Reviews on "The New Tenants"

RopeofSilicon.com
by Brad Brevet | 2.22.10

The New Tenants is the one film of the five live-action shorts that carries any names you're going to recognize such as Vincent D'Onofrio as a crazed husband and Kevin Corrigan channeling his inner Christopher Walken. It is also the biggest hodge-podge of the bunch, mixing humor, wit, drugs, violence and finally ballroom dancing to tell the story of two new apartment owners that get into a bit of trouble after they mistakenly hand off a large bag of heroin assuming it's flour to an aged neighbor. Once they learn the truth about the apartment and the mistake they've made it's too late as a series of crazy people begin hammering at their door all while they debate whether or not one should be smoking at the dining table or not.

I was instantly drawn into this film by the dialogue written by Anders Thomas Jensen and adapted by David Rakoff who plays the smoker of the two new tenants, but as the film came to a conclusion it felt like they had just wasted 17 minutes of mayhem, humor and confusion and instead of being interesting just ends up being silly. However, those opening 17 minutes are quite great and at only 23 minutes (the credits actually begin at minute 18 followed by a silent two minute scene at the end) you could do much, much worse than this. Full article
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HollywoodChicago.com
By MATT FAGERHOLM | 2.19.10

...Working neither as a black comedy nor a tense thriller, this star-studded short is little more than a diverting curiosity. There’s wonderful dialogue at the beginning, well written and delivered by David Rakoff, who exudes colorful Manhattan neuroses as if he was in a Tony Kushner play. The opening moments between Rakoff and his boyfriend (Jamie Harrold) are so amusing that it’s a letdown when the plot literally comes knocking on their apartment door. Soon, the couple is visited by various special guest weirdos (Vincent D’Onofrio! Kevin Corrigan!), who each get a miniature showcase before violently exiting. The film is too clever by half, all the way down to its ending credits, which include a complete recipe for cinnamon buns (sorry Back, but Scorsese’s “Italianamerican” did that first, and to infinitely more meaningful effect). Full article
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BaltimoreSun
By Michael Sragow | 2.19.10

The other Oscar-nominated shorts
..."The New Tenants": In a cathartic explosion of black humor, two newcomers to a gloomy big-city apartment discover that it's been a center of domestic frays and drug deals. A tarnished gem of nervous humor, with Vincent D'Onofrio's best acting in years. Full article
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WeAreMovieGeeks.com
posted by Travis, 2.18.10

...THE NEW TENANTS (Denmark, 20 min.) – directed by Joachim Back – introduces two seemingly mismatched roommates recently moved into an apartment building, a building that reveals a dark history and a cast featuring actors Vincent D’Onofrio and Kevin Corrigan as bizarre fellow tenants. Eerily eccentric like David Lynch, smart and dialectically rich like the Coen Brothers, THE NEW TENANTS is a mysterious, philosophical and entertaining slice of the life abnormal. This little movie is a trip! Full article
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By ROB THOMAS | The Capital Times | 2.18.10

Live-action shorts are strong offerings this year
...My favorite of the bunch is Joachim Back’s hilariously violent “The New Tenants,” adapted from a screenplay by Danish filmmaker Anders Thomas Jensen (a Wisconsin Film Festival favorite) by writer and commentator David Rakoff, who also stars.

Rakoff is best known for his darkly wry contributions to the public radio show “This American Life,” and the film opens with his unmistakable voice giving a bitterly hysterical rant that touches on everything from our poisonous water supply to terrorism (at one point comparing body parts flying in the air from a suicide bombing to those diet soda commercials where water and flying fruit collide). It’s a misanthropic aria of pure genius that sets the tone for what’s to come.

Frank and his partner, Peter (Jamie Harrold), have just moved into a fleabag apartment that, it turns out, has quite a bit of history. That history comes barging in in the form of several dangerous folks who had business with the prior tenant, including a cuckolded husband (Vincent D’Onofrio), and a shotgun-toting drug dealer (Kevin Corrigan) looking for missing heroin. Full article