New Year's Day

To Kick Off This New Year, I Wanted To Do A New Year's Centered Film. This Well-Written Indie Film Was Released To Mixed Reviews. That's Understandable Seeing How The Film Takes Place In One Setting And There Isn't Much Action. If I Could Give The Film A Different Title It Would Be "Dialogue: The Movie". Anyway, "New Year's Day" Follows A Writer Who Arrives At Apartment That He Is Moving Into Only To Find That A Group Of Friends Have The Apartment Through New Year's. He Decides To Stay For A Party They're Having Which Turns Into A Series Of Everyone Discussing Their New Year's Resolutions, Goals In Life, Desires, Temptations, And Secrets. It's A Breakfast Club Like Setup That Actually Showcases The Surprising Acting Talents Of Some Of The Film's No Named Actors And Actresses. The Dialogue Is Pretty Sharp And The Story Addresses Some Interesting Topics. I Like Films That Make Me Think, But What I Appreciate More Is A Film That Makes Me Relate. To Say The Least, This Was A Pretty Decent Film That I'd Recommend If You Can Handle 90 Minutes Of Fundamental Food For Thought. 68%.

New Years Day isn't a terribly good movie, but somehow, it's still endearing.

Starring a cast of no names, and an awful early performance by David Duchovny (as well as rather good Milos Forman), New Years Day tells the story of 3 young women about to move out of an apartment they have shared for years, and the man who is moving in. the four spend new years day together, (psychoanalyzing each other) because of a misunderstanding of what the meaning of "through January first."

The film has a decent set up, and other than Duchovny, the acting is all solid.

However, director and star Henry Jaglom apparently doesn't do scripts, he does giant flow charts. Consequently, his actors are forced to improvise, and generally become defined more by their bundles of neuroses than by any redeeming aspects.

Case and point for this affliction is a character who spends the entirety of the film's third act, where the girls throw a going away party, explaining repeatedly that he avoids the pitfalls of sleeping with his psychoanalysis patients by sleeping with them first, then becoming their doctor. The joke is cute the first time, but by the 4th time it has been told, no one cares anymore.

The movie is rife with moments like this. The worst of which is a suicide attempt that seems not only unrealistic, but also to have been included because without the scene the suicide attemptee would have absolutely no motivation or purpose within the story.

All the same, there is some definite underlying charm to much of it. Jaglom gives a wonderful opening and closing monologue giving the film, which otherwise just sort of starts and stops, a feeling of closure and weight. And the improvised dialogue is largely successful in creating a naturalistic atmosphere. However, if you don't already buy into the concept of Feud, Jung and Psycho Analytical theory, you will probably spend much of the film rolling your eyes.

If you just love Woody Allen and Robert Altman but have already seen all of their films, or just can't get enough stories about mediocre looking Jewish men discussing philosophy and becoming intimate with attractive women half their age, New Years Day is the film for you.

For everyone else, it's good, but not great, a little self important, and ultimately pointless.

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Okay, so maybe it's a little bit cliché to watch this on January 1 but I thought what the heck.

One motivating factor was that it's one of David Duchovny's first roles (he previously has one bit part in Working Girl.) He really was not yet a good actor at this point.

Maggie Wheeler (who played Janice in Friends) was alright but nothing here at all interested me whatsoever. Henry Jaglom's dialog driven excuse for a story is nothing more than vacuous and pretentious psychoanalytical drivel. I'm not sure Jaglom is for me because this bored the crap out of me.

---The Kat Pirate Screener. Arrgh!

Face it. There's a four word explanation for why you *might* want to see this film. "David Duchovny as Billy". Unless this kind of self-infatuated dialogue-driven "action" is your bag. Maggie Wheeler, as Lucy, actually turns in a fine performance as well, but I have to tell Jaglom the same thing I'd tell Tarantino: "Quit putting yourself in your own films. It makes you look pathetic." And whether or not he's acting, Jaglom doesn't have Tarantino's sense to play an *interesting* character once he's in his own movie. He has to play the same annoying know-it-all, fish out of water. Now, back to David Duchovny. He plays a sex-addicted playboy, Lucy's boyfriend. Be kind, it's his first film, and strange to see him so young. But there's no denying who that wonderful voice belongs to. Oh, and halfway through, he pulls a full-frontal scene in the hall, right before he's kicked unceremoniously (and naked) out of the apartment. Watch this right before you watch the X-Files or another Duchovny film like "The Rapture", "Kalifornia" or "X-Files: Fight the Future." It's nice to see the progress he made as an actor. Even with this first performance, it's easy to see that Duchovny is an heir to the Buster Keaton throne of underacting.

This film begins with a question that does not completely become clear until the final monologue-what happens when you walk in the middle of somebody else's story, and become involved in it, perhaps deeper than you wanted to? Is there any changing of a trajectory once it gets past a certain point in time? Or is it best to just sit back and watch it all happen? Jaglom's character walks into a situation that three younger women are about to leave, and at first (once he resigns himself to his position) he wants to help correct the flaws in their lives, but eventually he realizes that they really don't need his help.

Henry Jaglom's films are interesting in that they are disproportionately populated by complex, interesting women that are surrounded by guys that are mostly creeps. The male-to-female ratio is the opposite of most movies that don't qualify as "chick flicks" (and no, I would not count this or any of Jaglom's others as such), and yet it sees the gender dilemma more clearly than in any film by any other filmmaker that I've seen. His films are an exploration of interpersonal relationships between women in a way that every other (male) director shies away from...which is partly why his films remain relatively obscure, and so many critics view his work with suspicion.

Is New Year's Day perfect? Not quite. It has a few too many characters and a few moments that don't fit in with the rest of the picture, but boy did it make me think and feel. The final reel is as much a roller coaster as I've ever been on outside of an amusement park, and just when you think none of it can be tied together, it all unfolds perfectly logically.

The filmmaker Glenn Gordon Caron described his writing process being protracted by waiting for "the truth" in the situation he is writing about. Meaning, the twist in the plot that makes you go "Aha!" and realize how everything that came before it makes so much more sense, and yet, in a way you would never have foreseen. New Year's Day's "truth" unfolds in the most beautiful way I've ever experienced in any form of media, and more than makes up for its shortcomings.