How’s this for a premise: When a terrorist attack separates a Down syndrome-suffering woman from her caring and infinitely patient mother for the first time in her life, she is forced to confront a harsh outside world, emotionally connecting with the derelicts she encounters and vice versa. Healthy and full of real-world nutrients, Anita is the kind of film that’s more good … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 22-24
Film: The grueling existence of undocumented aliens is captured with dramatic sensitivity in Chris Weitz’s A Better Life, the ironically titled film about a gardener’s helper in Los Angeles, desperately trying to carve out a decent living for himself and his teenage son, while always looking over his shoulder for the law. Veteran Mexican actor Demian Bichir gives a haunting … [Read more...]
Film heroes, villains share high sense of style at Norton show
In an ideal world, bad guys are easily identifiable and, thus, avoidable. Their crimes are not carried out with a pen but with heavy swords or devastating superpowers. And right before they get their way, a hero sporting flashy colors saves the day. In that ideal world, evil and good share one thing: they are both stylish. This is the world the Norton Museum of Art has … [Read more...]
Women’s film saluted in first-ever Palm Beach festival
Last year, when Kathryn Bigelow won for The Hurt Locker, that marked the first Oscar to go to a woman for Best Director. Women have made strides in the film industry, however slowly, but to see the range of movies -- from deadly serious to downright frivolous -- that female directors and screenwriters are generating, there is now the Palm Beach Women’s International Film … [Read more...]
French film lions bring weathered charm to ‘Potiche’
An alternative title of Potiche could have been Men on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. In this, the latest film from French directorial chameleon François Ozon, the men are the irrational ones – clingy, petulant and generally bewildered – while the film’s female protagonist, played by Catherine Deneuve, is the film’s rational, resolute, forward-thinking, confident and wholly … [Read more...]
Film festivals cover varied ground, from indie to Andy
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 … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Jan. 7-9
Art: Elwa Productions, a New York-based contemporary art company with roots in West Palm Beach, returns to the city tonight to open A Connection That Binds, a show featuring work by Swedish sculptor Chris Vicini and American painter Devin Powers, at Elayne and Marvin Mordes’ Whitespace gallery on Australian Avenue. Vicini is noted for his extravagant porcelain creatures, which … [Read more...]
Jewish film festival thriving as it turns 21
At a time when film festivals are either shrinking or simply disappearing, the Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival is expanding as it turns 21. The annual celebration of Jewish culture on celluloid from around the world, a program of the Jewish Community Center of the Greater Palm Beaches, unspools beginning this evening, Dec. 1, with 34 films from 12 … [Read more...]
Affleck’s ‘The Town’ not enough out of the ordinary
If you’re not wary of the clichés of the heist movie by now – the well-laid plans gone violently awry, the criminal with a heart of gold who wants out of the racket after this “one last job,” the cop always on his tail with superhuman relentlessness – then you’ve managed to remain blissfully sheltered from one of Hollywood’s most exhausted formulas. Every now and then, a movie … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 4-7
Art: One of the most revelatory, absorbing art shows I’ve ever seen was The Studio of the South, an exhibit exploring the relationship between Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin and the work they created while briefly living together in the French town of Arles in late 1888. I caught it at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2001, and it was remarkable to see the influence the two … [Read more...]