The 2001 Sarasota Film Festival began and ended with a big cinematic bang, showcasing its two best movies at either end of the five-day event, which wrapped up on January 14.  Sandwiched in between were an interesting collection of American independent films, imports from Europe and a few Oscar hopefuls that have already opened in larger markets.

The highlight of the festival was Dinner Rush, a wonderful effort from commercial director Bob Giraldi.  Most of Rush takes place during one evening in a trendy Italian restaurant in TriBeCa, swirling its focus between the eatery’s patrons, owners, cooks and wait staff.  It’s like Big Night meets The Sopranos, with a couple of players from OZ thrown in for good measure.  Danny Aiello, who got his first acting break in one of Girardi’s commercials, plays the owner of the restaurant, and his stellar supporting cast includes, among others, Sandra Bernhard, Vivian Wu, Mike McGlone, John Corbett and Summer Phoenix.  Sure, it sounds like a B-movie with a C-movie cast of “Where do I know that guy from?” acting talent, but Rush is one fantastic ride with a great John Woo-type finale.

Sarasota’s closing night film was Sean Penn’s wonderful film, The Pledge, which stars Jack Nicholson as a retiring Reno police detective hunting down a serial killer who specializes in raping and murdering little blonde girls.  It’s Penn’s third directorial effort, but the first he hasn’t written, leaving Penn to focus his talent solely on the film’s direction.  The result is startling and a considerable improvement over his last film, The Crossing Guard, which also starred Nicholson.

Among the highlights from the European market were Aberdeen, a road trip picture about a successful Scottish businesswoman (a superb Lena Headey) who has to take her drunk and disorderly father (Stellan Skarsgård) from his Norwegian oilrig to a rehab center in the titular city in Scotland. Midsommer Stories is an interesting German import featuring five segments about the role that hip furniture store IKEA plays in the lives of its characters.  Another German flick, Cry of the Butterfly, is a decent coming-of-age story about a suicidal prep school brat and a girl dying of cancer.  Despite their differences (she wants to live; he wants to die), they fall hard for each other.  Total Loss wasn’t nearly as awful as the Dutch seemed to think when it was released in its home country.  It’s one of those fragmented time films where you see the ending first, and then learn about the events leading up to the finale. The Unscarred is an American film set in Germany (with largely German talent behind the camera) about four former students returning to their Munich college 20 years after graduation, only to find themselves in a treacherous game of blackmail and deception.

The domestic independent films seemed to be either heartwarming family films or dramas about hitmen and gangsters.  Mr. Rice’s Secret, an uplifting picture about a young boy dealing with cancer, was definitely one of the former.  The film featured a decent, low-key performance from David Bowie as the boy’s confidante and mentor, but the superstar was only on the screen for 10 minutes.  Also painfully sappy was the abominable Herman USA, which was based on a true story about unhappy single men in a small Minnesota farming town who take out an ad in the newspaper to attract a new crop of women to their community.  I’m not sure I liked it the first time I saw it – when it was called The Closer You Get.

If you can’t get enough of the whole hitman-psychiatrist relationship a la The Sopranos and Analyze This, then keep your eyes peeled for a film called Panic.  The wonderful William H. Macy plays a miserable man in a midlife crisis.  Not only does he hate the family business (contract killing), he’s also developing an attraction to a girl half his age (Neve Campbell).  John Ritter, Donald Sutherland and Tracey Ullman round out the great cast in this predictable, moderately entertaining movie.

For some reason, every festival has to have a film like Under Hellgate Bridge.  I’m not talking about films that are similar in story or style, but rather pictures made by people who will do ANYTHING NECESSARY to make you like their work.  Things like planting people in the audience to laugh at things that aren’t that funny, and having acting talent block the exits so that nobody can leave the theatre without being personally thanked/touched just isn’t cool.  I’m not saying this film did any of these things, but…whatever.  Bridge is a run-of-the-mill gangster film set in a gritty section of New York City.  It was made for virtually no money, and it’s got a pretty stylish shootout finale, but other than that, there isn’t much going on.

I was eagerly anticipating Saul Rubinek’s Club Land but found the film extremely disappointing.  The actor/director’s previous film, Jerry & Tom, was a fantastic debut that, unfortunately, went straight to video (one of the travesties of the ‘90s).  This film, however, not only stars Steven Weber but was also written by him.  And he can write about as well as he can act.  Alan Alda has a great role as a tyrannical talent manager, but the whole thing smacks of a second-rate version of Woody Allen’s Broadway Danny Rose.  Like Jerry & Tom, Club Land is going straight to cable.  Rubinek directs his ass off (his scene transitions are the best in the business), but there isn’t much he can do with the lame story.

Surprising in a good way was The Annihilation of Fish, which stars James Earl Jones and Lynn Redgrave as a pair of clinically insane lovers (she thinks she’s married to Puccini, and he wrestles demons…literally).  The film, which has been kicking around the festival circuit for about 18 months without a distributor, is a real crowd pleaser (it won Sarasota’s audience award for Best Feature) that deserves to be seen by a lot more people.

Several of Sarasota’s films have already opened in cities like New York and Los Angeles.  The best and best known of the bunch is Before Night Falls, a stylish biopic about Cuban artist Reinaldo Arenas.  There’s a lot of Oscar buzz around Javier Bardem’s portrayal of the tortured artist, but I though Julian Schanbel’s direction was much more stunning.  The Scottish film Ratcatcher features accents so thick, it had to be subtitled.  It’s about a young boy and his adventures during a long garbage strike.  Chunhyang is a Korean version of “Romeo and Juliet” that is sumptuous yet a little too familiar.  Sean Young, who provided two of the festival’s strangest moments (she commandeered the Q&A after the Under Hellgate Bridge screening, and her lifetime achievement award disintegrated in her hands), stars in Poor White Trash, a film about…ummm…poor white trash.  It’s a dark, funny comedy that succeeds in all of the ways Drowning Mona failed.

The festival also featured an impressive number of shorts, including a bunch from Florida State University film students.  The highlight was Ethel’s Sofa, a wickedly funny look at an old woman who is a little less helpless than she appears.  Another standout was a short called Stalkers about two women who camp out in a car to keep tabs on a dreamy man that neither has actually met.  Stalkers was named the festival’s Best Short Film.

In only its third year, the Sarasota festival has quickly become one of the South’s premiere film events, a fact confirmed by the amount of stars that showed up to introduce their films.  Because its attendance doubled this year, there is talk of expanding it to ten days in the near future.