Leighton Meester and Gillian Jacobs in Life Partners (Tribeca Film Festival)

Tribeca Film Festival, which has brought audiences Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal and Trollhunter in the past, brings two more B-movies with tell-it-like-it-is titles in its genre laden Midnight section, plus the world premiere of an amicable American indie with TV stars Leighton Meester and Gillian Jacobs.

Life Partners
Directed by Susanna Fogel
Written by Susanna Fogel and Joni Lefkowitz

Has the recession brought us increasingly older coming-of-age protagonists? This charming comedy features Paige and Sasha, two 29-year-old BFFs coming to terms with their lack of maturity. But when Paige finds love in a Lebowski-quoting dermatologist, Sasha feels left out in the cold. It’s a familiar triangle, but clever writing and a strong supporting cast keep things moving.

Life Partners wears its freshness on its sleeve, with constantly buzzing iPhones and references to binge-watching, local food, and spin class. And it can’t resist allowing its ladies to engage in a little self-pity: on her birthday Sasha moans, “We were just twenty-five!” But the relationships are well-drawn and believable, and the 20-something malaise is honestly depicted. Also refreshing is the lack of an intrusive soundtrack, so commonly used in this genre to raise the emotional stakes. It’s a testament to the script that such gimmicks aren’t needed.

Speaking of gimmicks, Sasha and many of the others are lesbians, and the fact that this is treated as business as usual instead of played for exoticism, crude humor, or gay/straight sexual tension is one of the film’s assets. All in all, this millennial romp is quite likeable. Yes, the lessons and hugs come along at a predictable pace, but so do the laughs.

Extraterrestrial
Written and Directed by the Vicious Brothers

Five college kids gather in a cabin in the woods. What happens next is alternately overly familiar and passing strange. Apparently, there’s been a “contract” between humans and little gray men since the infamous Roswell UFO crash. Our heroine, an emotionally fragile child of divorce, breaches it with a double-barreled shotgun. Extraterrestrial moves rapidly through horror clichés, but ends with a unique, other-worldly denouement.

Much is done here with little—the Vicious Brothers are skilled in low-budget special effects—but a formulaic script fizzles the tension. The laughs begin to come more frequently at the halfway point, but it’s more laughing at than with. The last five minutes then provide a sequence which is either humorless or a completely deadpan (too deadpan) send-up of romance. Either way, Extraterrestrial provides the kind of ultra-light entertainment most often enjoyed by, say, five college kids in a cabin in the woods.

Only two factors in the film demonstrate a potential for more. First, Gil Bellows (of Ally McBeal fame) provides satisfying gravitas as a world-weary small-town sheriff. Second, there is a jarringly beautiful moment right before the first youngster is sucked into an Independence Day-esque mother ship. Everything slows down, gravity weakens, and the antic music holds itself to just a few sweet notes. For a moment, we’re not sure what will happen next: perhaps the story will confound expectations and stay one step ahead of us. The moment, along with that hope, passes.

Der Samurai
Written and Directed by Till Kleinert

This bloody German thriller is more silly than scary, but has a canniness that is hard to dismiss. The simple opening image, of what appears to be a woman sitting on a bed, is composed as artfully as a painting. This makes the broad strokes that follow all the more disappointing.

A young policeman, Jakob, investigates a series of wolf attacks in his somewhat sleepy town. In an unorthodox move, he leaves bloody bags of meat in the woods for the wolf to draw it away from the nearby houses. This method is exploited by a troubled young man drawn to Jakob. He wants the mild-mannered cop to acknowledge there is a little wolf in all of us. So, like an Uma Thurman stunt double in Kill Bill, said youth dons a wedding dress and uses a samurai sword to go on a killing spree.

Jakob and this bizarre samurai engage in literal and figurative dances, a pas de deux of the love and death impulses. The killing ends, but writer/director Till Kleinert suggests that the wolf, in various forms, will endure.