November (2005)

Sophie (Courteney Cox) is dealing with the recent death of her boyfriend, who was shot during a convenience store hold-up. She's not doing too great a job of it.

There's a lot of good ideas here, but very few of them are fresh. The fragmented flashbacks reminded me of 21 Grams -- though in this film I felt as though I were being given clues rather than simply being jerked around for the helluvit. As for everything else? I just saw it, less than a month ago, in Stay. I feel as though if I'd seen this one first, I would've very likely loved it. It's got a great tone, Cox is terrific, and James LeGros plays her boyfriend (I've loved him since "My New Gun"). But it simply suffers in comparison to Stay -- especially when seen so close together.

It does pack a lot of story into an extremely short run time. It's also pretty dang impressive that the production was budged at 150k, was shot in just over two weeks, and got such a good look from mini DV. I just realized I sound a lot like I'm describing this film as being an amazing dancer with a great personality...I'll stop and slap my grade on it.

B-