Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

SoTrumpBelieve Must See Movie...

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

tieman64 "Economics is a form of brain damage." - Hazel HendersonThe privileged berate themselves in "Please Give", an intermittently interesting drama by director Nicole Holofcener, a director who specialises in female neuroses. The plot? Catherine Keener players Kate, a vintage furniture seller who acquires money by selling, at exorbitant prices, the furniture of the recently deceased. She essentially exploits the kin of the dead, getting valuable pieces for less than they're worth because surviving relatives are too preoccupied with grief to haggle over prices. There are other subplots in the film – Kate's husband has a brief affair, Kate's daughter assuages insecurity with commodities, a pair of sisters struggle with love, loss and personal responsibility etc – but it's the money angle that's most interesting. Because Kate is stricken with guilt over the way she does business, she engages in games of self-justification, compensating by being charitable to homeless people or volunteering at special-needs schools. But acts of charity don't help Kate and do little to help others. She remains guilty.The film abounds in interesting contradictions, Kate caught between the dog-eat-dog cynicism of free-market capitalism and an impulse to be ethical, to share with and care for others. Because of this she is supremely self-loathing, ashamed of her wealth. In economics, the neo-classical defence of this, of "wealth", is that the economy is not zero sum, that "wealth" can both forever increase and rationally "spread out", like some perpetual motion machine in which any and all imbalances are overcome by fiscal velocity and "benevolent liquidity". Critiques tout the flip-side; gains here are at the expenses of losses elsewhere, debt based systems breed bondage and loci of power, economics doesn't take into account the acquisition of land and how money enters the system and the economy is pathologically kept afloat by illusions/faith/denial (the continuous birth of new players, the deferring of debt and even death, various false mathematical/philosophical presuppositions etc). In this regard Kate's an atypical American; she's your successful, self loathing liberal woman caricature. Full-bore hippie in Versace.Another of the film's subplots deals with altruism/guilt/exploitation in a different manner. Here, a lab technician (Rebecca Hall) who administers mammograms spends all her free time caring for her 92 year old grandmother, a cranky woman who doesn't appreciate anything Rebecca does. Rebecca's sister, played by Amanda Peet, decries Rebecca for taking care of this nuisance, a nuisance who doesn't deserve to be taken care of and who seems to simply be exploiting Rebecca. Nevertheless, Rebecca believes it is her obligation to "give". So the film – its title is a plea "to give" - abounds in interesting contrasts. Materialism, self-interests, an allegiance to capitalism on one hand, guilt, feigned, forced and genuine compassion on the other. The film then ends with an interesting moment; Kate buys her daughter an inordinately expensive gift, a complex act which manages to affirm capitalism, play to Kate's more selfless desire to "give" - no matter how irrational the act seems - and demonstrates how socioeconomic structures colour selfless acts. Love and charity are seen to be irrational, unsustainable even, under the logic of the dollar. Charity itself is a type of ethic that avoids issues of complicity and co-responsibility for misery, and is maintained largely because the bourgeoisie desires to redress social grievances only in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society. That the film fails to go further is because it's engaged in a game of dichotomies, your usual left/right, socialism/capitalism duality.All economics is both biology and physics. It's a transfer of energy. All organisms attempt to maximise the capturing of energy, expending less than they take in. Extrapolate this to the national level and one sees that capitalism itself, as an organism, is designed to maximise extraction. It's what Howard Odum proposed as the 4th thermodynamic law, or 4th principle of energetics; systems "evolve" to maximise intake, leading to the hypertrophic nature of all systems, which have a cancerous predisposition for expansion. Indeed the market, by design, abhors limits. It is obsessed with expansion. Boundaries must be transgressed, worked-around, cheated. What psychologists refer to as the death-drive is mirrored (as well as a lot of other male biological imperatives) exactly by free-market capitalism: there is a pervasive desire for unrestrained, unregulated, limitless "jouissance". You then eventually reach the point where the extraction of energy from people and the planet out-paces birth rates and the planet's ability to "produce energy". It's the clichéd "infinite growth on a finite planet" problem - which in turn has led to proponents of economic homeostasis - though in reality, the planet's not quite finite. The total "matter" on Earth remains the same, the machine just need more of it and faster. And the Earth can't keep up. Hence Kate's dilemma: extracting harms others.What the film does is ignore the fact that personal crises and ecological dislocations are influenced by cultural factors and have their primary sources in social dislocations. The very notion of "dominating nature" has its roots in both the Churches of Scientific Rationality and the constant domination of human by human (hierarchies that bring people into subjugation to gerontocracy, patriarchies, military chiefdoms, capitalist, religious or bureaucratic systems of exploitation etc). Such "ruthlessness", in which a great many humans are as exploited as the natural world itself, is actively supported by many people, under the assumption that this is "how nature is" and "how nature works". These are the same people who, a million times in their daily lives, behave like they believe the opposite. Obey a traffic light and you're asserting man's ability to organise, change, rise, stave off chaos. Nature is contingent, and capitalism actually doesn't require one to believe the worst of his fellow man, but hinges on the opposite, that man is innately "good". In a sense, what is thus required is a legislating of morality.8.5/10 - Worth one viewing.

