Tribeca Dispatch: Sunday, April 27 (Robbery)

Here's the rest of the Sunday report.

General festival notes: 1) Much to my surprise, the Q&A for This Is Not a Robbery was by far the most intelligent and lengthy, despite taking place at 11:15 a.m. on a dreary Sunday morning. 2) Being an American Express cardholder seems to have more perks each year. (Amex was the first sponsor of the festival.) I stopped by the Insider Center in Union Square for access to computers, Daily Variety, free food and drinks, and the chance to sign up for talks, post-movie receptions, and short-film screenings. A discussion about clothing design from Annie Hall to Sex and the City caught my attention, and I made a reservation for Monday night. An hour later, tickets for a highly acclaimed sports documentary became available, and I suddenly had a conflict. What did I do? You’ll have to wait until later Tuesday to find out.

First movie seen: This Is Not a Robbery
What it is (description from TFF Web site): One morning, J.L. "Red" Rountree woke, ate breakfast, went for a drive, and robbed a bank. He was 87. This is the unusual story of how this devoted family man and law abiding senior citizen became one of the country's most notorious serial bank robbers
Viewing partners: none

Review: After living a quiet life for eight and half decades, Texas businessman J.L. “Red” Roundtree suddenly began robbing banks. This sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit, but in fact This Is Not a Robbery is a documentary. Roundtree had died by the time directors Lucas Jansen and Adam Kurland started filming, so they used audiotapes of a GQ interview, friend recollections, family photographs and inventive animation - the directors found re-creations too cheesy - to show how their subject went from family man to criminal. Think untapped rage: A bankruptcy filing in the 1950s led to years of resentment. Roundtree also said he wanted to replicate the high he found from his brief, mid-1990s drug dalliance with his gold-digging prostitute second wife. (It only seems like the Anna Nicole Smith story.) Oh, and he found robbery “fun.” The tale is funny in a “can you believe this” kind of way, the animated sequences in particular adding to the jocularity. Yet something is lacking - some sense of concern for a lonely old man’s degeneration.