Sunday

A delight in a world where "if you don't know what's going on in the first thirty seconds, you're lost." The first half-hour or so lets a viewer take in another world, one with which she may not be familiar, and allows a gradual "easing into" the plot, which sheds far more light on human behavior than almost any ten glossy, big-budget H-wood films out there. Most won't want to do the work required to fully appreciate this film. Take the time, talk it over, then get Signs and Wonders.

What a risky, amazing film! One could call it small, but only in its focus on "ordinary" needy people. In its theme and treatment it has a humaness and innovation that most so-called "big" movies totally lack. A man,Oliver, who has lost his job, family, middle-class status, is living in a homeless shelter with truly down-and-outers. It's Sunday in New York, Queens. On the street a has-been actress mistakes him for a director she once knew. He plays along...The viewer gets to know these sad people inside-out as they begin a relationship. The city itself and its derelicts are intercut into the continuity, becoming significant "characters" in themselves. The musical score is rich and fitting, international and enhancing. Jonathan Nossiter, the director, deserves more accolades than he probably received. See this film!!!

One of the most unique films I've seen in years. An indie film with a meticulously well thought-out story, full of clever twists and surprises; not a comedy but an offbeat drama with some amusing moments. Excellently conceived and directed, with Lisa Harrow as the standout (great body, too). The only minus is the amateurish overacting provided by Richard Harris's little boy, Jarred. I have no idea how this talentless, nepotist, unsympathetic nerd manages to get his face into so many interesting movies.

Unfortunately, indie films have already had their heyday in the 90s, and are by now (2006) as good as dead. Today, nearly every indie film has to have a PC message, and is made by a talentless moron.

I went to see this movie because I knew Amy Hobby the producer. I was pleasantly surprised, except for some bad sound at the beginning, it was a movie that addressed the idea of loneliness and desperation in average people. Both the actors did a good job of bringing sensitive interpretation to their roles, but I was a little confused by the ending and I never did figure out the husband's place in the trio.

The film's gritty outer-borough images of Queens, familiar to any born and bred New Yorker, got my attention instantly. But it was the film's two principal characters--both middle-aged, both survivors of difficult lives--that sustained it. He, an out-of-work middle management type, is a victim of corporate downsizing now living in a homeless shelter among a multiethnic, multiracial horde of down-and-outers, where he struggles to maintain bare-minimum standards of privacy and personal hygiene--and where remnants of his middle-class life set him apart from his surroundings. She, a faded beauty and still-struggling actress, maintains an oddly genteel life in a rundown two-family house nearby, surrounded by weedy lots and shuttered factories. As they meet and proceed to remove their masks, a kind of love story--brief, impossible, and ultimately doomed, is ignited. This is a beautifully shot and acted film, and a deeply affecting one.