10 Items or Less

Continuing my work on my backlog of movies to review (which is a difficult endeavor considering that I am seeing new movies about as often as I'm reviewing them), it's now time to discuss 10 Items or Less, which is the most recent movie I've seen in a theatre. (We saw Clerks II at Jorian's place on Saturday. It was ok, but I wasn't impressed.)

If I could only use one word to describe this film, that word would be "charming."

I liked the film very much, although it doesn't make my short short list of best films of the year. I believe it did make this list for some of the people with me. Our group enjoyed the film immensely, though the others in the theatre (all 6-8 or so of them) didn't seem to like it close to as much as we did. This evening, someone else mentioned Lost in Translation as a film with some similarities, and that's a very fair comparison.

The trailer is a very good representation of the film. If you like it, you will like the film. Morgan Freeman and Paz Vega both give exceptional performances. [Freeman: "It's amazing!" Vega (sarcastically): "It's Target."] Freeman kind of plays himself, but he does so extremely well.

Also, one of the film's taglines gives an aphorism which contains a great deal of truth (not to be redundant or anything): "You Are Who You Meet." The film provides a very nice example of that, and there are several extremely funny moments. (Also, having a knowledge of Los Angeles helps one appreciate certain things in the movie, but it's not necessary.)

Finally, the reason I'm mentioning this film right now is that it's in very few theatres even in comparison to other artsy films and it seems like it's not going to be out very long. Consequently, I wanted to review it before it leaves theatres to encourage people to go see this movie. You might be reading this and thinking this movie isn't your bag (and for some people this will be true), but take a look at the trailer and trust it. Then go see the film.