek to New York City. Marlon is separated from his girlfriend Reina almost as soon as they arrive in Queens, but over the course of his search for her he manages to make a home for himself among fellow immigrants. Through flashbacks to Marlon's journey across the border, though, Brand is frank about the sacrifices involved in securing a life in America that, given immigration policies and the stark reality of poverty, is not so secure after all. Paraiso ends on a moment of hope for its characters, and manages to address the most chilling aspects of immigration within the framework of a traditional Hollywood drama.

And finally there's Katyn, the latest film from the Polish master Andrzej Wajda, which was nominated for this year's Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. The movie dramatizes a near-forgotten event during World War II, when Soviet soldiers invaded Poland and took nearly 150,000 soldiers captive, many of them among Poland's best and brightest thanks to the country's draft. The Soviets eventually executed as many as 22,000 of the prisoners, and though nearly everyone in Poland was affected by the massacre, the Soviets refused to acknowledge the killings for decades. Katyn follows a series of people affected by the massacre, including the wife of an army officer and his friends, the sister of a man slaughtered in the massacre, and the family of a professor killed for daring to question the status quo. Though Katyn is occasionally stilted in its storytelling, and the interlocking storylines lack some of the power they might have had on their own, Wajda is bravely tackling a difficult story from his own country, and reminding us of just how many stories there are left to tell from World War II.

As for stories left to tell from Tribeca, there aren't too many of those. But I hear there's a couple of superheroes with a tale or two to tell...