Berkreviews.com Moviecast – Tribeca Preview
Jonathan Berk (@berkreviews) and David Ortega are about to venture off to Tribeca for the film festival. They got together to discuss the movies they’re planning on seeing while at the festival.
Their plans include (all plot summaries are pulled from Tribecafilm.com):
Ghostbox Cowboy
David Zellner shines in this darkly comedic morality tale that examines the inner workings of China’s economic engine and the lengths outsiders will to go to get in on the game. Texan Jimmy Van Horn (Zellner) arrives in China brimming with optimism, only to realize that acquiring a share of the country’s rapidly growing riches is not as easy as it appeared from back home. Armed with an absurd product pitch and short on the charisma or quick thinking needed to convince local businessmen of his sincerity, Jimmy soon finds himself out of funds, leaving him at the mercy of those who promise to help him stay in the place he’s gambled away his entire livelihood to be. As it turns out, there’s a lot of unpleasant work in China for guys who look like Jimmy Van Horn.
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You Shall Not Sleep
For Bianca, performing on stage provides escape from a tortured home life, one where her father’s mental illness leads to a daily cycle of pain. Unexpectedly, the upstart actress is presented with an exciting new opportunity: to move into an old psychiatric hospital and take part in a play led by a doctor who specializes in a radical form of sleep deprivation, pushing the actors to their limits by testing their resolve. But the longer Bianca goes without sleep, the more dangerous her situation gets. She begins to suffer from nightmarish hallucinations—and to suspect that both the doctor and the hospital itself have sinister plans that go beyond mere on-stage entertainment.
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Duck Butter
When Naima (Alia Shawkat) and Sergio (Laia Costa) meet at a club, they hit it off instantly, connecting over their disdain for the dishonesty they have experienced in their respective romantic relationships. High on their fast chemistry, the two women concoct a romantic experiment: They plan to spend the next 24 hours together, having sex on the hour. Above all, they commit to perfect honesty with each other, a theoretical remedy to the deceit they believe to be an element of modern relationships. But their relationship in a vacuum doesn’t go as planned, and soon the weight of their commitment begins to close in, threatening the ideals of the daylong experiment and their chances for a romantic future tomorrow.
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Jellyfish
Fifteen-year-old Sarah Taylor exists in the eye of the storm. The sole caretaker of her family, including precocious twin siblings and a manic-depressive mother who spends most of her time in bed, Sarah runs from school to home to work each and every day. Yet, despite her Herculean efforts to put food on the table and keep the electricity on, she is still forced to engage with more dehumanizing ways to make a few extra bucks—so it’s no wonder that her back is up among her peers at school. Jellyfish tells the story of Sarah’s discovery of an unexpected outlet for her frustration and quick-tempered wit: stand-up comedy.
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Jonathan
Jonathan (Ansel Elgort) lives a mundane life. He goes to work. He eats alone. He plays video games, and he swaps video messages daily with John, with whom he shares a modest apartment. The lives of the two are entwined, though not quite in the way it might initially seem. So when John breaks one of the ironclad rules that govern their ordered lives, their structured existence, their increasingly suspicious doctor, and their own individual autonomy threaten to collide.
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Cargo
Stranded in rural Australia in the aftermath of a violent pandemic, an infected father desperately
seeks a new home for his infant child, and a means to protect her from his own changing
nature.
Stockholm
There’s the Brooklyn bank robbery that inspired Dog Day Afternoon, and then, there’s the 1973 case that originated the term “Stockholm Syndrome.” Rob Budreau’s Stockholm recounts the absurd true story that sent psychologists scrambling to explain why a group of bank clerks insisted on defending the thief who had taken them hostage.
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The Night Eats the World
One night, Sam attends a raucous apartment party in Paris. But, pressured to show up against his will and not feeling festive, the dejected Sam heads to a private room and falls asleep. The next morning, everything has changed: The walls are stained with blood, there isn’t a living soul in sight, and the dead have taken over the streets. Barricading himself inside, he hunkers down for safety, anticipating a long haul. As the undead congregate outside, Sam passes the lonely months by entertaining himself however possible. But there’s only so long he can hold on to his sanity—and he may not be truly alone.
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Lemonade
Mara, a young Romanian mother and nurse who moved to the United States several months ago for work, has, it seems, already become accustomed to the suspicious, questioning glances and remarks that are part of the fabric of her life in America. By morning, she’s getting vaccinated—the doctor adds a flu shot without her consent—by afternoon, she’s taking her nine-year-old son to look at schools and working on her green-card application—while fending off advances from her self-righteous immigration officer—and by evening, she’s simply trying to keep the peace with her new husband, a former patient she met just a few months prior.
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The Miseducation of Cameron Post
When teenage Cameron (Chloë Grace Moretz) is caught having sex with another girl on prom night, she is shipped off to God’s Promise, a middle-of-nowhere treatment center run by Dr. Lydia Marsh (Jennifer Ehle) and “success story” Reverend Rick (John Gallagher, Jr.). They subject her to dubious gay conversion therapies—but, despite these “treatments,” Cameron eventually forges a community with her fellow teens, quietly defiant Jane Fonda (Sasha Lane) and Adam Red Eagle (Forrest Goodluck). Together, these misfits play at recovery, since their only way out is time.
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Tully
Director Jason Reitman, screenwriter Diablo Cody, and actor Charlize Theron—the team behind the 2011 comedy Young Adult—join forces once again for Tully, a bold new dramedy that confronts the many taboos of motherhood. A bittersweet spin on the classic fairy godmother tale, Tully stars Theron as Marlo, a mother of three battling stress and resentment. When she hires the titular Tully (Mackenzie Davis), a younger nanny, her new employee’s free-spirited ways ignite her previously dormant inner spark.
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Zoe
In the not-too-distant future, the most cutting-edge technology has honed romantic relationships down to a science: A computerized test can determine the likelihood of successful partnership between two individuals, and androids—known as “synthetics”—have been designed as the ideal partners, ones who will never leave. Zoe (Léa Seydoux) and Cole (Ewan McGregor) work in the research facility responsible for developing this technology, and it’s against this backdrop of romantic engineering that their own relationship begins to blossom. But a sudden accident opens a division between them, threatening their nascent relationship and pointing to larger philosophical questions about love, humanity, and authenticity.
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