Not to be confused with the recently-announced Vin Diesel family film, Caradog James’ sci-fi thriller is another mad scientist period film similar to Frankenstein’s Army, this one involving a scientist who creates an unstoppable android prototype that has to be stopped when a programming glitch sends it on a destructive path.
This year’s Opening Night Gala isn’t the first Tribeca Film Festival that kicks off with a music doc. The 2011 festival was marked by Cameron Crowe’s The Union about the musical relationship between Elton John and Leon Russell. Fans of the Brooklyn-based emo rock group The National will be able to figure out from the title that this movie, directed by frontman Matt Berninger’s younger brother Tom who went on the road with the group in 2010 and documented that milestone tour.
Karl Mueller, writer of The Divide and the upcoming The Devil’s Rapture, makes his feature directorial debut with this horror movie starring Jon Foster and Sarah Jones as Scott and Penny, a filmmaker and his girlfriend who move into an abandoned house with an elusive neighbor known as “Mr. Jones,” who makes strange sculptures. This intrigues them enough to look further into it the mysterious neighbor’s art.
Indie darling Zoe Kazan takes on a dual role in Jenée LaMarque’s drama playing identical twin sisters Audrey and Laurel, the latter who wishes she had the confidence of her sister, instead living at home with her father with a crush on the boy next door. When tragedy strikes, Laurel has a chance to reinvent herself as her sister Audrey. It also stars Jake Johnson and Ron Livingston, who just appeared together in Joe Swanberg’s SXSW hit Drinking Buddies.
Stuntwoman Zoe Bell stars in Josh Waller’s action-thriller about a woman abducted by a secret society and wakes up to find herself with fifth other women, all whom are forced to fight for their lives. Some of the other women include Sherilyn Fenn, Tracie Thoms and Rosario Dawson and among all those hot women is a very lucky man named Doug Jones.
Playwright/filmmaker Neil LaBute returns with an adaptation of his own dramatic play starring Stanley Tucci and Alice Eve as a guy named Fred who leaves his family to be with the significantly younger Velvet who happens to be friends with his son.
Laurie Collyer, director of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Sherrybaby is back with this drama starring Naomi Watts and Matt Dillon as poor Quickie-mart employees living in a Florida motel who find out that she’s pregnant, which threatens her job and their eviction when her ex (played by Norman Reedus from “The Walking Dead”) shows up.
Director Paul Verhoeven (RoboCop, Starship Trooper, Total Recall) makes his return to film with his first movie since 2006’s Black Book, a collaborative film in Dutch, half-doc and half-narrative, that he co-wrote with literally hundreds of people using crowd-sourcing, which follows a rich businessman whose affairs start to complicate his life. While this is a North American premiere, rather than a World Premiere, Verhoeven will be on hand for a special Tribeca Talks After the Movie on Tuesday April 23 at 6:30PM to discuss his process.
Clark Gregg, best known as Agent Coulson from the Marvel movies, directs his second feature following his adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke, this one once again starring Sam Rockwell as a former child star who has become an agent for young actors who finds a talented 13-year-old prodigy, played by newcomer Saxon Sharbino while dealing with her drunken father and a tough competitor. It also stars William H. Macy, Fellicity Huffman, Allison Janney, Amanda Peet and Molly Shannon.
We hope to have a number of updates once the Tribeca Film Festival starts, although we’re not going to have a chance to see anything until Saturday, April 20, but look for short reviews and interviews soon after taht.
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