England's finest have crossed the pond ... Shane Meadow's This is England
Discovery and novelty have been the watchwords of the blogosphere this week, as what probably only seems like every film blog in existence descended on New York's Tribeca Film Festival. Not that all of them are happy about it; among the blow-by-blow coverage of the contents of the festival - co-founded by local poobah Robert De Niro - several bloggers have voiced misgivings about the riot of sponsors and hosting of the glitzy premiere for Spiderman 3. The usually laidback Like Anna Karina's Sweater was moved to lament the "crass commercialism" many feel now hangs over De Niro's baby.
Yet whatever its flaws, Tribeca certainly has no shortage of product. Indeed, such is the abundance of films that for me just glancing through its programme induced a giddy spell. So it's with a genuine respect that I tip my hat to those blogs willing to do battle with a seemingly numberless array of titles - chief among them Green Cine Daily, New York's own Reeler and the excellent House Next Door.
As increasingly seems the norm, it's documentaries that have been where the action is - among the most tantalising being Chávez, a well-received account of the life of legendary Mexican boxer Julio Cesar Chávez directed by Diego Luna, hitherto best known for starring in Y Tu Mama Tambien. Equally praised has been Taxi to the Dark Side, a fierce indictment of the use of torture by the US military that's been responded to by all who have seen it with a mixture of admiration for director Alex Gibney (who also made the excellent Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room) and outraged disbelief.
In the musty old world of fictional features, however, there's been little in the way of consensus either about which films matter, or whether those films are actually any good. Among the smörgåsbord, the titles picking up the most coverage have been led by Two in One, the latest from Russian director Kira Muratova - a baroque arrangement of two unrelated (but equally outlandish) stories, the response to it has been more curious than smitten, but Muratova's sheer visual chutzpah certainly seems to have snagged attention, with The House Next Door describing the film as one where "anything is possible, however nonsensical."
Collecting plaudits elsewhere have been the absurdist New Zealand comedy Black Sheep, dubbed a "perfect midnight show" by Zoom-In Online; Yu Li's urban meditation Lost in Bejing (which Screen Grab calls "complex and emotionally devastating") and, gratifyingly, This is England described by The Reeler as "only a piano score from greatness."
Oddly, the one cinematic strand that seems to have gone AWOL from the teeming line-up is American indie - or perhaps it's simply that, notable exceptions like debutant Kevin Connolly's Gardener of Eden aside, no-one can summon up the patience for it anymore. These are dark days for the goatee and Converse brigade, and while many of the new wave of directors lauded by Wild Sound may be highly gifted, the catch-all term "Mumblecore" hardly whets the appetite. Jay Duplass' on-release The Puffy Chair is the work of a man with talent, but really, there comes a time when young American directors need to offer more than pasty, middle-class navel-gazing, and by my watch that time was 1994.
A few stray nuggets to end on: It would be remiss not to mention the attention received by Robinson Devor's documentary Zoo, an understated study of (if only there was a better way to put this) men who love horses, gracefully reviewed by Reverse Shot, and perhaps a fraction less so by Bright Lights; there's much to be enjoyed in Screen Grab's timely recap of the strange history of British directors and party political broadcasts; and lastly, this post from Film Ick offers a reminder of a time when American indie(ish) cinema did still have a modicum of pep. That said - what, no John Turturro?
