‘Rudy! A Documusical’ Review: Cut The “Musical,” Keep The “Rudy!” [Tribeca Review]

The family of Dani Hampson have paid tribute to their daughter and sister after her sudden death on the day she was meant to marry X Factor star Tom Mann. Mum-of-one Hampson, 34, had been due to marry former Stereo Kicks star Mann on Saturday, June 18, but died in the early hours of the morning. Her heartbroken fiance broke the news on Monday with a devastating tribute on social media, saying that while they never married he will ‘wear this ring that I was always supposed to wear as a sign of my unconditional love to you.

“Of Medicine and Miracles” could have been a podcast. It could have been a newspaper feature.

If there hadn’t been a body count, Chris and Jeff George’s escapades might have made for a divinely trashy TLC reality show. The brothers had gargantuan appetites, a habit of breaking the law without consequences, a flair for exaggeration, and a knack for spending money as fast as it came in on all the things that would keep a certain kind of viewer coming back: strip club visits, firearms, McMansions, and jacked-up trucks.

You can accuse writer/director/star Katie Holmes of doing a lot of things in her sophomore feature “Alone Together,” but you certainly can’t say she doesn’t wear her influences on her sleeve. The picture opens with a throwback jazzy vocal track over shots of the NYC skyline, Central Park, and the Upper West Side; the Nora Ephron vibes are palpable.

White people have stolen music from black people for decades and then some. This is a matter of historical record.

“I’m just curious how you even know when Rudy Giuliani is drunk,” said Trevor Noah on The Daily Show last night of the president’s former personal lawyer, whom he likened to a “drunk vampire.”

A sibling is usually your first friend and your first enemy, someone who cares about you like your parents but will get into shenanigans with you. These relationships are complicated, especially when you go in different directions in life and potentially feel estranged from the complex trappings of family.

A standard hagiography that is far less interesting than the subjects it features, “Turn Every Page” aspires to none of the depth and complexity it champions throughout its too-long 112 minutes. A serviceable accounting of both a historian and a historically important editor, the documentary makes a strong case for the importance of both, yet in so doing, demonstrates that these men need no such help.

Artfully toggling between the ephemeral memories associated with the infamous Chelsea Hotel, and the more granular concerns of its present residents, Maya Duverdier and Amélie van Elmbt’s new documentary, the Martin Scorsese executive produced “Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel,” is a concise reflection of the erasure of historical monuments in the name of gentrification. Centralizing the protracted construction process that closed down the hotel in 2011, but allowed its long-term residents to stay, the doc mainly follows the hold-outs in their ninth year of construction, many who view the hotel as one the last examples of bohemian, and affordable, living in Manhattan.

The movies have given us man-children for decades, dating back to Carl Reiner’s “The Jerk,” leading all the way to a bumper crop of “dudes stuck in arrested development” productions through the 2000s and 2010s: “Cyrus,” “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up,” “Adult Beginners,” “The Comedy,” “Step Brothers,” “Jeff Who Lives at Home.” Alex Heller’s feature debut, “The Year Between,” descends from this overdone tradition and leaves a new wrinkle on the formula: Bipolar disorder, a formidable condition characterized by extreme mood swings and thus a clear goldmine for slacker burnout comedy.

B.J. Novak’s feature directorial debut, “Vengeance,” does not begin like you would expect B.J.

A minor but affecting character study about buried family trauma, Clara Stern’s feature-length narrative debut “Breaking the Ice” works well as both a sports drama — focusing on an Austrian minor-league women’s hockey team — and a romantic drama. While perhaps too contained within its protagonist’s point of view, Stern’s film is nevertheless an impressive debut.

Set in the Fall of 2005, Sarah Elizabeth Mintz’s piercing feature debut, “Good Girl Jane,” tracks the grooming of the title character (Rain Spencer), Jane, a young outcast teenage skater enduring an endless summer that nearly undoes her. Jane and her older sister Izzie (Eloisa Huggins) have recently transferred to a new school.

“American Dreamer” is a mess of a movie, in which scenes of startling wit and emotional truth co-exist alongside entire subplots that are utterly inexplicable. It’s all over the damn place; its good ideas in near equal proportion to its bad ones, feeling less like a polished production than a filmed first draft, released as a rough assembly.

Aisha Osagie wakes up early. She bathes and prays.

This weekend at the Tribeca Film Festival, Academy Award-winning documentarian Ross Kauffman (“Born Into Brothels”) debuts his newest documentary, “Of Medicine and Miracles,” to the world. The film tells parallel stories of an incredibly resilient child battling a rare form of leukemia and the researcher who pioneered her treatment.

Ray Romano is a good actor, and seems like a nice guy. These are the two primary takeaways from “Somewhere in Queens,” which the stand-up comedian, character actor, and sitcom star co-wrote, co-produced, directed, and starred in.

“I come from a family of geniuses and criminals,” confesses inventor David Hanson. And it’s not at all apparent if Hanson is the former, or a less pernicious version of the latter.

The horrors of opioid addiction, greed, corporate interests, and the exploitation of the drug and patients are nothing new, and shows like “Dopesick” have done a great job of putting the epidemic in a great cultural, capitalistic and political context. But a new true-crime documentary, “American Pain” is showing one specific slice of the story that’s almost too unbelievable to believe.

“The Wizard of Oz” is the all-movie; in my film school days, professors would use King Vidor’s canon cornerstone as a teachable exemplar for just about everything, from the usage of color to the dream-logic of cinema to the mechanisms of Golden Age Hollywood manufacturing. The new documentary “Lynch / Oz” applies this lens as a way of seeing the works of David Lynch with greater clarity and understanding, and in doing so, draws on the seemingly infinite number of angles from which the foundational fantasy can be analyzed.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaNo mere documentary can capture the turbulent life story of “America’s mayor.”In order to do justice to the rise and fall of Rudolph “Rudy” Giuliani, director Jed Rothstein had to invent a new genre. The result, “Rudy! A Documusical,” weaves in musical performances by Broadway actors with archival footage from Giuliani’s metamorphosis from top prosecutor to New York City mayor and hero of 9/11 to his sad final act as Donald Trump’s cable news henchman and chief purveyor of election lies.“Rudy is this very unique and mercurial character,” says Rothstein.