Tribeca Festival's films not worth the trek

The first feature I caught at Tribeca was "President to Remember: In the Company of John F. Kennedy." Though it promises an "intimate" look at the heavily mythologized president, the effort fails to deliver. The haphazardly constructed film is composed primarily of handheld footage showing the president making speeches and riding horses at his country estate. Who knew that Kennedy, the charismatic politician, was a part of the American aristocracy? Coupled with the boring images is a cliche-ridden narration read by Alec Baldwin, who insightfully remarks that Jacqueline Kennedy "dazzled the nation" with her style. "President to Remember" is a forgettable documentary that would be mediocre on the History Channel but comes off as terrible on the big screen.

The shoddy documentary highlights a flaw present in many of the festivals' movies: a lack of subtlety. The film noir "The Caller" features excellent performances by veteran actors but suffers due to its second-rate direction. After an executive (Frank Langella) blows the whistle on his corporation, he becomes a marked man. To gain a measure of self-understanding during his final days, the executive hires a retired private investigator (Elliott Gould) to track his every step. To his credit, Gould adds an infectious humor to the somber film. At one point, he comments that shadowing the old man proves as fascinating as it would be to be high on acid while "watching bacteria grow on linoleum." The actors' excellent work is undermined by director Richard Ledes, who tries to bring what should be the subtext of the scenes to the surface. While the detective talks on the phone with his client, he confesses that he is just an "eye." Ledes makes the dialogue laughable by having Gould peer through a camera lens as he says the line. As a director, however, Ledes fails because he lacks confidence in his performers and in his audience's intelligence.

Even when Tribeca presents typically crowd-pleasing genres, the festival seems incapable of finding satisfying features. Take, for instance, "Fermat's Room," a Spanish horror film along the lines of "Pan's Labyrinth." Five expert mathematicians are invited to a secret party where they are expected to solve riddles and enigmas. It turns out that this gathering is a trap that forces them into a room that grows progressively smaller as they make more mistakes. Though the feature effectively creates a sense of claustrophobia, it resembles an unrefined proof in that it relies on unbelievable plot twists to keep the movie going. There is something to be said for elegance in mathematics as well as in movies. Unfortunately, "Fermat's Room" completely lacks this key quality.

Tribeca genuinely surprises with a few examples that burst with imagination. No film stands more starkly against the festival's middling fare than Bill Plympton's ambitious animated feature "Idiots and Angels." Centered on a cruel, lustful man who wakes up one day to discover wings growing on his back, the film looks as though it were lifted off Plympton's chaotic sketchpad. The kinetic "Idiots" is both a delightful comic adventure and an effecting tale about spiritual transformation. Plympton handles the difficulties and rewards of a spiritual epiphany with a masterfully light touch, making the transformation of a rotten bastard into an unwilling hero seem utterly convincing. Festivals like Tribeca should exist to expose the public to movies like "Angels and Idiots," which showcases the power of an unbridled creativity free from the pressures of box office numbers.

An equally bizarre but no less affecting film is the documentary "Man on Wire," which focuses on the French tightrope walker Phillip Petit and his famous walk between the towers of the World Trade Center in the mid-'70s. Backed by a crack team of outsiders, the artist pulled off what has been called the "artistic crime of the century." The filmmakers smartly tell Petit's story as though it were a bank robbery. As a result, the film becomes an edge-of-your-seat look at a man willing to sacrifice anything to achieve his goals. With a stereotypically French outlook, the charismatic performer claims he was willing to die "in the embrace of [his] passion." Complementing the in-depth interviews and the lush archival footage are stylishly constructed reenactments that capture the excitement of the escapade. "Man on Wire" stands as a beautiful testament to an impossible dream and a quiet love letter to the majesty of New York City.

The excellent "Idiots and Angels" and "Man on Wire" sadly are the exception, not the rule, exposing how low the Tribeca Film Festival sets its bar. Tribeca's slogan this year proudly states, "Film junkies, prepare for relapse." In fact, watching too many of the mediocre films at the festival in reminiscent of a stay at a Betty Ford Center. After a stint in the rehab that is Tribeca, even the most diehard film fans will consider taking up another hobby. While it offers a few gems, they are not enough to make up for what has proven to be a very disappointing film festival.

The Tribeca Film Festival runs from April 23 to May 3.