Tribeca's 10 hottest movies

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• Adult World
  Emma Roberts plays a recent college grad eager to get her career as a famous poet launched – now that’s a lucrative path, young lady! – so of course she takes a job in a down-and-out porn shop while seeking the mentorship of a disgruntled literary legend, played by John Cusack. But I’m especially excited about “Adult World” because it’s the long-delayed second feature from director Scott Coffey, who made the marvelously crisp L.A. satire “Ellie Parker” with his pal Naomi Watts back in 2005 – and apparently burned all his bridges to the film industry in the process.
• Big Bad Wolves
  Israeli horror pioneers Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado – bucking the stereotype that Israel didn’t need horror movies – made the memorably atmospheric “Rabies” in 2011. Now they’re back, pushing into more psychological terrain with this multiply twisted tale about a renegade cop and a bereaved father conducting an impromptu interrogation of a serial-murder suspect. (Any resemblance to Israel’s, or America’s, real-life torture controversies is no doubt intentional.) Their cast is headed once again by Israeli star Lior Ashkenazi, last seen by American viewers in the academic satire “Footnote.”
• Big Men
  Documentarian Rachel Boynton (director of the eye-opening study of political consultants, “Our Brand Is Crisis”) takes us inside the deal-making and skulduggery of the African oil business – a contemporary Joseph Conrad realm if ever there was one – in a reportedly powerful film shot in the very different contexts of Ghana and Nigeria. In the former nation, a small American energy company struggles to hold onto its leases and deliver the promised economic benefits in the face of a regime change; in the latter, militants attack oil pipelines and demand a redistribution of wealth. Sure to be one of the season’s talkers among economists and global activists.
• Byzantium
  Back in the indie realm after two decades wrestling with Hollywood (and developing the delicious “Borgias” for TV), Irish director Neil Jordan returns to the vampire genre with a lush, decadent, gory and highly contemporary spectacle starring the always terrific Saoirse Ronan, along with Gemma Arterton, Sam Riley and Jonny Lee Miller. To be released later this year by IFC.
• Dark Touch
  French director Marina de Van (“In My Skin,” “Don’t Look Back”), a cult figure-to-be still waiting for her following, travels to rural Ireland for this gruesome haunted-house flick that blurs the lines between art-house ambiguity, child-abuse drama and supernatural ghoulies and ghosties.
• Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia
  Did the great Gore Vidal, one of the most merciless and penetrating social critics of the 20th century, degenerate into self-caricature toward the end of his life? Sure, but what a great caricature he was, and how badly we need him now! As Nicholas Wrathall’s documentary demonstrates, Vidal never lost his flair for the theatrical – “I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television” – and never abandoned his withering contempt for all the abundant varieties of American idiocy.
• Just a Sigh
  A French actress on a train, played by the spectacular Emmanuelle Devos, meets a suave Englishman (Gabriel Byrne) and spends one afternoon with him in Paris, oh so pregnant with possibility. So we’re talking about two of the better-looking people on the planet, in its most romantic city. Need I continue? This slow-burning romance from up-and-coming French filmmaker Jérôme Bonnell specifically recalls Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise” and its sequels, to be sure – but also Abbas Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy” and Agnès Varda’s “Cléo From 5 to 7.”
• Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic
  You can’t say that Richard Pryor has been forgotten, exactly – his influence is everywhere in today’s confrontational style of comedy – but this immense comic superstar of the ‘70s and ‘80s is nearly as remembered for his drug problems and numerous personal demons as for his immense talent. Director Marina Zenovich is no stranger to controversial artists, having made two films about Roman Polanski, and here enlists Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Mel Brooks, Lily Tomlin and others, along with rarely seen footage of Pryor in public and private.
• A Single Shot
  This classically orchestrated backwoods thriller from director David M. Rosenthal (who made the underappreciated “Janie Jones”) and screenwriter Matthew F. Jones (adapting his own novel) stars Sam Rockwell as a hunter who accidentally shoots a young woman and finds her hidden stash of cash. If you’re guessing this is the kind of trouble that only leads to more trouble, you’re correct. An outstanding supporting cast features Jeffrey Wright, William H. Macy and Kelly Reilly.
• Sunlight Jr.
  Naomi Watts and Matt Dillon play a poor couple trying to stay afloat between convenience-store jobs, disability checks and a Florida transient motel. Between an unplanned pregnancy and an abusive ex-boyfriend, they’re in danger of falling all the way through the so-called safety net. As in her excellent “Sherrybaby” (starring Maggie Gyllenhaal), writer-director Laurie Collyer portrays the lives of people rarely seen in the movies, with tremendous dignity but no sugarcoating.

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