by Liz Wiest, Staff Writer

The 23rd edition of the Tribeca Film Festival has come to a triumphant close this week after twelve days of magnificent world premieres, delightful events, and cutting edge immersive experiences. I prefaced my curtain raiser by stating that this year’s selections had the makings to be the crème de la crème of the festival circuit, and while not every viewing reinvented the wheel for me, I certainly didn’t feel like any of my choices didn’t belong there. The journey was certainly more than worth the ride.

Though I didn’t get to all of the options I had hoped for due to conflicting schedules, I was incredibly pleased with the slate that I was able to catch, and am signing off on an optimistic note that I will get to cover even more ground next year.

Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story
Written and Directed by Bruce David Klein
Runtime 104 minutes

As I stated in my review of the highly anticipated Group Therapy, Tribeca’s documentary selections, at least out of the two I viewed, fell slightly short of my expectations. I would be surprised if I was just speaking for myself claiming that I left wanting more, and unfortunately this same rhetoric ended up applying to my screening of Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story. As a theatre kid, I grew up idolizing Liza and her mother, and to be frank, wish the documentary was made by someone who did the same.

Liza fell victim to the trap documentarians who secure such a fascinating subject often fall into, where they let the actual filmmaking and storytelling fall to the wayside and rely on the object of the cameras and their interviewers to do all the heavy lifting. Minelli has been notoriously private her entire life, and to squander her literal once-in-a-lifetime vulnerability with directionless editing and seemingly random segmenting of the documentary felt like a waste to me. Though the talking heads they selected were clearly knowledgeable and aided the fabulous archival and interview footage tremendously. However, not even witty bits and heart wrenching authentic emotional moments from the legend herself could make up for what felt like a made-for-tv special as the final product.

All that to be said, if you’re a fan of Liza’s, or a theatre fan in general, the film is absolutely still worth a watch. With the icon entering her twilight years, it’s not certain how many more of these glimpses into her real life we will be allotted. It was heartbreaking to see in her eighties still referencing herself in relation to her parents, and all I can hope is that if this documentary is granted a wide release, that the respect and admiration for the ineffable Ms. “Liza with a Z” is given where it has long been overdue.

Escape From Tribeca

The “Escape from Tribeca” programming delivered exactly what I was sold for my curtain raiser: celebrity panels, a Godzilla-themed dance party, and a selection of films that truly transport you to another time and place, leaving feeling disoriented (mostly for the better), following.

#AMFAD All My Friends Are Dead
Written by Josh Sims and Jessica Sarah Flaum
Directed by Marcus Dunstan
Runtime 91 minutes

Fewer things bring me more joy than the onslaught of biting, Gen-Z horror films that have taken the 2020s by storm. Though they aren’t the ones calling the shots or making the films yet save for Rachel Sennott, they are in on the joke, and aren’t afraid to laugh at themselves before the oldheads can. #AMFAD is a film that achieves exactly this. The story follows a group of seven friends on their way to Karmapalooza, an aptly named Coachella-type festival where a grisly murder happened twenty years before, unapologetically foreshadowing what’s to come.

Director Marcus Dunston opened the screening by introducing his magnum opus as “Scream meets Seven”, (I would argue also Bodies Bodies Bodies). This is fair given that the killer is essentially a rebooted Ghost Face with the Kevin Spacey killer MO. Like Quentin Tarantino surmised in Cinema Speculation: “The horror copycat genre became a genre in and of itself”. Of course, he was talking about Psycho, but I think it applies here as well. Is #AMFAD changing the game? No. But it’s also not trying to. The Jojo Siwa cameo solidifies that. Nonetheless all the performances, including Siwa’s, are well-done and accentuated by the fun cinematography and surprisingly stand-out editing. From the escapism perspective, #AMFAD deviates from the mold of a typical festival film. The well-produced still-unrated gorefest earns its place among the Tribeca ranks for being solidly funny and still packing enough surprises in to break up the familiarity of the tropes.

