Tribeca Festival Capsule Reviews
Tow - An all-star cast highlights this based-on-a-true-story dramedy, which is easily the most commercial film I saw at Tribeca this year. Rose Byrne plays Amanda Ogle, a homeless woman who lives in her car. She’s trying to get her life together so she can visit her teenage daughter (Elsie Fisher). While at a job interview, someone steals her 1991 Toyota Corolla, and she’s stunned to find that the towing company is demanding an increasingly large sum to get it out of impound. This begins a yearlong fight against the system, one that finds her working with a young pro bono lawyer (The Holdovers’ Dominic Sessa) and staying in a high-bar shelter run by Octavia Spencer. Demi Lovato and Ariana DeBose play fellow shelter residents.
Director Stephanie Laing wrings a lot of drama from showing how the homeless are often mistreated by the system, or at least subjected to many hurdles the rest of us don’t have to deal with. That system screws Amanda so badly that you root for her to achieve some form of victory. Comedic moments, many from Sessa’s green attorney, help to provide levity. Rose Byrne is fabulous in the lead role, effectively capturing the character’s desperation while also infusing her with a hilariously smart-ass attitude. It’s a career highlight performance. Tow is the kind of movie that mixes entertainment value and social commentary in a hard-to-resist fashion.
Happy Birthday uses that simple plot to grippingly explore the class system in Egypt. Toha may just be a little girl, but she’s a little girl on the wrong side of that system, no matter how helpful she is to Laila. (A clothing store refuses to let her try on an outfit because she’s a child maid.) The film affectingly depicts what the child is up against as she desperately tries to be part of a world that is not her own. Doha Ramadan gives a naturalistic performance as Nelly, and your heart aches for her throughout.
On a String - Isabel Hagen wrote, directed, and stars in this good-natured comedy about the aptly named Isabel, a Julliard-trained violist stuck making a living by playing weddings and other events with a quartet of fellow musicians. The job is a grind that in no way fulfills her musical ambition. An ex-boyfriend informs her that the Philharmonic is holding auditions, but she’ll have to overcome insecurity if she wants to nail it. Then there’s the matter of her attraction to the married father (Frederick Weller) whose daughter she gives violin lessons to.
The movie mines humor from Isabel’s professional and personal struggles, which include living with her quirky family. (The always great Dylan Baker plays her dad.) Hagen is sweetly vulnerable in the lead role, creating a dynamic where you root for Isabel even when you also want to yell at her to get her act together. On a String contains some big laughs, along with shrewd observations about what it’s like to be young and aimless. It’s a total charmer.
Billy Idol Should Be Dead - My first rock concert was Billy Idol in 1984. He came onstage clearly under the influence of substances yet still managed to give a kick-ass show. That pretty much sums up who he was during that decade – an intensely charismatic performer living a hard-partying lifestyle that would eventually catch up with him. Jonas Åkerlund’s documentary details the singer’s rise to fame and the numerous overdoses (and one motorcycle accident) that nearly claimed his life.
Idol appears on-camera to frankly discuss these subjects, as do loved ones and collaborators. Åkerlund utilizes an abundance of amazing concert and interview footage, then ads anime sequences to dramatize specific events that took place behind closed doors. He also films the interviews in atmospheric black-and-white. The approach feels perfect for a subject whose punk attitude thumbed its nose at conventionality. Billy Idol Should Be Dead is notable for capturing Idol as a human being as well as a rock icon. You get a fascinatingly full portrait of an ‘80s musical giant.
© 2025 Mike McGranaghan