Home Performing Arts Weekend Tribeca Roundup.

Weekend Tribeca Roundup.

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At the Sundance Film Festival. 'Please Give.'

‘Please Give,‘: Oh Please Give, I had such high hopes for you. Your trailer made you look like the answer to the genre of film know as “white people problems.” I’m looking at you, The Family Stone, Margot at the Wedding, and Garden State. Even at you, Crash, with your impossibly high incidence of unlikely racial conflicts. Yes, we get it, being upper-middle class is very very hard. Sometimes you can be terrible and not even know it! Almost every character in every one of these films certainly is. I hoped Please Give would be the antidote, finally sending up the self-absorbed and guilt-ridden archetypes that for some mysterious reason (not that mysterious) always seem to be festival favorites. Unfortunately it is not the solution. And as they say, if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.

The film’s biggest issue is that it lacks any likable characters, yet doesn’t seem to know it. Catherine Keener‘s Kate feels constantly guilty about her affluence but doesn’t recognize that this guilt is really just an unhelpful side effect of her self absorption. Oliver Platt’s Alex is skin-crawlingly affable as he contemplates cheating on her with Amanda Peet, who plays the only character we are clearly supposed to hate. The exception is Rebecca Hall, who I would have loved to see more of. Director Nicole Holofcener seems to have realized too late that Hall is and should be the center of this film, so unfortunately Hall is simply a capable member of an ensemble cast, rather than its leader.

Clash: Already a hit in its native Vietnam, Clash is at its best when Director Le Thanh Son is having a little fun. An early tense conversation is likened to a Hong Kong action flick (meta!). A particularly laughable character is killed too soon when he takes a bullet between the eyes after ogling a hooker’s bouncing boobs too long during a shootout. A hand-to-hand combat scene pauses briefly to register our female hero Trinh (Ngo Thanh Van) become enraged when a bottle is smashed over her head. Unfortunately, the fight scenes that were fun and exciting in the beginning grow tedious and increasingly ridiculous as the 100 minute flick wears on. Clash also owes a serious debt to Kill Bill in both style and substance. Too bad it can’t quite sustain Tarantino’s level of manic gleeful energy.

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