She Loved Blossoms More
Written by Yannis Veslemes and Dimitris Emmanouilidis
Directed by Yannis Veslemes
Runtime 86 minutes

If David Lynch and Yorgos Lanthimos had a baby, it would be Yannis Veslemes’s She Loved Blossoms More. The strikingly gorgeous pure nightmare fuel adds a gruesome sci-fi twist to the grief movie trope and was easily my favorite Tribeca viewing experience. The film follows three brothers who, under the orders of their estranged father, attempt to build a time machine to bring their deceased mother back from the grave with disastrous consequences.

When one experiment goes wrong leaving one of their girlfriend’s stuck in between the world of the living and the dead, the brothers must band together to put an end to their deranged scientific method once and for all. The most I can say without spoiling is that Greek cinema’s reputation for VFX prowess is solidified in Blossoms. The abominations produced by the failed attempts of the time machine had my jaw on the floor openly wondering how they mastered certain shots. From the visual aspect alone, I think the film’s 5.8 on IMDb is criminal, and must be a result of some kind of website glitch. Do I fully know what Veslemes was trying to say? Absolutely not. But I enjoyed every second of it. And in the post Poor Things-era of Lanthimos supremacy, I believe She Loved Blossoms More could issue in a Greek Renaissance that the bleak pre-existing-IP-obsessed Hollywood could learn a thing or two from.

Kill
Written by Nikhil Nagesh Bhat and Ayesha Syed
Directed by Nikhil Nagesh Bhat
Runtime 115 minutes

Nakhil Nagesh Bhat’s Hindi revenge-o-matic Kill was deemed: “India’s most brutal film”, and it only takes about twenty minutes in to see exactly why. The violent drama follows Special Ops commando Amrit (Lakshya) as he boards a train to New Delhi to steal back the love of his life from an arranged marriage she was forced into during his deployment. The only problem is, aboard the train are also forty thieves, who make the mistake of crossing Amrit and invoking his bloodthirsty revenge instincts.

While I don’t mind a gorefest, Kill gives its audience whiplash between its Bollywood-trope love story and gruesome action sequences that make a Tarantino movie look like fun for the whole family. The antagonists are certainly nefarious enough to justify Amrit’s fury, and it’s quite easy to get on board and root for him to avenge his loved ones by any means necessary. The Sound Mixer certainly had their work cut out for them (and unfortunately fell short more than once) with the sheer amount of stabbing. But, like the fast train to New Delhi, Kill is a genre film whose intricate fight choreography, tough-as-nails badass protagonist and high-stakes emotional undertones get you exactly where you need to go.

Mercer Labs

The announcement that the Tribeca Immersive Exhibit will be extending at the Mercer Labs Museum of Art and Technology came of no surprise to me. Though I approached the exhibition with extremely cautious optimism due to the market saturation of loosely branded NYC-based “immersive experiences”, I ultimately left feeling inspired, impressed, and slightly nauseous. Though some of the rooms had inspiration drawn from tourist favorites ARTECHOUSE (Chelsea Market), The Color Factory (SoHo) and even, God forbid, the Museum of Ice Cream (SoHo), FRAMERATE: Rhythms Around Us, Planet City by Liam Young and the entirety of the collection by Roy Nachum (Archetype will blow your mind, honestly), introduced groundbreaking pieces that certainly sets the newly-opened Mercer Labs above the rest.

However, if we’re speaking economically, the prices as they currently stand ($52 for general admission), does not fully justify the visit. Especially if you have children, consider attending one of the aforementioned hands-on experiences for a more reasonable price. Or, if you don’t, consider visiting one of the “listening experience” bars popping up around the city such as the Instagram-viral In Sheep’s Clothing for a night akin to the CO_SONIC 38, 144km2, the AI-powered sound room exhibit, for the somewhat-less outrageous price of an NYC cocktail. You’ll at least encounter fewer robots.