Deeeeee-pressing! I mean, really depressing. And, initially, boring and annoying. The businessmen at Jeannie’s apartment, all fake-laughing drunkenly and crazily, and everyone’s all disheveled and hostile and WE GET IT, Cassavetes. But then, when the entire movie has accumulated and you get to the end, it’s all necessary; you needed to see all of that awkwardness and bleakness so that it would have weight, which, by the last semi-surreal scene, it does. Bonus: Seymour Cassel looking disturbingly foxy. Seymour Cassel. I know. You wouldn’t think to yourself, “Yeah, I’d like to see Bert Fischer without a shirt on,” but I’m here to tell you — you totally would like to see that. (3/17/04)

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