Film: Surely one of the best films of 2012 and a shoo-in for Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress is Zero Dark Thirty, the tense, suspenseful, well-researched and somewhat conjectural tale of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. It comes from filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow ― the only woman to win an Oscar for feature direction ― and screenwriter Mark Boal, the team that created the similarly gritty The Hurt Locker. We know from the start that this new film will be tough going when it opens with the recorded voices of phone callers inside the World Trade Center on 9/11, then cuts to CIA waterboarding of terrorists to gain information on bin Laden’s whereabouts. Most of the film, however, focuses on a young CIA analyst named Maya (the remarkable Jessica Chastain) and her obsession with tracking down the Taliban leader. And the final half-hour is devoted to the Navy SEAL operation to invade bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and exterminate him. This is a tough, but satisfying film that anyone who goes to the movies for more than escapist entertainment should see. – Hap Erstein
Theater: Tickets are scarce for this final weekend of Palm Beach Dramaworks impressive production of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance, the first of his three Pulitzer Prizes for drama. Maureen Anderman ― a veteran interpreter of Albee’s women ― and Dennis Creaghan head the cast as a long-married affluent couple whose home is suddenly crowded with their grown daughter, back from another failed marriage, and their neighbors, who have become frightened by an unexplained domestic terror. Handling the play’s best lines is Angie Radosh as Anderman’s alcoholic sister, full of liquor-fueled truths.
Following the end of the play’s run, Dramaworks hosts the Southeastern premiere of a new documentary on the playwright, The Stages of Edward Albee, screening this Tuesday, at 2 p.m., 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. Call (561) 514-4042 for tickets to the show, or reservations for the film. – H. Erstein
Music: Having gotten its season off to a rowdy start with Jacques Ibert and a tour of small symphonies, the Palm Beach Symphony returns this Sunday night for a concert that is devoted to the number 39, which is the anniversary year the orchestra is celebrating this season. Mozart’s great Symphony No. 39 (in E-flat, K. 543) is on the bill with Haydn’s No. 39, a tense, G minor excursion that heavily influenced Mozart when the younger composer wrote what became known as his Symphony No. 25. The Dvorak Czech Suite (Op. 39) is on the program along with the Concierto de Aranjuez of Rodrigo, who wrote this most famous of his pieces in 1939. The guitar soloist is Sebastian Acosta-Fox; Ramon Tebar conducts this concert set for 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Flagler Museum on Palm Beach. Tickets: $50. Call 655-7226 or visit www.palmbeachsymphony.org
Art: Sure, you know all about the soup cans and Marilyn, and the Factory, but did you know Andy Warhol was really into cars? Warhol and Cars: American Icons, now showing at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, chronicles Warhol’s fascination with automobiles as products of American consumer society. The exhibit, which features more than 40 drawings, paintings, prints and photographs of automobiles plus archival material dating from 1946 to 1986, runs through Feb. 10. This might be a good weekend to check it out, given that it’s also the closing weekend for Shark, a show featuring artistic representations of our finny fellow creatures. The museum is open daily from 11 am-6 pm, except open until 8 pm Thursdays and 12-5 pm Sundays. Closed Mondays. Admission: $10 adults, $7 seniors, military members, children 6-17. For more information, call 954-525-5500 or visit www.moafl.org.