Tribeca Film Festival '09: complete coverage!

I realize that the title of this post might be a little misleading. Seriously, though, there are 85 films in the TFF this year -- and I'm only here for several days -- so would you really expect me to see every last one of them? No, the truth of the matter is that I only saw one. But I guaranty you that I saw absolutely all of it. And it was pretty darn good, too.

As is my custom when traveling, I celebrated my arrival at my destination by immediately taking ill. Given my destination was New York, the most appropriate malady during these panicky times would of course have been Swine Flu, but I was instead saddled with a considerably less sexy head cold. Still, in its defense, it's a really powerful head cold. Because of that I was forced to skip the late night screening of South Korean director Lee Yoon-Ki's My Dear Enemy that we had tickets for. But I did manage to catch a screening yesterday afternoon of The Eclipse.

I didn't see this movie.

Directed by Tony nominated playwright Conor McPherson, The Eclipse is described in the TFF program as being an "atmospheric drama" with vague supernatural overtones. This, combined with the film's focus on loss and renewal, lead me to expect something meditative, decidedly adult, and only subtly spooky. And this is what The Eclipse, to a great extent, delivers. But that description in no way prepared me for the considerable number of pants-wetting shock moments that the film also had in store. My impression of the film was that it was overall a thoughtful human drama that made effective use of some horror movie conventions, but I was surprised, during the post-screening Q&A, when McPherson listed as his primary influences Dawn of the Dead, The Exorcist and The Shining. In other words, this is what you can get when a writer with both a fine eye for character and the subtleties of human interaction and a heartfelt respect for the genre sets out to make a horror film. I'm afraid that I might have already spoiled The Eclipse, so I won't go any further in describing it, other than to say that the performances by leads Ciaran Hinds, Iben Hjejle and Aidan Quin are uniformly excellent -- oh, and that Ivan McCullough's cinematography is aces (though it's hard to go wrong when you have the breathtaking beauty of the film's Irish coastal setting to work with). As yet, the film doesn't have a distributor, but hopefully that situation won't stand for long. In the meantime, look out for it on the festival circuit.

Beyond that one trip to the cinema, I haven't done much else that's blog-worthy while in New York, but I'm happy to say that my diminished condition hasn't prevented me from catching up with those friends whose company was my primary reason for coming. I do hope to do some more movie-hunting before I leave, as so far I haven't had a chance to do much. I did find this, though:

I seriously considered gifting Keith with this as a commemoration of our shared love of chimpsploitation, but then it occurred to me that sometimes it really is the thought that counts.