20 films at the Tribeca Film Festival that already have distribution

No Greater Law
Feature Documentary
Country: UK, USA
Director: Tom Dumican
Writer: Jesse Lichtenstein, Tom Dumican
Distributed by: A&E
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

In Idaho’s rugged Treasure Valley, the Followers of Christ believe in God, family, and faith healing. As an investigation into the community’s high infant mortality rate closes in on the church, one patriarch fights for his right to his faith.


Studio 54
Feature Documentary
Country: USA
Director: Matt Tyrnauer
Writer:
Starring: Myra Scheer, Karin Bacon, Norma Kamali, Nile Rodgers, Ian Schrager, Steve Rubell
Distributed by: A&E
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

In 1977, Studio 54 and its founders, Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, epitomized New York hedonism. But by, 1979 the fantasy was over—and Studio 54 goes inside that meteoric rise and catastrophic fall.


Disobedience
Feature Narrative
Country: UK
Director: Sebastian Lelio
Writer: Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Sebastián Lelio
Starring: Alessandro Nivola, Rachel McAdams, Rachel Weisz
Distributed by: Bleecker Street – Releasing 4/27/18
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

After the death of her estranged rabbi father, a New York photographer returns to the Orthodox Jewish community in North London where she grew up and, in doing so, reignites long-dormant passions and controversies.


McQueen
Feature Documentary
Country:
Director: Peter Ettedgui, Ian Bonhôte
Writer: Peter Ettedgui
Distributed by: Bleecker Street
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

Legendary couturier Alexander McQueen’s rags to riches story is vividly brought to life by his closest friends and family, and through his revolutionary body of work, as inspired, tortured, and visionary as the man himself.


Woman Walks Ahead
Feature Narrative
Country: USA
Director: Susanna White
Writer: Steven Knight
Starring: Bill Camp, Ciarán Hinds, Sam Rockwell, Chaske Spencer, Michael Greyeyes, Jessica Chastain
Distributed by: DirecTV/A24
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

Based on a true story, 19th-century Brooklyn artist Catherine Weldon journeys west on a mission to paint a portrait of the legendary chief Sitting Bull, only to find a very different world—and man—than she was expecting.


Crossroads
Feature Documentary
Country: USA
Director: Ron Yassen
Writer:
Distributed by: ESPN Films
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

Despite never having played the game before, a group of underprivileged teens emerge as a talented lacrosse team under the tutelage of Coach Bobby Selkin in this inspiring documentary.


Say Her Name: The Life and Death of Sandra Bland
Feature Documentary
Country: USA
Director: David Heilbroner, Kate Davis
Writer:
Distributed by: HBO
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

Sandra Bland was a bright, energetic activist whose life was cut short when a traffic stop resulted in a mysterious jail cell death just three days later. Say Her Name follows the two-year battle to uncover the truth.


Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie
Feature Documentary
Country: USA
Director: Andrea Nevins
Writer: Andrea Nevins
Starring: Peggy Orenstein, Roxane Gay, Gloria Steinem, Michelle Chidoni, Kim Culmone
Distributed by: hulu
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

Since her debut nearly 60 years ago, Barbie has been at turns a fashion idol and a cultural lightning rod. Tiny Shoulders steps behind the scenes as the icon undergoes her greatest reinvention yet.


Mary Shelley
Feature Narrative
Country: Ireland, UK, Luxembourg, USA
Director: Haifaa Al Mansour
Writer: Emma Jensen
Starring: Maisie Williams, Tom Sturridge, Joanne Froggatt, Bel Powley, Douglas Booth, Elle Fanning
Distributed by: IFC
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

The story of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin’s whirlwind romance with the tempestuous poet Percy Shelley, a romance that led to her creation of one of the most enduring works of gothic literature before the age of 20: Frankenstein.


Nico, 1988
Feature Narrative
Country: Italy, Belgium
Director: Susanna Nicchiarelli
Writer: Susanna Nicchiarelli
Starring: Calvin Demba, Karina Fernandez, Thomas Trabacchi, Sandor Funtek, Anamaria Marinca, John Gordon Sinclair, Trine Dyrholm
Distributed by: Magnolia
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

This whirlwind road movie follows the final months on tour of the singer-songwriter Nico, one-time Warhol superstar and Velvet Underground vocalist.


