In the days leading up to the annual Phoenix Film Festival, it’s become something of a ritual to ask executive director Jason Carney if there’s a movie on the schedule about which he’s particularly excited. This year, he opts for the Opening Night selection.
“I’d have to go with our opening night film, Sing Sing,” he says. “I had the opportunity to see it, and I’m just so blown away by Colman Domingo. He’s one of the best in the business right now. Just so electric.”
The drama, about a theater company staging a play with an incarcerated cast in the title correctional facility (some of the film’s cast were formerly prisoners), kicks things off at 7 p.m. this Thursday, April 4, following an opening night party at 6 p.m. The fest continues through April 14, with all films playing at Harkins Scottsdale 101.
“Looking ahead,” Carney continues, “I like a movie called Good One. It’s just a good quiet drama.” Concerning the revelations witnessed by a teenage girl on a backpacking trip with her father and her father’s best friend, India Donaldson’s film has, according to Carney, “not a lot of dialogue. It’s just a quiet movie. A lot of reaction shots. The director did a great job.”
Other promising features range from road movie Ezra, with Robert DeNiro and Bobby Cannavale, to the Phoenix-made A Personal Pandemic to documentaries like Kim’s Video and Bad Indian: Hiding in Antelope Canyon to the closing night film, Thelma, starring June Squibb as a 93-year-old woman on a quest to get back the money she lost from a telephone scam; Squibb leads a cast that includes Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree, Parker Posey, Clark Gregg and Malcolm McDowell. There are also the usual programs of shorts, in various categories. And as always, the film fest runs simultaneously with the International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival, at the same venue and over the same dates.
One of this year’s most interesting events isn’t a movie at all, however, but a live performance. “We’re doing a staged reading of the script of Raising Arizona,” Carney says. The live reading of the 1987 Coen Brothers favorite is slated for 6:55 p.m. Saturday, April 13.
“Tim Butterfield is directing, and we have a lot of great local actors like Emily Mohney, Louis Farber and Maren Mascarelli,” Carney says. “We want to do some non-movie events, and this one has local interest. It should be fun.”
Go to phoenixfilmfestival.com for details and tickets.
