The controversial Michael Winterbottom thriller “The Killer Inside Me,” a comedy from “Amelie” director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and films starring Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, Catherine Keener, Melissa Leo, Patricia Clarkson, Liev Schreiber, Ellen Barkin and Idris Elba are among the latest entrants at the Tribeca Film Festival, which begins April 21 in New York City.
“The Killer Inside Me” (below), a brutally noir which stars Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba and is based on the hard-boiled Jim Thompson novel, drew wildly disparate reactions when it screened at the Sundance Film Festival. “Micmacs,” the latest film from Jeunet, is a slapstick fantasy that was compared to the work of Buster Keaton by the Hollywood Reporter.
Also on tap for the festival, which announced the first 33 of its films last week: new work from directors Neil Jordan (“The Crying Game”), Nicole Holofcener (“Lovely & Amazing”), John Carney (“Once”) and Edward Burns (“The Brothers McMullen”); music-centered films about British punk musician Ian Dury, Canadian hard rockers Rush and New York popster Billy Joel; documentaries about climate change, Vidal Sassoon, Shea Stadium, river surfing, the North Pole and Joan Rivers; and at least three films centering on transsexuals and transvestites.
Academy-Award-winning documentarian Alex Gibney (“Taxi to the Dark Side”), whose “Untitled Eliot Spitzer Project” is also showing at Tribeca, will also be represented by “My Trip to Al-Qaeda,” his film version of Lawrence Wright’s one-man play. Oscar-winning director Chuck Workman introduces “Visionaries,” his new documentary about avant-garde film.
The latest films to be announced are showing out-of-competition in the festival’s Encounters, Discovery, Cinemania and Spotlight sections. Films in the World Narrative Feature Competition, World Documentary Feature Competition and Global Cinema Showcase sections were announced last week.
The Encounters section is made up of 14 films, six documentaries and eight narrative features. They include “Climate of Change,” narrated by Tilda Swinton; “Every Day,” a family drama from Richard Levine; “Meet Monica Velour,” in which Kim Cattrall plays an ‘80s soft-core icon; and “sex & drugs & rock & roll,” for which Andy Serkis (below right) received a BAFTA Best Actor nomination for playing Ian Dury.
Discovery films include “Arias with a Twist: the Docufantasy,” about the downtown New York art scene; the Brazilian romantic comedy “Elvis & Madonna”; “The Infidel,” a comedy in which a young Muslim discovers he’s adopted, and was born to a Jewish mother; and “The Sentimental Engine Slayer,” the directorial debut of Omar Rodriguez from the band The Mars Volta.
The Cinemania section contains six films. Three are Asian, including “Clash (Bay Rong),” the top-grossing Vietnamese film of the past year. The others include an ‘80s style dance movie, Spork”; a Irish-set film about a smalltown family and their alien visitor, directed by John Carney (“Once”) and Kieran Carney; and a campy exploitation flick, “Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives.”
Spotlight is a section comprised of nine films that have distribution deals, among them “The Killer Inside Me”; “Get Low,” featuring an acclaimed performance by Robert Duvall; “Please Give,” for which director Nicole Holofcener and stars Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt drew raves at Sundance; Neil Jordan’s “Ondine,” in which Colin Farrell plays an Irish fisherman who appears to catch a mermaid; and the documentary “Joan Rivers – A Piece of Work.”
