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Former Czech Republic president Václav Havel died from respiratory problems earlier today. Havel, who had been a heavy smoker, was 75.

Besides his role as a political dissident during the Communist regime and as a representative of Czechoslovakia's transition from Communist rule to economically and politically troubled constitutional democracy, Havel was also a playwright.

A number of his plays were filmed for television throughout the '80s and '90s. In 2011, Havel himself directed for the big screen an adaptation of his play Leaving, which was released in the Czech Republic in March. Making clear allusions to Havel himself and to his nemesis and successor, Czech president Vaclav Klaus, Leaving is a dramatic comedy about a once-popular chancellor (played by veteran Josef Abrhám) whose fortunes have taken a dramatic turn for the worse. As a result, he must vacate his posh official residence so his successor, Vlastik Klein (Jaroslav Dusek), can move in.

Having examined the American fright features populating the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival’s Midnight collection, it’s high time to look at a pair of European genre movies playing the event. One of them is actually part of the Spotlight section instead, as Lunacy's Czech writer/director Jan Svankmajer, at age 71, now qualifies as a Grand Old Man of oddball cinema as opposed to the young turks populating the Midnight realm. And despite its title, Lunacy may be the least “mad” of Svankmajer’s features, committing (pardon the pun) to a straightforward story interspersed with the filmmaker’s traditional surreal stop-motion animation. In an onscreen introduction, the filmmaker describes his latest work as “a horror film, with all the degeneracy of the genre,” and is interrupted by a fleshy animated tongue skittering past his feet. That’s a sign of things to come, as the stop-motion isn’t nearly as...