Tribeca 2023 #2: Stan Lee, Downtown Owl, The Line
Reviews that run the gamut.
Feature Presentation’s Tribeca coverage continues with this second installment of reviews from documentaries to quirky comedies to dark dramas.
Stan Lee
Tracing his life from his upbringing in New York as Stanley Lieber to the rise of Marvel Comics, Stan Lee tells the story of Stan Lee’s life, career, and legacy using his own words and personal archival material.
When I was a kid, I would read a book called Stan Lee's Amazing Marvel Universe. It was a perfectly fine history of Marvel Comics, but more importantly had push buttons that played almost 70 audio commentary tracks from Stan Lee himself, narrating and dropping anecdotes about the most important moments in the company's history, largely through the lens of his revisionist history - one where he did it all, from creating every iconic character to running every aspect of the company, single-handedly. Wherever those tracks were sourced from, whether they were recorded for the book (I didn't have time to track down a copy and find out) or if they were collected, I listened to the book so many times that I not only memorized the stories, but his tone and inflection as he told them.
As a result, when some of those tracks are used as narration in the documentary Stan Lee, I couldn't help but notice. That does mean, however, that I heard very little about Stan, Marvel, or the Fantastic Four that I didn't already know. Sure, I'm a nerd who loved comics as a boy, doing so with an enthusiasm that was obsessive. But there are many people like me and many more whose Marvel Comics knowledge would put me to shame, and those people won't get much out of this surface-level documentary. We already know all of these things.
Those who played outside as a kid might find the film to be a comprehensive biography.
The problem is: Stan Lee wasn't always a reliable narrator when it came to the story of his life, the characters he created, and the company he ran. As biographer Abraham Riesman wrote in his 2021 book True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, "He lied about little things, he lied about big things, he lied about strange things, and there's one massive, very consequential thing he may very well have lied about."
That thing? He continues, "It's very possible, maybe even probable, that the characters and plots Stan was famous for all sprang from the brain and pen of (writer/artist Jack) Kirby....there are those who claim...that Stan pulled off one of the most daring acts of artistic theft in modern history."
The documentary has no interest in exploring that reality, instead using Stan's storytelling and narration to guide the story. We may never know the entire truth about the genesis of Spider-Man or Iron Man or Black Panther, largely because secondary sources like this one have no interest in doing anything except telling Stan's version of events. And giving him all of the credit, whether that's true or not.
Downtown Owl
Welcome to Owl, North Dakota, 1984, where a widowed farmer invents his happiness, righteous teens uncover a local scandal, and an English teacher searching for more out of life upends the peaceful existence of the locals.
Silly ensemble pieces about quirky Midwesterners need a roster of character actors down to explore and take risks - and that's exactly what you get with Downtown Owl, the directorial debut of wife and husband duo Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater, from Linklater's adaptation of Chuck Klosterman's 2007 novel.
Rabe also stars as Julia (and despite being the lead of her own film, manages to give the least character actor-y performance of the bunch, instead deferring to the cast around her), a woman who needs some direction in her life. Taking a new job as a high school English teacher (and being voluntold that she'll be the volleyball coach), she spends the fall of 1983 teaching her students Orwell's 1984 ("Because it's 1983..."), getting drunk nightly at the town's watering hole, and not exactly finding that direction she's looking for in this fresh start.
That's where that cast of characters comes in, populating the world around her. Linklater cameos as the school's bumbling principal, while Finn Wittrock easily leans into his role of the slimy coach down the hall. The school’s students include performances from August Blanco Rosenstein, Arden Michalec, and others.
The bar consists of Elvis Costello-devotee Henry Golding as a mysterious cowboy, really leaning into the mystery of his secrets. A standout above the rest is Vanessa Hudgens, ridiculously '80s clad, spouting lines like, "Wear your least comfortable bra!" and having a ton of fun in her bar-crawling wingwoman role. Rounding out the ensemble is all-timer Ed Harris, coming off the bench to show everyone how it’s done.
Downtown Owl lends itself to some nitpicks, from some unfortunate dialogue to some stylistic leaps to the overall issue of adapting a novel that doesn’t seem to be very cinematic. However, it plays when it lets its actors play.
The Line
Coming-of-age feature The Line explores the moral ambiguity of loyalty to tradition, as seen through a college sophomore in the throes of fraternity culture.
I rushed a fraternity during my first semester of college. Looking back, it feels very unlike me. But I was far from home and liked some of the guys and appreciated having people to watch Bad Boys II with. However, just a few years earlier at this school, a fraternity pledge had unfortunately died during a hazing ritual. As a result, the school was serious about its zero-hazing policy, which was still in effect when I arrived. Fraternities will do what fraternities will do and we still participated in the "hazing," but it was almost always optional. Brothers would literally scream in your face and say, I kid you not, "Drop and give me twenty!...if you want to! Run this mile blindfolded...if that's alright!" It really made me realize how silly the whole thing was.
Tom (an "I knew this guy was good!" performance from Alex Wolff) doesn't find his fraternity business to be silly at all. In fact, he's more or less obsessed with the idea. The tradition, the brotherhood, the commitment, the money, the social status. But when his roommate Mitch (a bombastic, unbelievably uncanny frat-bro performance from Bo Mitchell) starts to go off his rocker at the same time that Tom meets a girl totally outside his social realm (a "Yes, she can act!" performance from Halle Bailey), Tom starts to question how the fraternity (whose president is played by an excellent Lewis Pullman) may or may not actually be bad for him.
It's a question that few in Greek life ponder, and many more should. But this film, the feature debut of director Ethan Berger, and a highlight of the festival, goes to the dark places of the collegiate underbelly. Those places that a certain unnamed documentary only promised to go. The Line not only promises to go there, but delivers sure-handedly.
Downtown Owl media courtesy of Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis.
Other media courtesy of Tribeca Festival.