Paul Giamatti and Alex Shaffer in Win Win.By Hap Erstein
Palm Beach County used to be film-festival challenged, but now we have a glut of options for moviegoers who want to get away from a steady diet of studio fare and perhaps rub shoulders with some of the filmmakers. It is, after all, not a hard sell to get directors and actors to come to Palm Beach in the final, frozen days of winter.
Tonight kicks off the 16th annual Palm Beach International Film Festival, which each year lately threatens to be its last as corporate sponsorships get tighter in this economy and the festival no longer has the political muscle it once enjoyed.
Still, it opens with a solid winner, Tom McCarthy’s Win Win, the assured saga of a hapless New Jersey lawyer (the great Paul Giamatti) who pulls an unethical move on an aging, growing senile client (Burt Young) and risks losing his practice. Nevertheless, his luck improves as the client’s grandson from Ohio comes to visit and he happens to be a wrestling whiz, who joins the high school squad that Giamatti coaches and breaks them out of their losing streak. Factor in terrific support from Amy Ryan, and you have a smart film with complex characters worth rooting for.
Young will be present at the screening tonight at the Muvico at CityPlace and if you miss Win Win tonight, it will likely be repeated in the final days of the nine-day fest, when the most popular entries are rerun.
Festival organizers are justifiably proud that they have amassed 11 world premieres, 3 U.S. premieres and 14 Florida premieres, with films from such countries as the Netherlands, Italy, France, England, Russia, Israel, Australia, Liberia, the Czech Republic, Canada and Greece.
Attendance over the years has been erratic, but if independent and foreign films are your passion, this is probably your best local chance to see a wde variety of them on the big screen. For the schedule, go to www.pbfilmfest.org.
The cast of the Amos and Andy Show.A decidedly more offbeat and smaller event is the African-American Film Festival, a series of three movies focusing on the history of black cinema, showing at the Kravis Center for the sixth straight year.
Producer James Drayton usually emphasizes films of social and cultural significance, but this year’s attention-getting theme is “Movies We Might Rather Forget.”
For three Tuesday evenings, beginning March 29, attendees can see three incredibly politically incorrect selections from the days of unabashed racial stereotyping. The festival kicks off with an evening of episodes from the notorious Amos and Andy Show, which is so rarely shown these days. Similarly, it will be followed by 1945’s Open the Door, Richard, a starring vehicle for Stepin Fetchit, the comic actor whose very stage name is synonymous with “slowness and laziness and stupidity,” notes Drayton.
The third show of the festival is also from 1945, Brewster’s Millions, the fable of a guy who can inherit a large fortune if he can spend a small fortune in a limited amount of time. If that sounds familiar, it is probably because of the 1985 remake starring Richard Pryor. But the one in the African-American Film Festival features Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, not in the leading role, but as the wealthy spendthrift’s servant sidekick.
“These are all films that have a cloud over them,” says Drayton, a former area bookstore owner. “I think this is a marvelous opportunity to really look at this and learn something.”
Perhaps. Expect a lively, heated discussion following each screening, hosted by AnEta Sewell, Emmy Award-winning former area newscaster, currently seen on the CW/My TV Network weekly public affairs program Around Our Town.
For more information and for tickets, go to www.kravis.org.
Next: The first ever Palm Beach Women’s International Film Festival.