The Gospel According to André
Feature Documentary
Country: USA
Director: Kate Novack
Writer:
Starring: André Leon Talley
Distributed by: Magnolia – Releasing 5/25/18
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

From the segregated South to the fashion capitals of the world, The Gospel According to André recounts fashion editor André Leon Talley’s storied life and career through intimate conversations, rich archival, and testimonials from fashion luminaries including Anna Wintour, Tom Ford, and Marc Jacobs.


Into the Okavango
Feature Documentary
Country: USA
Director: Neil Gelinas
Writer: Brian Newell, Neil Gelinas
Distributed by: National Geographic
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

Botswana’s Okavango Delta is one of the planet’s last remaining true wildernesses, but studies have shown it is shrinking. A group of intrepid scientists embark on a four-month, 1500-mile journey upriver to the Okavango’s source to investigate why.


The Rachel Divide
Feature Documentary
Country: USA
Director: Laura Brownson
Writer: Jeff Gilbert, Laura Brownson
Distributed by: Netflix – Releasing 4/27/18
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

Rachel Dolezal became infamous when she was unmasked as a white woman passing for black so thoroughly that she had become the head of her local N.A.A.C.P. chapter. This portrait cuts through the very public controversy to reveal Dolezal’s motivations.


Sunday’s Illness (La Enfermedad del Domingo)
Feature Narrative
Country: Spain
Director: Ramón Salazar Hoogers
Writer: Ramón Salazar Hoogers
Starring: Susi Sanchez, Barbara Lennie
Distributed by: Netflix – Releasing 6/15/18
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

After Anabel hosts an opulent dinner, she is confronted by Chiara, the daughter she abandoned decades earlier. Chiara arrives with just one request: that she and her mother spend ten days together.


The Bleeding Edge
Feature Documentary
Country: USA
Director: Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering
Writer:
Distributed by: Netflix
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

Each year in the United States, unparalleled innovations in medical diagnostics, treatment, and technology hit the market. But when the same devices designed to save patients end up harming them, who is accountable?


Cargo
Feature Narrative
Country: Australia
Director: Yolanda Ramke, Ben Howling
Writer: Yolanda Ramke
Starring: Martin Freeman
Distributed by: Netflix – Releasing 5/18/18
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

An infected father navigates a zombie-riddled Australian Outback with his infant daughter. Fortunately, he’s found an Aboriginal community that may hold the disease’s cure. Unfortunately, he has only 48 hours to live.


The Fourth Estate
Feature Documentary
Country: USA
Director: Liz Garbus
Writer:
Distributed by: Showtime
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

For the journalists at The New York Times, the election of Donald Trump presented a once in a generation challenge in how the press would cover a president who has declared the majority of the nation’s major news outlets “the enemy of the people.” Oscar-nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus witnessed the inner workings of journalism and investigative reporting from the front lines during this administrations’ first history-making year. A Showtime release


The Seagull
Feature Narrative
Country: USA
Director: Michael Mayer
Writer: Stephen Karam
Starring: Brian Dennehy, Billy Howle, Michael Zegen, Glenn Fleshler, Jon Tenney, Mare Winningham, Elisabeth Moss, Corey Stoll, Saoirse Ronan, Annette Bening
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Classics
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

A sumptuous adaptation of the classic Chekhov play transports the audience to a picturesque lakeside estate, where a love triangle unfolds between the legendary diva Irina, her lover Boris, and the ingénue Nina.


Duck Butter
Feature Narrative
Country: USA
Director: Miguel Arteta
Writer: Alia Shawkat, Miguel Arteta
Starring: Alia Shawkat, Laia Costa, Hong Chau, Kate Berlant, Kumail Nanjiani, Mark Duplass, Jay Duplass, Lindsay Burdge, Miguel Arteta
Distributed by: The Orchard – Releasing 4/27/18
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

Two women, jaded by dishonest and broken relationships, make a pact to spend 24 uninterrupted hours together, having sex on the hour. Their romantic experiment intends to create a new form of intimacy, but it doesn’t quite go as planned.


We the Animals
Feature Narrative
Country: USA
Director: Jeremiah Zagar
Writer: Dan Kitrosser
Starring: Josiah Gabriel, Isaiah Kristian, Evan Rosado, Sheila Vand, Raul Castillo
Distributed by: The Orchard
Festival tickets: Click for tickets

This lyrical coming-of-age tale, based on the acclaimed novel, weaves magic realism into an exquisite portrait of three brothers, their troubled parents, and the secret that the youngest of them holds.

