Simply A Masterpiece

Captivating movie !

An Exercise In Nonsense

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

This is a low budget Independent film that wowed critics at The Sundance Festival in 2007.It stars Jason Patric as Jay, a very strict Traffic warden who is in fact downright rude and also prone to violence and lying about the people he has booked. He provokes them and thinks his uniform is enough to see him through. In an early scene he books his own son.Claire played by British actress Samantha Morton is a new warden, good hearted in nature but lonely living with her disabled mother.Both characters go on a date and seem to be attracted to each other, although what Claire sees in Jay, no one knows. He is rude, obnoxious and tells her she is chubby. The fact that he has a very distant relationship with his son who is a musician might give a clue that he has issues, he mentions of his relationship in his college days which detoured his life. Jay is also addicted to online porn, more so than the normal red blooded male.The movie, filmed in sunny LA but set in Christmas is unusual with lead actors who are known names and features good acting. Jason Patric who was set for stardom in the late 80s and early 90s might be too good looking to play a loner with relationship issues. Samantha Morton looks too thin to be someone with a fondness for M&Ms.The film has its little twists and turns and although slight it keeps your interest.

Starring: Samantha Morton,Jason Patric . NOT your typical 'love story', But perhaps that makes it more in line to our lives. Jason Patric (Speed 2) absolutely steals this movie with an performance that is real and thought provoking as too "Alpha Male".Samantha Morton is a good girl and worth more than what she has been given,And may finally coming into her skin. This is a romance comedy about parking ticket officers and their prey,Unlawful car parkers.The "Making Of " is amazing when you see what into this Sundance/Cannes favorite.

What an astonishing performance from Mr. Patric!The movie - as it starts - seems to be pretty boring and simple. Maybe a bit too silly. Then Jason Patric appears and the story gets more interesting. It is enough to make you keep watching. Shortly you find yourself to be amazed by Mr. Patric's unique character. At this point it is hardly decidable if he is a real asshole or just a man with an unsuccessful life. Later it becomes clear that the director is a woman, so she wants this character to be a real asshole. Anyway, Mr. Patric puts so much reality into his character that you keep wondering how could this grotesque man be so real. If you're a man, you'll find the essence of yourself in "Jay". ..and this is very-very surprising after all.I've never though of Mr. Patric as one of the best actors, but he surely is. I would give him an Oscar for this performance without any doubt!

The movie Expired is really unlike most of the feature films you'll see these days. It has an intensity, a committed vision that grabs you and holds you in its grips for the entire hour and a half or so. Of films in recent years that share this quality, I can think of Todd Solondz' "Happiness".Expired is the story of two L.A. parking officers, or "meter maids", one female and one male, who meet on the job and have an increasingly dysfunctional, mercurial relationship. Samantha Morton plays it extremely sweet, wide-eyed and gentle as Claire, a meter maid who lives with her stroke-incapacitated, essentially mute mother and hates having to ruin peoples' days with tickets. Jason Patric is Jay, a taut, seething, bull-shouldered ball of defensive machismo in a blue uniform with a ticket-gun and a hilarious dark mustache. He likes slapping parking tickets on folks the way some LA cops like cracking heads.The first two thirds or so of the film especially are darkly comedic, and the purposefully stylized elements- lighting, dialogue, supporting actors, visual action, set design, musical score- create a very sharp, bittersweet, somewhat tragic kind of comedy, like the best of the Coen Brothers films. This isn't broad American multiplex comedy, this is comedy that comes from true pathos, sadness and the small calamities of life. While Morton's face shows sensitivity and vulnerability- two of her big strengths- Patric's Jay character is fantastic because he offsets the angry disciplinarian guy with loose moments of real charm and also sarcastic, almost whimsical humor.The film progresses with a few traditional "plot points" that serve to accelerate the conflicts and create moments of challenge and decision for the characters, but really the film is also greatly a close-up examination of the attempted close relationship of two equally extreme opposites- the "naive, yearning do-gooder" and the "previously injured, prickly, defensive bully." At its core it's just a film about human beings- what they have, what they want and need, and the different places they're coming from emotionally.Visually, the film was shot in a crisp, almost beautiful way, at once seeming straightforwardly no-nonsense and yet heavily atmospheric. A lot of the production design strongly complements the film- from the richly hued, antique-laden apartment Claire and her Mom live in to the various LA coffee shops and streetscapes. The musical scoring is also highly evocative and appropriate- with the best of it reminding me of great melodic work Michael Penn and Jon Brion did in P.T. Anderson's film 'