Summer of Blood Tribeca Review

The Bottom Line : If Eddie Murphy couldn't make a vampire in Brooklyn funny, this film certainly can't.

Director-Screenwriter : Onur Tukel

Cast : Onur Tukel, Anna Margaret Hollyman, Dakota Goldhor, Dustin Guy Defa, Melodie Sisk, Juliette Fairley, Vanna Pilgrim

A shlubby loser becomes a lady killer vampire in Onur Tukel's comic horror film.


A shlubby Kraut Garcia lookalike becomes a woman killer lamia in Onor Tukel’s Brooklyn flower child variation on the acquainted horror pic genre. except for all its efforts to place a recent spin on its oft-trod territory, Summer of Blood, receiving its public presentation at the Tribeca festival, lacks the required sarcastic bite.

The producer conjointly plays the central role of Erik, a prototypal loser World Health Organization within the gap scene rejects a wedding proposal from his lovely girlfriend Jody (Anna Margaret Hollyman) who’s clearly too smart for him. the connection ends in real time afterward once, whereas walking home, she promptly ditches him when running into Associate in Nursing old flame who’s everything that Erik isn't.
Sad sack Erik, whose principal sexual intercourse is masturbating within the rest room to a photograph of a comely fellow worker (Dakota Goldhor), promptly reenters the geological dating scene to predictably dismal results. however his life suddenly turns around when a nocturnal encounter on a dark Brooklyn street with spiffy lamia Gavin (Dustin Guy Defa).

Desperately needing blood to squelch his continual disabling abdomen pains, Erik begins prowling the streets at midnight in search of victims. He discovers a new sexual superior skill, reconnecting with the trio of ladies he antecedently dated and transferral them to heights of ecstasy with neck bites that remodel them into vampires yet. His powers of influence conjointly are available in handy once it involves managing his landholder World Health Organization retracts his demand for back rent when one verify Erik’s eyes. except for all his nonheritable powers, he still pines for his ex-girlfriend who’s settled into her new relationship.
Featuring copious amounts of gore, the film, displaying influences starting from role player to Judd Apatow to mumblecore, may be a technically dilapidated affair whose primary attribute is Tukel’s impassive comic performance and excusatory temperament to portray his character as a complete dick. whether or not responding to Jody’s expressed want to possess youngsters by declaring that “babies ar worthless” or, before changing into a lamia, asking one amongst Gavin’s hurt victims, “Are you HIV negative, I hope?,” his Erik is thus unrelentingly unsympathetic that he virtually garners a grudging respect.

Summer of Blood has its occasional humourous moments, like Gavin’s description of lamia parties attended by such figures as songwriter, aeronaut and Enron’s Ken Lay. conjointly amusing ar Erik’s encounters with a hostile fellow worker (actor/filmmaker Alex Karpovsky, of Girls) dismayed at his untidy look and incompetence.

But the copiousness of gags founder additional typically than not -- Erik thinks that everybody may be against him as a result of he’s Turkish -- and what we’re left with is a rambling, amateur riff on the lamia genre that’s already been satirized way too typically.

Tribeca Film Festival (XYZ Films)

Producers: Onur Tukel, Clifford McCurdy, Melodie Sisk, Max Heller, Clifford McCurdy

Director of photography: Jason Banker

Not rated, 86 min.  

Goodbye to All That Tribeca Review

The Bottom Line : A surprisingly sexy tale of emotional rebuilding.

Venue : Tribeca Film Festival, World Narrative Competition

Production: Epoch, Remain Calm Productions

Cast: Paul Schneider, Melanie Lynskey, Audrey Scott, Anna Camp, Heather Graham, Heather Lawless, Ashley Hinshaw, Michael Chernus, Amy Sedaris, Celia Weston

Director-Screenwriter: Angus MacLachlan

Producers: Mindy Goldberg, Anne Carey

Director of photography: Corey Walter

Production designer: Chad Keith

Costume designer: Kim Wilcox

Editor: Jennifer Lilly

Sales: Jessica Lacy, ICM

Rated, 86 minutes

Paul Schneider plays a man reeling from an unexpected divorce in the directorial debut of "Junebug" scribe Angus MacLachlan.

NEW YORK — In his first film as a director, Junebug screenwriter Angus MacLachlan goes back to North Carolina for the story of a man blindsided by divorce. Paul Schneider shines in the role, stumbling through a dating world that has changed since his character got hitched, thanks mostly to social media. His turn is a fine fit for the seriocomic spirit of a picture that, while less distinctive than the earlier film, should have little trouble connecting with viewers beyond the fest circuit.

chneider's Otto Wall is an avid runner who can barely cross a room without tripping on something. After he's injured in an ATV accident, his daughter Edie (Audrey Scott) asks mom Annie (Melanie Lynskey), "Why do these things always happen to Daddy?" "Because he doesn't pay attention" is the reply.
While Otto comes across as a very caring husband and father, clearly the film agrees with Annie's diagnosis. Otto is flabbergasted when she announces she wants a divorce — or, rather, when her therapist (Celia Weston) does, in a comically infuriating scene. The break is official before he can even process it, but a Facebook-enabled discovery that Annie had been cheating helps Otto get comfortable with the idea of dating new women.