New Trailer for ‘Tickled’ – about competitive endurance tickling – looks surprisingly dark & mysterious

TICKLED

One of the most talked-about films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, TICKLED begins with reporter David Farrier stumbling upon a bizarre “competitive endurance tickling” video online, wherein young men are paid to be tied up and tickled, and reaching out to request a story from the company. But the reply he receives is shocking—the sender mocks Farrier’s sexual orientation and threatens extreme legal action should he dig any deeper. So, like any good journalist confronted by a bully, he does just the opposite: he travels to the hidden tickling facilities in Los Angeles and uncovers a vast empire, known for harassing and harming the lives of those who protest their involvement in these films. The more he investigates, the stranger it gets, discovering secret identities and criminal activity.

Discovering the truth becomes Farrier’s obsession, despite increasingly sinister threats and warnings. With humor and determination, Farrier and co-director Dylan Reeve summon up every resource available to get to the bottom of this tickling wormhole.

Rated R

“You’re going to love it. What begins as a profile of a quirky subculture becomes an online mystery-horror thriller, in which the bogeyman is everywhere.”

– Logan Hill, Esquire

“CAPTIVATING AND JAW-DROPPING. A fascinating, stranger-than-fiction exposé.”

– Sheri Linden. The Hollywood Reporter

“A surprisingly tense and increasingly weird detective story. Compelling, alternately painful and funny and deeply sad.”

– Lee Marshall, Screen Daily

“A must-see documentary. Tickled is not at all what it seems. A secret world full of villains and victims, power and deceit, and shocks and surprises—you just can’t make this stuff up.”

– Kevin Polowy, Yahoo Movies

 

For more info:

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If I Chose the Academy Award Winners and Nominees – 2015 edition

I’ve now seen most of the films that had a release in 2014. This makes me more qualified to vote for the Oscars than 97.548% of the Academy’s membership. With the Oscar ceremony occurring tonight, I’ve picked, as I have the previous two years, who I think the nominees and winners should be in the bulk of the major categories. Once again, the foreign film category will be left off because I simply haven’t had access to enough foreign films to make a comment on them. Those that have made it to my neck of the woods, I will say, have been very good for the most part. Read More →

New Trailer: Jennifer Lawrence & Bradley Cooper in ‘Serena’

Directed by Susanne Bier
Screenplay by Christopher Kyle based on the novel by Ron Rash
Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Toby Jones and Rhys Ifans Read More →

Melissa’s Bluray Review: James McAvoy Is Outrageously Intense In ‘Filth’

The Filth

Look out, Filth is worth every bit of that R rating, in sight as well as sound. If you’re still up for it, what follows is a heartbreaking, devastatingly intimate and intense performance by James McAvoy.

Released last fall in Scotland, Ireland and England, Filth was dropped on American audiences only a few short months ago. Liz and I actually attended a special screening in May, where James McAvoy and Imogen Poots introduced the film. It was a star-studded event with Patrick Stewart and David Bowie amongst the crowd. Vanessa Redgrave inadvertently held the door for me. It was quite the moment. Oh, who’s that? Why it’s Parker Posey. Yeah, it was a good time.

Read More →

New Poster: ‘Frank’ Starring Michael Fassbender With A Big Head

Frank Poster

I really can’t wait to see it again. Stay tuned for a review coming up from Liz!

In select theaters August 15th!

Acclaimed Irish director Lenny Abrahamson follows up his award-winning films Adam & Paul, Garage, and What Richard Did with an offbeat comedy about a young wannabe musician, Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), who finds himself out of his depth when he joins an avant-garde pop band led by the mysterious and enigmatic Frank (Michael Fassbender), a musical genius who hides himself inside a large fake head, and his terrifying bandmate Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal).

Written by Jon Ronson (The Men Who Stare At Goats) and Peter Straughan (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Men Who Stare At Goats), Frank is based on the memoir by Jon Ronson. It is a fictional story loosely inspired by Frank Sidebottom, the persona of cult musician and comedy legend Chris Sievey, as well as other outsider musicians like Daniel Johnston and Captain Beefheart. Read More →

Melissa’s Monday Movie: ‘Jiro Dreams of Sushi’

Today at work we were discussing sushi and I immediately recommended seeing the 2012 documentary on Netflix (an other places), Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Not only is it a fascinating look at how sushi is made, but also about the complete love Jiro has for it. Warning: After seeing this movie, you will want sushi. Find here Read More →