Ellen Wedner, a veteran of the arts scene in Miami for two decades, has moved two counties north to direct the Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival. Running eleven days from Jan. 16 to 26, the 24-year-old festival will screen 37 films in western Delray Beach and Palm Beach Gardens. Hap Erstein spoke with Wedner about her festival philosophy and the changes she is … [Read more...]
Hap’s picks: Top 10 films of 2013
Now that we have seen the year-end crop of award-worthy movies, it is clear than 2013 was rich in quality films. Family dysfunction, struggles for survival and looks back at our history are among the themes in this highly subjective selection of the best. 1. Nebraska — Alexander Payne’s signature territory of pain-laced comedy about deeply flawed, but recognizable characters … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Nov. 16-17
Film: By a quirk of release patterns, you can now see two recent films starring Naomi Watts on area theater screens. The two roles she plays in Diana and Sunlight Jr. are a real display of her acting range, portraying two vastly different women separated by an ocean and by the gulf of their financial circumstances. Diana is, of course, about Princess Diana, and her love affair … [Read more...]
The troubled vintage of fathers and sons
It cannot be a spoiler to say that Paul de Marseul (Niels Arestrup), the hulking and obstreperous central figure in You Will Be My Son, dies. It’s not a spoiler because the very first scene is Paul’s casket sliding, with graceful elegance, toward its incineration in a crematorium. Paul’s milquetoast son Martin (Lorant Deutsch) watches with disbelief, his face a harsh map of … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 14-15
Film: David Gordon Green came on the cinema scene with such methodical, observant art films as George Washington, Undertow and Snow Angels. Lately, though, he has made broad, raucous comedies like Pineapple Express and Your Highness. He now returns to his earlier mode with Prince Avalanche, the saga of two men who paint traffic lines on remote country roads. The older guy (Paul … [Read more...]
The wrong man pursued, in powerful ‘The Hunt’
Lucas, the protagonist of Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt, is fond of horsing around. In the film’s opening scene, which looks like something out of the Grown-Ups movies, Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen) and his coterie of male colleagues gather around a dock and strip down to their undies, placing bets on whether one of their pack will jump naked into the freezing November water of the … [Read more...]
To El and back: Superman retake too interested in being overwhelming
Whenever a character as iconic as Superman is revisited, the creative visions behind it rarely see past the conservative knee-jerk reaction to regurgitate the hero’s origin story. Which means each “new” take treads familiar narrative ground. Like the latest cover version of a populist classic, we know the melody and lyrics, but we still want to know what the new artist … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Film Festival turns 18: At last, it’s about the movies
The Palm Beach International Film Festival, running April 4-11, turns 18 this year, and it reaches the age of maturity with a new emphasis on the films themselves. There will be 141 in all, including eight United States premieres and 26 world premieres from such diverse nations as Russia, Spain, Thailand, Palestine, Ethiopia and Nepal. As she was putting the final touches on … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: March 29-31
Film: British director Michael Apted has made such commercial movies as Coal Miner’s Daughter and the 1999 James Bond flick, The World Is Not Enough. But by far his more significant project has been the Up series, a documentary visit with a dozen or so British subjects every seven years for the past 49 years, to track their lives and learn how they have overcome or fallen … [Read more...]
2012’s 10 best in a standout year for film
Most years at the movies there is a clear front-runner for awards and a struggle to fill the other nine slots in a 10 best list. For 2012, however, there are more than two handfuls of first-rate films and no clear number one in the ranks. Here is a highly subjective look back at what made the year just past a standout for moviegoing: 1. Lincoln: A cerebral history lesson of … [Read more...]