Every divorce should be this hard: With seemingly no effort online, Otto has soon connected with three different beauties who want nothing from him but sex. (One of the women goes haywire later, but what's a breakup without a hot rebound fling with a manic-depressive?) While he certainly enjoys himself, though, Otto's confused by the lack of interest in deeper connections -- something MacLachlan clearly sees as tied to our present mode of friending. His need for something grounded is more pressing in light of his relationship with Edie, who is growing distant for reasons he can't peg.

Some of those have to do with Annie, and MacLachlan manipulates us a bit in order to make us blind in the same ways Otto has been: Otto's ex behaves with such cold self-absorption, kicking him out of his home and then expecting him to make everything easy for her, that we can't help but long for a showdown in which he makes her see how awful she's being. The film pointedly denies us this gratification, and eventually suggests we were wrong to want it -- that although we never witnessed his failures in the relationship, they were real, and his job now is to grow instead of vent his anger.

From this stance, even the most interesting of Otto's love interests — an old summer-camp girlfriend coping with losses of her own, played beautifully by Heather Lawless — is at best a catalyst, nudging him to be more attentive to the bonds he has before trying to forge new ones. The lesson may be too pat, but Goodbye is gentle in the delivery.

Time is Illmatic Tribeca Review

The Bottom Line : Fans will embrace this walk down memory lane.

Venue: Tribeca Film Festival, Special Events

Production: Illa Films

Director: One9

Screenwriter: Erik Parker

Producers: Anthony Saleh, One9, Erik Parker

Director of photography: Frank Larson

Editors: David Zieff, One9, John Kanellids

Music: B. Satz

Sales: Josh Braun, Submarine

Not Rated, 74 minutes

Nas remembers the birth of his extraordinary hip-hop career.

NEW YORK -- Superstar MC Nas remembers his humble roots in One9's Time is Illmatic, an evocative appreciation of his debut album on the occasion of its 20th anniversary. Though presented concurrently with the inevitable CD reissue (titled Illmatic XX), the doc avoids the prefab feel of many similarly targeted music films, instead offering a strong sense of the neighborhood -- New York City's Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing project in the U.S. -- that served as both a rallying cry for musicians who grew up there and a constant threat to their lives. Though too limited in scope for much of a theatrical life, the film will play well to hip-hop fans on cable.

One of the aspects that keeps Time from projecting an advertorial vibe, its indifference to outside voices, may also leave casual fans wanting a bit more: The director never offers the expected testimonials from fellow musicians and others attesting to Illmatic's influence on hip-hop (though Cornel West does pop up briefly). We're presumed to understand the platinum-selling record's legacy going in. Instead we dive in with plentiful first-person storytelling from both Nas (born Nasir Jones) and his brother Jabari "Jungle" Jones, with crucial input from their father, jazz musician Olu Dara. (Producers who crafted the record's beats make quick but welcome appearances as well.)

While the star tends toward earnestness -- the "who'd'a thought...?" appreciation of someone not taking stardom for granted -- Jungle provides much of the account's color, both getting many of the film's laughs (in a post-screening concert, Nas chuckled that Jungle was the film's star) and providing an eyewitness account of what Time presents as the catalyzing moment of the artist's career: the shooting death of Willy "Ill Will" Graham, the rapper's close friend and collaborator in early hip-hop experiments. After that tragedy, which happened in their building's courtyard, Nas threw himself into the creative burst that quickly drew attention from outside Queensbridge.

The filmmakers focus more on storytelling -- recounting rivalries between Queens rappers and the South Bronx's Boogie Down Productions; early support from Roxanne Shante and MC Serch; the rapper's discovery by and quick signing to Columbia Records -- than on making the most of the period's music. This is not one of those rock docs that makes viewers move in their seats, and it often cuts away from its best performance footage before we're ready to leave. It's busy saving space for later concert scenes, present-day performances of songs made famous on Illmatic.

STORY: Music Docs Take Center Stage at 2014 Tribeca Film Festival

These segments afford little examinations of individual songs -- as when Q-Tip cites a couplet from "One Love" that eloquently describes how the mass incarceration of young black men destroys families and communities. But they aren't as musically thrilling as the vintage footage.
The doc barely talks about how the record was received and what it led to -- a career full of multi-platinum records and sold-out arenas -- but it wraps up with some time at Harvard, where a new Nasir Jones Fellowship will promote hip-hop scholarship. The Ivy League is an odd place for the film to go in its one request for outside legitimization of the artist's work. But for a rapper who once lamented that his people are in "projects or jail, never Harvard or Yale," perhaps it's appropriate.