Win Win

With Win Win, the character actor and occasional writer-director Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent, The Visitor) continues his run of charming, nonpatronizing little films for grown-ups. Paul Giamatti is in fine form as a lawyer and high-school wrestling coach whose life of quiet desperation turns him into a teetering pillar of his suburban New Jersey community. Amy Ryan, Bobby Cannavale and Jeffrey Tambor co-star, along with Burt Young, Melanie Lynskey and nonactor newcomer Alex Shaffer. It’s not quite a “sports movie,” nor really an “indie movie,” and that absence of quotation marks feels just fine. It’s a modest but real thrill to see such clear characterization and to witness strong performers taking up the many generous opportunities that a bright and humane young filmmaker has afforded them.