PREVIEW
MAKENNA BALLARD AND F. MURRAY ABRAHAM IN A LITTLE GAME A Little Game is a bright, cheery movie about a little girl in a big city that's a little overstuffed with life lessons, but its charm is its New York kids. They're really New York. You can't put over anything on them, and they're smart and talk back with non-stop aplomb even when they don't have the answers. In this very Lower Manhattan story, Max (Makenna Ballard), a 10-year-old girl from PS 41 in the West Village, is ostracized at her fancy new Upper East Side all-girls school and shaken by the death of her beloved Greek grandmother (Olympia Dukakis), who lives in Astoria, Queens. She learns how to be resilient and persevere when an irascible chess master (F. Murray Abraham) in Washington Square, two blocks from where she lives, becomes her unlikely mentor. Janeane Garofalo and Ralph Macchio play Max's mom and dad.
A Little Game, 92 mins., debuted at Newport April 2014. Won an award at the International Family Film festival. Theatrical release (NYC) 12 December; VOD (Netflix, Walmart) January 2015.