Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Cinema of Present), Sept. Screenplay, Karen Sprecher, Jill Sprecher.Ĭamera (De Luxe color), Dick Pope editor, Stephen Mirrione music, Alex Wurman production designer, Mark Ricker costume designer, Kasia Walicka Maimone sound (Dolby Digital), Thomas Gregory Varga line producer, Stacy Plavoukos assistant director, Vince Maggio casting, Adrienne Stern. Executive producers, Sandy Stern, Michael Stipe, Doug Mankoff, Andrew Spaulding, Peter Wetherell, James Burke, Heidi Crane. Co-produced by Colin Bates, Sabrina Atoori. (International sales: Overseas Filmgroup, L.A.) Produced by Ben Atoori, Gina Resnick, Andrew Fierberg, Amy Hobby. Not only are all these characters in some way linked to one another, but the smartly written screenplay juggles time with imagination and skill the viewer is kept off-guard as to the precise chronology of the unfolding events, which cues a number of tasty surprises.Ī First Look Media presentation of a Stonelock Pictures and Echol Lake production, in association with Single Cell Pictures, with Double A Films, Entitled Entertainment. In a mean attempt to get rid of this man whose happiness he finds so annoying, Gene fires him ironically, it turns out to be the best thing that could have happened to Wade. He’s so miserable that the presence of ever-smiling, perennially cheerful fellow worker Wade (William Wise) infuriates him. A morose, lonely man, whose wife left him years before, he’s torn apart by the knowledge that his son is a heroin addict and thief. Gene manages a section within an insurance company that’s downsizing. A dreamer, Beatrice imagines one of her clients, a rich architect, might be attracted to her the accident, which she barely survives, changes all that. The young woman hit by Troy’s car is Beatrice (Clea Du Vall), who has been working as a house cleaner with her friend, Dorrie (Tia Texada). For Walker, happiness, or contentment as he calls it, means accepting the status quo, in effect giving up - and he’s not willing to do that, which puts his marriage in jeopardy. Tormented by his actions, he gives one of his students a particularly hard time, with unforeseen results. Meanwhile, teacher Walker (John Turturro) is cheating on his wife, Patricia (Amy Irving) with a married colleague, Helen (Barbara Sukowa). In the following days he’s consumed with guilt. As Troy, who smugly claims he doesn’t believe in luck (“Luck’s a lazy man’s excuse”) drives home, he hits a pedestrian on a side street - and drives away, leaving the young woman apparently dead. He gets into conversation with doleful Gene (Alan Arkin), who tells him a cautionary tale about a colleague who won $2 million in the lottery and quit his job he thought he was a happy man, but he wound up broke and unemployed. Divided into chapters, each with a title taken from a line in the film, pic opens in a bar during happy hour where attorney Troy (Matthew McConaughey) is celebrating the conviction of “another low-life,” as he puts it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |