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This just in: there are actually some great movies in Tribeca this year. As a festival programmer, I sympathize with Tribeca’s plight of being the third US premiere festival in the calendar year, and I wish I didn’t continuous hear complaints from other journalists about their programming. However, in an unfortunate turn of events for both the filmmakers and their publicists, I can’t really tell you about all the great movies, due to Tribeca’s embargo on reviews of all world premieres before the films screen publicly for the first time. Perhaps the embargo was a reaction to all the negative criticism, a move made in an effort to help ticket sales for movies that could possibly get bad press, but vicious cycles are the worst thing in the world and they make me sad for all the parties involved.

So, here we are now with nothing to cover but the program itself (and the embargo, of course). And instead of reviewing the quality of the films in the midnight program, I’m just gonna review the section as its own entity.

Surprisingly, this is an activity that isn’t without merit. Traditionally, the midnight program in a festival is reserved for genre titles – horror, action, science fiction. However, recently (and it should be noted that this is much more the case with Sundance than it is with Tribeca), an increasing number of other types of films that might play well at the witching hour have crept in to midnight schedules. Graphically sexual movies like James Westby’s porn comedy The Auteur, which is premiering in this year’s Tribeca Midnight program, are horrific in concept only.

Meanwhile, strict genre films have been placed in non-Midnight sections of the festival. Placing an exceptionally artful piece of genre cinema in competition is a welcome curatorial statement, as this is a completely valid form of filmmaking that does not be deserve to be ghettoized into just its own section. Such is the case with Tomas Alfredson’s Scandinavian child vampire tale Let the Right One In (trailer embedded above), which has generated so much positive buzz both out of its premiere in Rotterdam and following Magnet’s purchase of the film in Berlin that it’s sure to become one of the foreign genre hits of the year. Reviewing the film at the European Film Market, Todd Brown from Twitch called it “An exceptional piece of work…not shy in indulging in graphic imagery and laying on the blood.”

When films like Justin Meeks and Duane Graves’ 70’s horror homage The Wild Man of Navidad are placed in Discovery while Steve Saporito and Zach Saffer’s rock and roll drag queen documentary SqueezeBox! are placed in Midnight, things may get a little confusing. Seriously, though, it’s not such a bad thing. I, for one am excited for all that genre films like Let the Right One In have to offer. Let the complaints cease and let’s praise Tribeca for elevating Midnight-style fare to a higher status.

Under discussion:

Tron  (1982)

Speed Racer  (2008)

People are starting to say smart things about Speed Racer, sight unseen. The film has been screened for journalists who attended junkets, but those journalists have so far stuck to stuck to the studio’s review embargo––all of the really interesting stuff is being written by bloggers who are basing their critiques solely on promo materials like stills, trailers, and now clips.

It’s these seven new clips posted by Colider.com that prompted iO9’s Annalee Newitz to start spouting sci-fi philosophy. “In this scene, where Speed and his pals race through a geometrically-impossible “ice mountain,” it’s clear we’re inside an artificial world where humans and machines have become interchangeable,” she writes. “Watching Speed and his car is like seeing the movie Tron from the point of view of one of the programs.” Tron references are always sexy.

You can watch the clips at either Colider or iO9, but they don’t seem to be easily embeddable. Colider’s are crisp and HD sparkly; it looks like Newitz’ crack Gawker Media tech team scraped the clips in order to re-post them on their own site, but I kind of prefer the lower resolution. Especially with that ice cave clip, the pixelation causes the image to blur into a wild four-dimensional abstract expressionist canvas. It made my eyes cross, but in a good way.

Under discussion:

Aliens  (1986)

Supergirl  (1984)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day  (1991)

Barb Wire  (1996)

X-Men  (2000)

Charlie's Angels  (2000)

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider  (2001)

Resident Evil  (2002)

Spider-Man  (2002)

Kill Bill Vol. 1  (2003)

Underworld  (2003)

Catwoman  (2004)

Elektra  (2005)

Aeon Flux  (2005)

Iron Man  (2008)

The Incredible Hulk  (2008)

The Dark Knight  (2008)

Justice League  (2009)

Discussion of this summer’s heroine lack is in full throttle. Last friday, New York’s Vulture blog asked, “Where are the Roles for Superwomen?; Stu at Defamer jumped off from there, ultimately suggesting an X-Men spin-off for Ellen Page; John at The Movie Blog listed reasons “Why Most Female Lead Action Films Don’t Succeed” (shocker: men can’t identify with or believe in strong — and strong — female characters). Now, adding to the conversation in the least noble way possible, USA Weekend presents the appropriately titled “Girls Want to Have Fun, Too”, a cover story (with the least flattering photos I’ve ever seen) from its summer movie preview that spotlights Gwyneth Paltrow, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Liv Tyler as the “leading ladies” of the season’s three big comic book adaptations.

Of course, each of these three actresses are only secondary figures to their superhero counterparts (in Iron Man, The Dark Knight and The Incredible Hulk, respectively). But that’s not the worst of it: the women are asked what kind of super powers they would like to have in real life (how about in movie life, as in what superheroine they’d like to play?), and when questioned on the subject of women’s roles in superhero movies, each suggests that we’ve seen great progress:

How do you think women have changed in these kind of films over the years?
Gwyneth: There’s a reason why they’re hiring actresses like us. We’re all women, we’re all mothers, and we all normally do different films. There’s a certain understanding of who we are and what we bring and a certain respect for that.
Maggie: Twenty or 30 years ago, the women in these films were vapid and just appeared for extra silliness.
Liv: In all these films, our characters have real jobs and really fall in love and have real dilemmas. When you look at the history of the comic books, the women also have changed.

Well, maybe none of them has to suffer a wet t-shirt scene, ala Kirsten Dunst in Spider-Man, but that doesn’t mean things are truly better. Really, it would be much better if the women in these kinds of movies were the actual leads. And it’s not like we’ve never seen a great action heroine — two of the greatest action films of all time, Aliens and Terminator 2, both directed by James Cameron, feature non-sexualized, kick-ass female leads. Plus, as silly as they come, movies like Charlie’s Angels, Kill Bill, Lara Craft: Tomb Raider, Underworld and Resident Evil have shown that sexy female-led action films can be relatively successful, too.

So, why does it still take forever to get a Wonder Woman film off the ground? (The rumored re-cancellation of Warner Bros.’ Justice League movie is another bad sign for that one). Why are there no female spin-offs from the X-Men movies? Is Hollywood really dumb enough to think the disappointments of Catwoman, Aeon Flux, Elektra, Supergirl, Barb Wire, etc. can be blamed on the gender of their stars? Just as many male-led superhero movies have been terrible, right?

OK, so let’s compromise, at least. Give us a movie were there’s at least a male-female superduo, like Cloak and Dagger or even The Wonder Twins. Or give Wolverine a sidekick, either Kitty Pryde or Jubilee, in his next solo outing.