Fans of the first V/H/S (myself included) will be happy to hear that the second installment in the horror anthology series continues to employ the found footage style in fun (and frightening) ways. Following its Sundance premiere in January, V/H/S 2 is playing as part of this year's Tribeca Film Festival, prior to its VOD and theatrical release later this summer. Four of the directors -- Simon Barrett, who helmed the framing segments; Adam Wingard, whose movie follows a guy with a new implanted cyborg eye that allows him to see dead people; Jason Eisner, who choreographs the alien invasion of a kids' slumber party; and Eduardo Sánchez, who directed a hilarious first-person zombie short (and who, fun fact, helped launch the age of found footage horror with the 1999 smash hit, The Blair Witch Project) -- made the trip to New York and spoke with us about continuing the V/H/S legacy.

This ain't no gangster's paradise.

Ten years ago, French filmmaker François Ozon scored an art-house hit with Swimming Pool, a supremely entertaining thriller and still one of the best movies about novelists and authorship in recent memory. After a decade of highs (Ricky) and lows (5x2), Ozon makes a successful return to similar territory with In the House, which again uses the act of writing as the launching pad for a thoughtful, deftly plotted mystery.

Two movies into his feature filmmaking career, Joseph Kosinski has yet to establish a signature visual style or set of themes, but between TRON: Legacy and now Oblivion, he has provided us with a pretty good idea of what his dream house would look like. Trained as an architect before moving over into movies, Kosinski lavishes attention on the designs of his various worlds and has an obvious affection for structures that sport clean, sharp lines, have lots of open space (with plenty of glass windows) and are bathed in a harsh white light -- think Bauhaus meets a Williamsburg rave. Actually, your best reference point is probably the hotel room from the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a movie that's stylistic impact on Oblivion is profound and all-encompassing. It takes brass balls to ape the various environments and props from Stanley Kubrick's seminal science-fiction favorite and act like it ain't no thang, but Kosinski goes about his extended homage with an obvious confidence that stems from his design background. And the results are there on screen: Oblivion looks fantastic, immersing audiences to a distant, post-apocalyptic future that's more authentic than most movies of its type. I like to imagine that Kosinski had his own Monolith positioned just next to the camera throughout the shoot, which he could occasionally reach over and touch for inspiration.

New York's other film festival -- the one named after the fashionable Tribeca nabe, but actually unfolds all over Lower Manhattan -- returns for its 12th edition tonight, opening with the rock doc Mistaken For Strangers, a portrait of The National directed by the roadie brother of the band's lead singer. The subsequent eleven days of screenings, events and panel discussions will be just as eclectic, as Tribeca continues its mission to serve as the funky, cool little sibling to the older and more respectable New York Film Festival that unspools every year at the uptown (and upscale) Film Society of Lincoln Center. For the full schedule, visit the festival's online headquarters. In the meantime, here are some of the trends to watch for at this year's TFF.

Leave it to Quentin Tarantino to turn a slavery-themed Western into a bloody good time.

It's not fair to spend an entire movie comparing it to another film on the same subject that was never actually made. But as I sat there watching the new Jackie Robinson biopic 42, I couldn't help measuring it against the version of the Robinson story that Spike Lee and Denzel Washington spent years trying to get off the ground before they were relieved by writer/director Brian Helgeland. Knowing Lee's penchant for provocation, his Jackie Robinson movie almost certainly would have been more confrontational -- and less commercial -- than the studio funding it would have liked. And, to be honest, there's no guarantee that it would have succeeded artistically; after all, as terrific a talent as Lee is, his stats are inconsistent with big wins like Do the Right Thing and He Got Game sitting alongside such heartbreaking losses as She Hate Me and Summer of Sam. But, win or lose, Lee's 42 would almost certainly have been more interesting than Helgeland's 42, which takes a crucial piece of sports and social history and treats it with kid gloves, substituting Hollywood gloss for real-world grit.

If you're not already a card-carrying member in the cult of Terrence Malick, I'm not sure that I'd use To the Wonder as a recruitment tool, as this slender wisp of a romantic drama represents both the director's simplest, yet strangely most complex work to date. Gone are the beautifully rendered period backdrops that defined Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The New World, as well as the grand cosmic questions that fueled his last, most divisive film, The Tree of Life. Instead, much like his debut feature, Badlands (recently re-issued in a must-own Criterion Blu-ray edition), Wonder is the small-scale story of two people in love, whose affair is destined to end badly. But where Badlands recounts a relatively straightforward narrative (for Malick, anyway), Wonder pushes his late-career trend towards abstraction and ellipticism well past what may be the breaking point for most viewers, even amongst his most devoted fans. It's not necessarily a difficult film to watch, but it does prove somewhat difficult to love.

If you've ever wanted to see David Cross, Julia Stiles and America Ferrera in the same movie... well, now you can through the magic of VOD.

What would Carl Spackler say?