Expired

This movie was absolutely wonderful. At times hard to watch because it was so honest, it had humor, sadness, well rounded characters and was unique. Jason Patric was fantastic, the best performance I've ever seen from him. How he managed to get us to like him even though he was such an awful human being is a testament to his fine acting. I was not as impressed with Samantha Morton's performance but they work off each other so wonderfully and have such chemistry that you can't help but love them together and it works. Illeana Douglas was terrific too... you wonder why you don't see her working more.

Just loved it. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't like this movie other than they just don't get it.

Expired world-premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival to outstanding reviews. It is probably one of the best reviewed films at the festival. I saw the movie with a thousand plus audience - and all I can say: THIS IS A MUST SEE FILM! Expired is a turbulent love story (to say the very least) between LA parking enforcement officer Claire and LA parking enforcement officer Jay. Simply put, Samantha Morton is outstanding, so is Jason Patrick. With respect to Jason Patrick, most likely his best performance to date. I caught a review in USA today, which says:"Patric plays a violence-prone hot-head, who may be one of the nastiest dinner date since Joe Pesci in Goodfellas." I have to agree. He's something else. Not sure how - what Italian born filmmaker Cecilia Miniucchi did with her actors, the chemistry between the two leads makes everybody in the audience twitch on their seats. What direction!!

When it comes to the theaters, go check out this unlikely romance. You'll see that I wasn't exaggerating one bit.

The movie Expired is really unlike most of the feature films you'll see these days. It has an intensity, a committed vision that grabs you and holds you in its grips for the entire hour and a half or so. Of films in recent years that share this quality, I can think of Todd Solondz' "Happiness".

Expired is the story of two L.A. parking officers, or "meter maids", one female and one male, who meet on the job and have an increasingly dysfunctional, mercurial relationship. Samantha Morton plays it extremely sweet, wide-eyed and gentle as Claire, a meter maid who lives with her stroke-incapacitated, essentially mute mother and hates having to ruin peoples' days with tickets. Jason Patric is Jay, a taut, seething, bull-shouldered ball of defensive machismo in a blue uniform with a ticket-gun and a hilarious dark mustache. He likes slapping parking tickets on folks the way some LA cops like cracking heads.

The first two thirds or so of the film especially are darkly comedic, and the purposefully stylized elements- lighting, dialogue, supporting actors, visual action, set design, musical score- create a very sharp, bittersweet, somewhat tragic kind of comedy, like the best of the Coen Brothers films. This isn't broad American multiplex comedy, this is comedy that comes from true pathos, sadness and the small calamities of life. While Morton's face shows sensitivity and vulnerability- two of her big strengths- Patric's Jay character is fantastic because he offsets the angry disciplinarian guy with loose moments of real charm and also sarcastic, almost whimsical humor.

The film progresses with a few traditional "plot points" that serve to accelerate the conflicts and create moments of challenge and decision for the characters, but really the film is also greatly a close-up examination of the attempted close relationship of two equally extreme opposites- the "naive, yearning do-gooder" and the "previously injured, prickly, defensive bully." At its core it's just a film about human beings- what they have, what they want and need, and the different places they're coming from emotionally.

Visually, the film was shot in a crisp, almost beautiful way, at once seeming straightforwardly no-nonsense and yet heavily atmospheric. A lot of the production design strongly complements the film- from the richly hued, antique-laden apartment Claire and her Mom live in to the various LA coffee shops and streetscapes. The musical scoring is also highly evocative and appropriate- with the best of it reminding me of great melodic work Michael Penn and Jon Brion did in P.T. Anderson's film 'Hard Eight'.

Ileana Douglas is perfect as Claire's decent-hearted, energetic busybody neighbor and Teri Garr is rock solid as the mute, wheelchair-bound Mom but hilarious and deliciously campy in a second role as the Mom's crazy sister in Pomona! With its strong vision and execution, 'Expired' should certainly put writer/director Cecilia Miniucchi on the Hollywood map.

The movie describes the life of a meter maid in Los Angeles. She lives with her disabled mother (played by Teri Garr). Beyond her mother, some other aspects of her life are also disabled. She has a positive outlook on life and tries to keep that as the story unfolds. Her relationship with her mother, her aunt, and a potential romantic interest at work weave together to make the story. This was a Sundance film and it was fairly well attended, but I am guessing the tone of the movie will make it hard for a wide release to happen. Cringing is very common throughout the movie as the characters choose paths or actions that most of us would steer clear of. At least a couple of the scenes could do with better editing as there were jumps that should not be in a big studio production.

7/10

She starts by telling us she is the most hated in the world. That's because of her profession, but her attitude towards life is really much like the hated one. This woman, Claire, is shy, a loser, and she doesn't expect to be anything else. But there really isn't anything tragic about it.

Then this man turns up. An emotional invalid and an impossible love relation starts. These are people who don't take anything for granted. He's aggressive about it, she isn't.

Samantha Morton is tremendous in this part as a completely non-boring bore. She teaches us that you can live a life without success. And that life is a true one.