rogerdarlington Many will class this independent work a woman's film - and it is true that the writer- director is a woman (New York-born Nicole Holofcener who is sometimes called the female Woody Allen), three of the four main roles are taken by (attractive) women (Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet and Rebecca Hall), and three of the four support roles are filled by women (two very elderly and one very young). But it would be a mistake to pigeon-hole this movie which is full of wryly humorous and insightful observations on the human condition.Set in Holofcener's New York, this is a character-driven movie with minimal plotting. It concerns the occupants of and visitors to a couple of next-door apartments: a middle- aged husband (Oliver Platt) and his do-gooder wife (Keener) who are planning to expand into the accommodation of an aged woman looked after in very different ways by her daughters (Peet and Hall). At the heart of the narrative is the eternal question: what does it mean to be good.

Chrysanthepop Nicole Holofcener explores intertwining stories between and around two families who live in a New York apartment building. There's a very opinionated, blunt and sometimes bitter 91 year old grandmother, Andra, who is regularly visited by her youngest granddaughter Rebecca while the self-centred elder one, Mary (who is put off by her grandmother's bluntness) obsesses about herself (especially her looks). Little does she know that she's pretty much just like Andra. Next door to Andra lives a married couple Kate and Alex and their teenage daughter Abby who complains about her looks. Kate and Alex, who own Andra's apartment, plan to extend it to their own after her death. Kate overwhelmed by the less privileged, always gives out money to the homeless (much against her daughter's wish) but at the same time she wants to do more charitable work. Yet, when the time comes she is just too overwhelmed to go a step further and runs out from the center of the mentally handicapped.'Please Give' looks at the stories of these characters with humour. Holofcener touches themes like death, guilt, self-centredness, adultery and commitment but it's all done with a well balanced touch of comedy. Her writing is solid. It has a whimsical narrative similar to some of Woody Allen's best works. The intense sequences are subtle and effective. The characters are well-defined and recognizable. They are cleverly written with a comic touch.It is also a well crafted little film. The sets are simple yet detailed. The cinematography is first rate. The editing is fine.'Please Give' is loaded with excellent performances. Catherine Keener and Rebecca Hall brilliantly downplay their parts. Amanda Peet is spot on as the bitchy Mary. Oliver Platt performs naturally. Lois Smith is a delight and Ann Morgan Guilbert is very good.'Please Give' has heart, humour and substance. Thankfully, it is lacking in the kind of melodrama that has become an ingredient in many Hollywood films of this genre. Overall, Nicole Holofcener has made a fine little film that explores the (direct and indirect but significant) effects people have on others. I hope she keeps giving us little gems like this.

secondtake Please Give (2010)A sharp, witty, touching, slice-of-life gem of a movie directed by Nicole Holofcener. It has some of the trappings of an Indie movie, with very ordinary people taking the leads and quirky low budget filming and music to make it undramatic. But the cast is top notch. The leads--there are four of them in a well balanced ensemble--are nothing if not believable. Maybe most impressive as an actress is Rebecca Hall, who played Vicky in "Vicky, Christina, Barcelona," completely transforming herself into an awkward, kindly, thoughtful and slightly whining young woman. Playing her sister is a hardened and unlikable Amanda Peet, who also has a Woody Allen feather in her cap, "Melinda, Melinda."Then there is a moderne era antique store couple, Catherine Keener (a regular in the director's films) and Oliver Platt, a comfortable couple who buy their antiques people who have just had a relative with an apartment full of stuff die. Yes, there is some black humor, hilarious stuff, and there are layers of contemporary New York life with its superficial and materialist angst, and charm. As events compound, usually with conviction, the characters become more rounded and intriguing. And sympathetic. By the end, you feel for everyone, whatever their weird and sometimes selfish cores.If the movie seems like a cross between Sex and the City and Six Feet Under, it's not a surprise--Holofcener has directed episodes from both series. Throw in her early apprenticeship under Woody Allen, and you get the humor as well as the high standards of writing and directing, combined, that Allen inspires. "Please Give" is slight, somehow, in its intentions. It takes a view of life that isn't so strange really, and where nothing all that unusual happens--the weirdness is just a reminder that we all have weirdness in our lives--and it makes it salient. That's the magic overall, lifting everyday traits into the light where they matter. Or matter differently. With a laugh.Don't miss it!