Tribeca Festival 2025 #2: Honeyjoon, Andy Kaufman Is Me, Music Videos
Our Tribeca coverage continues.
Our Tribeca coverage continues, this time with a sweet drama, silly documentaries, and a wide-ranging collection of music videos.
Honeyjoon
Honeyjoon finds American June on vacation in the beautiful Azores islands with her Persian-Kurdish mother, Lela, one year after the loss of her father. Accidentally surrounded by overly affectionate honeymooners, the pair have plans to navigate their trip in completely different ways. June’s goal of regaining her joie de vivre is put to the test as Lela pines for a deeper investigation into their shared loss. When a tour guide challenges their status quo with his many, many charms, the two begin to reawaken and learn that what they truly need to move forward may be found within the distance between them.
Honeyjoon is my second Tribeca film in a row about the differences between folks my age, those of us caught in the half-generation between true millennials and true zoomers, and our parents. I've also been enjoying the same concept on FX's Adults, which is about adults learning how to adult. And not in the true millennial posting on early Facebook "lol adulting is real" way, but in the terrifying and impossible way. I guess we're getting to make movies and tv shows now and our main perspective is "Holy shit, our parents lied to us."
Writer/director Lilian T. Mehrel's film works because it's thematically rich, while still giving you enough room structurally to see yourself in her characters. While the film is about June (Ayden Mayeri) celebrating, with her mother Lela (Amira Casar), the life of her late father in his favorite place, an island off the coast of Portugal, I saw myself and my parents in her picture.
Take June, for example. I've never had to reckon with my American upbringing and my Persian heritage, but I've felt too distant from my own ancestral lineage to accept any of it. My mother has never told me to cover my arms at the pool or the beach, but she has asked me about my clothing choices well into adulthood. And my father hasn't passed, but, just like the scene where she discovers her father's old anti-depressants, I've had peripheral-opening moments where I realized my parents were people with issues and struggles too. I think we've all had moments like that.
This is the second film I've seen from the AT&T Untold Stories pitch competition (Smoking Tigers was the first), and from what I've seen, it's going swimmingly. This kind of movie struggles to get distribution when it's by men and about men (Ex-Husbands, one of my favorite movies of last year and hopefully one of your favorites of this year, is a direct comparison), so we need programs like this to make movies about women and by women to even happen. And for only a million bucks! Can you imagine what Mehrel will be able to do with more?
Spoilers in this line only: God, the sexting fakeout was...so disappointing.
Andy Kaufman Is Me
This wildly entertaining documentary cracks open the bizarre, brilliant, and endlessly surprising world of Andy Kaufman like never before — using his own voice to guide the way. Unearthed from a vault of never-before-heard audio diaries, Andy Kaufman is Me offers an all-access pass to Kaufman’s unfiltered thoughts, offbeat performance ideas, and a surreal semi-autobiographical novel he never finished… until now.
If you're a fan of Nathan Fielder but don't know who Andy Kaufman was, you need to know who Andy Kaufman was. If you're a fan of Tom Green but don't know who Andy Kaufman was, you need to know who Andy Kaufman was. Tim Heidecker, Conner O'Malley, Joe Pera, Dax Flame. If you don't know who Andy Kaufman was, you need to know who Andy Kaufman was.
Andy was the original "Is this an elaborate act, or is he really like this?" comedian. Director Clay Tweel's new documentary Andy Kaufman Is Me, shows folks from Johnny Carson to Steve Martin to David Letterman totally stumped by his brand of humor. It was unlike anything television had seen before. The silly voices, the bizarre characters, the anxious fidgeting. Anytime someone called him out, he would say, "This is the real me," and move on to another fictional version of himself. The documentary is as effective and comprehensive as possible, a look at the man we will never understand completely.
What it does not do, however, is answer any of the questions we have about the real Andy. For decades, especially due to his premature death at age 35, we have wondered how much we of Andy was an act. It's the same question we ask when we watch The Rehearsal or Smoothie Madness now. Unfortunately, the documentary shows that we will just never really know. His siblings are just as stumped now as his parents were then. His friends - one claims Andy was the only person he ever saw get a Vietnam deferment from just five minutes with a psychologist - acknowledge his eccentricities without knowing the extent of them either.
I guess we'll never know.
Music Videos: Playlist
Features eight unique music videos, including a world premiere.
Forget the glory days of MTV or the less glorious days of Vevo, music videos are alive and well at the Tribeca Film Festival. Here are reviews for eight of them, which they have programmed as a collective:
Bonnie McKee “Forever 21”: Bonnie McKee, blossoming popstar, is the exact kind of person you shouldn't invite to your wedding. Well, the version of herself she plays in the video for "Forever 21," at least. Throwing a fit, causing a scene, and smashing the cake, Bonnie sings bubblegum pop about the heartache of knowing you can't mature, stop drinking, or chasing that feeling of being 21. The bad 70's wedding attire is a highlight.
GRASS “Even Better”: KPOP singer GRASS doesn't sweat the small stuff in "Even Better," her first Australian music video. Somebody throws a hot coffee all over her, she gets knocked out by a stray basketball, and her car breaks down. Those things would bother me quite a bit, but it doesn't slow this banger down, as she sings, translated in English, "Don't you worry 'bout a thing / this too shall pass."
Grace Bowers “Madame President”: Everybody's trying to do their thing, make a living, and maybe, just maybe, be happy. It shouldn't be aspirational, but in this country where we still haven't seen a "Madame President," young Southern rock guitarist Grace Bowers thinks it is. She's living her dream at just 18 though - the shots of her and her band jamming out in the middle of the street are reminiscent of the All American Rejects house party videos that have been gracing our for you pages.
Rae Khalil ft. Freddie Gibbs “Carpinteria”: There's an extended shot here where Freddie Gibbs drives a cool car, hangs out with a beautiful woman, and eats a slice of cheese pizza. In other words, I have seen worse music videos.
LL COOL J “Rock The Bells”: LL Cool J's song came out 40 years ago, but it's just now getting a music video. It's a dope as hell, black-and-white, New York City-spanning montage of New Yorkers rapping along with a song that's closer in age to the dawn of hip-hop than it is to now. It's the exact kind of thing Tribeca wants to get their hands on. In person, it also plays before the feature film The Sixth Borough.
Jack White “That's How I'm Feeling”: Though Jack White will soon be able to call himself a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer (thanks to his upcoming induction as a member of The White Stripes), he's not resting on his laurels. He's still making new stuff, running an indie record label, and rocking the hell out - as evidenced in his latest music video, shot at a number of his recent live performances.
The Warning “Qué Más Quieres”: I don't speak Spanish (despite my liberal arts degree claiming I am at least proficient in the language) and the Tribeca press site didn't have subtitles, so I had to do some digging on this one. It's not the same to read the lyrics after the fact, but the high-paced, energy-slammed video is entertaining enough.
Kid Cudi “Neverland”: Kid Cudi's video is probably the most like a short film, with performances from recognizable faces like Kiernan Shipka, Brittany Snow, Haley Joel Osment, and Cary Elwes, produced by Jordan Peele and his production company Monkeypaw Productions, and directed by cult horror director Ti West. It also runs nine minutes, with the song not even kicking off until three minutes in. I can't say I'm the biggest fan of the music, but I appreciate the short and creepy and atmospheric vampire movie.
Media courtesy of Tribeca Festival.