Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

NateWatchesCoolMovies Greg Harrison's November is one of those frustratingly opaque, reality bending sketchy thrillers where a metaphysical shudder is sent through someone's fabric of existence, in this case that of photography professor Courtney Cox. Driving home late one night, her husband (James LeGros) runs in to a Kwik-E-Mart to grab her a snack right at the same moment a burglar (Matthew Carey) brandishes a gun, and then open fires. After he's killed, you feel like the film is in for a run of the mill grieving process as she visits a therapist (Nora Dunn). Events take a detour down Twilight Zone alley though when a spooky photograph shows up amongst one of her student's portfolios, a snapshot of that very night at the store, apparently zoomed in on her husband. Who took it? Is the man actually dead? Will the film provide the concrete answers that some viewers so fervently salivate for in these types of films? Not really, as a heads up. As soon as things begin to get weird, they pretty much stay that way for the duration of the exceedingly short runtime (it clocks in under eighty minutes!). Cox's character revisits that fateful night from many different angles and impressions, either reliving it, recreating it or simply stuck in some sort of alternate time loop chain. There's a policeman played by Nick Offerman who offers little in the way of help, and she's left more or less on her own through this fractured looking glass of garbled mystic confusion. The tone and aesthetic of it are quite something though, a jerky, stark Polaroid style mood-board that evokes ones like The Jacket and Memento, with an art house industrial touch to the deliberately closeup, disoriented visuals. It's a bit maddening from the perspective of someone only looking for answers, and if that's why you came, you'll be left wringing your hands and losing sleep. If you enjoy the secrets left unravelled, and are a viewer who revels in unlocked mysteries left that way, recognizing the potent energies distilled from unexplained ambiguity, give it a go.

chazz46-2 It is apparent that there is sufficient documentation that we humans "play the the tapes of our life" in very fast forward just prior to our death. This movie seems to allow for the ending of that comprehensive tape playing to resolve in final acceptance of the truth after what must be several permutations of fantasy and guilt-based wishful thinking. Rather than the long drawn-out subconscious (actually "final conscious")dreams as portrayed by the movie in the cadence of the living, this movie just accounts for a split second of "playing the tapes" before Sophie finally dies. I would have never guessed how those nanoseconds could have been captured by film art. In that sense, we the living, are given the opportunity to dissect out over an expanded time period that which actually occurs in an instant. We are thus given to appreciate how the senses of the living are tuned out of the dimension of time itself. Furthermore, this movie would suggest that how we handle truth is still wrapped in dream work even as we play our final tapes at our death.

dolph50 Well, I will admit is not the worse job I have seen done but they moved toward the mark. Shots are too long, too many empty staircases, unnecessary shots. I mean if you think you would like to take a nap while seeing it, that's the right movie for you. No matter how long the nap you won't miss anything important. Take my word for it. After the initial two minutes when the boyfriend (who she was cheating with another guy) is shot down there is nothing worth the pain. Jesus. My guess is they wanted to make something nobody's ever done. Maybe they did. Of course I am pretty sure they weren't counting on breaking a box office record. If there will be any box office sellout at all, which I doubt. Should have gone straight to video.

robertllr For anyone who gave this movie a high rating, and thinks he is cleverer than those who gave it a low one; let me ask you this: have you ever seen the 1962 film "An Incident At Owl Creek Bridge." No? I thought not. Perhaps, then, you've seen one of these four films—and I list them in no particular order: "Lulu On the Bridge"? "Final Approach"? "A Pure Formality"? "Sixth Sense"?These are just the ones that come to me off the top of my head. They all have the same manipulative plot; and I'll bet if I had a dollar for every film in which the protagonist is dead but doesn't know it till the end of the film, I'd be a wealthy man.I gave it a low rating, not because I didn't get it, but precisely because I did. In fact, the only reason I gave it any stars at all is because this version of the same old story is, admittedly, a stylish and well-constructed piece of cinema. Unfortunately, it's precision is also its downfall. There are so many clues that no seasoned cinema aficionado would fail to figure it out--long before the word "Acceptance" is flashed on the screen. "November" resembles—much as "Sixth Sense" does—a pretty puzzle in which you are shown all the pieces--individually, and then in various groups--until at the end, in a flurry of prestidigitation, they are all put together so you can see the actual picture. But then, it all evaporates.That kind of thing may be clever; but it makes for a film that is, at best (as in "Sixth Sense") charming; while at worst, it is merely a pointless exercise. Moreover, while some of these films have had me going for a while, half way through "November" I knew what was coming. There are just so many times you can set up an audience like that. It's a bit like all the recent movies that have been made since "The Sting" ("Ocean's Twelve" and "The Spanish Prisoner" leap to mind) in which the grift you are supposed to think is going down, is really something quite different. By now, it's just not a surprise, and--its like, you know--who cares?There really ought to be a law against reusing these apparently irresistible (to even some seasoned directors—i.e., Polanski) ploys.To close, let me compare this tidy and trite approach to film making with something like Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" or Resnais's "Last Year At Marienbad"—or even "The Draughtsman's Contract". These are pictures that give you a mystery without the cheap "gottcha" at the end. I'll be thinking about "Mulholland Drive" for a long time, watching it over and over, discussing it, reading about it and writing about it. "November," on the other hand, is signed, sealed and delivered even before it ends. The picture on her wall of the outstretched arm that clomps so heavily throughout the film, for example? Just to make sure you get it, we are shown this (imaginary) picture one more time as our heroine's dying gaze falls on her lover's hand. Take that! And that! Cheese…talk about beating you over the head