'Enemies of the State': Film Review | Tribeca 2020

A cinematic history lesson that will be all-new to most Americans lacking ties to Korea, Min-ho Woo's The Man Standing Next observes the inner circle of South Korean president Park Chung-hee during the 40 days before his assassination on Oct. 26, 1979.

About 20 minutes into new series Sweet Magnolias, I had a revelation: This is just like Mind you, it takes place in a small South Carolina town (the fictional "Serenity"), and there's no sex. There's not so much as a steamy make-out session.

Brad Pitt, 56, may be in quarantine but he made time for a special congratulatory message for graduating seniors in his hometown of Springfield, Missouri on May 18! The talented actor recorded a video clip for Missouri State University’s class of 2020 from his home and the school played it as one of the last surprises during their virtual graduation. They also reposted it on their Twitter page to show the public and it’s every bit as sweet as you can imagine.

A snowbound bag-of-cash thriller set in the vast North Maine Woods, John Barr's Blood and Money casts Tom Berenger as an ailing hunter trying to escape from bank robbers who want their money back. A solid B movie whose pleasures aren't diminished much by the screenplay's dicey dialogue — plenty of the film has no dialogue at all — it's a welcome vehicle for its star, who has been underused by filmmakers for decades.

Brian Levin's debut feature is being billed as a Southern Gothic thriller, but only the first part of the description applies for this effort that gives new meaning to the expression "slow burn." Heavy on foreboding atmosphere but light on narrative momentum, character development and thematic coherence, Union Bridge requires considerable patience to cross.

A mediocre Hawaii-set comedy targeted at the limited demographic of middle-aged white guys who dig wish-fulfillment rom-coms, Tyler Spindel's The Wrong Missy finds David Spade juggling the attentions of three attractive women, one of whom is psychotically bent on either fulfilling his every need or killing him in the attempt.

A shaky narrative is given ballast by two vivid and well-matched leads in Sabrina Doyle’s exasperating, sporadically touching feature debut, the blue-collar melodrama Lorelei. As former high school sweethearts reconnecting amid dire socioeconomic circumstances, Pablo Schreiber and Jena Malone hustle to overcome movie-ish dialogue and clichéd story dynamics, investing their life-bruised characters with authentic feeling.

Clementine

A kitschy cover version of the early-’80s teen movie romance gets bogged down in nostalgia, losing the edge — of new music and Nicolas Cage’s performance — that made it a generational favorite.

[Note: In the wake ofthe Tribeca festival's postponement this year,The Hollywood Reporteris reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally for critics.] In the hard-hitting and heartbreaking documentary Jacinta, a young mother suffers the effects of heroin addiction that plagued her own mother as well, prolonging a cycle of abuse and incarceration that repeats itself across a generation. Stories of drugs, jail and recidivism are, alas, nothing new in America.

Twice in Clark Duke's Southern crime pic Arkansas, an oddball character played by the director informs strangers that, however off-putting he may be, sooner or later everybody wants to be his friend. The same must be true in real life, since the actor (familiar from The Office and Hot Tub Time Machine) has enlisted a surprising array of talent (not only from Hollywood, but the music world)to assist as he makes his feature directing debut.

[In the wake of the Tribeca festival's postponement this year,The Hollywood Reporteris reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally for critics.] There's plenty of wild and intimate beauty and not a little blood in Kokoloko, the first feature from Gerardo Naranjo since his 2011 international breakout, Miss Bala.

[In the wake of the Tribeca festival's postponement this year,The Hollywood Reporteris reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally for critics.] If nothing else (and there is plenty else) Bo McGuire strikes a campily confident pose. Hirsute of face and loud of shirts, a Virginia Slim always dangling from his lips or fingers, this Alabama-born artist swans his way through his feature debut, Socks on Fire.

For his lucid and perceptive look at Stanley Kubrick's unparalleled body of work, Gregory Monro excerpts a number of archival clips. It's not the filmmaker who's at the center of most of them but his collaborators, testifying to his exacting methods.

[In the wake of the Tribeca festival's postponement this year,The Hollywood Reporter is reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally for critics.] What a pleasure to see the underrated Steve Zahn in a leading role that fully capitalizes on the contradictory currents coursing through his screen persona — of mellowness and wired energy, grounded warmth and off-kilter unpredictability.

An unhealthily close bond between mother-and-daughter addicts forms the dark heart of Jessica Earnshaw's gripping, characterful doc debut.

Oakland, California, in recent years has been the setting of a number of bold, stylistically distinctive takes on race, African American identity and social conditioning, from the searing tragedy of Fruitvale Station through the hip-hop swagger of Blindspotting to the gonzo satire of Sorry to Bother You. That makes Black Panther co-writer Joe Robert Cole's reflection on the vicious cycle of gang culture and its toll on families an earnest but unrewarding disappointment.

Ashton Sanders, from "Moonlight," proves again that he's a lyrical actor of disenfranchised despair in the unusually authentic tale of an aspiring rapper in Oakland who gets caught up in the thug life.

[In the wake of the Tribeca festival's postponement this year, The Hollywood Reporter is reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally for critics.] For those of us whose memory of Hurricane Maria boils down to footage of President Donald Trump scornfully tossing out paper towels to a crowd at a disaster relief center, Cecilia Aldarondo’s documentary Landfall offers up a welcome flipside: images of Puerto Ricans proudly and painfully trying to rebuild their island amid a

Producer-director Maria Finitzo’s feature documentary The Dilemma of Desire was robbed, like so many other works, by the coronavirus pandemic of its moment in the spotlight when its premiere at SXSW was cancelled in March. That fate seems extra cruel given that the movie is all about celebrating female sexual pleasure and especially the much-misunderstood clitoris in defiance of patriarchal efforts to silence, stifle and suppress female desire.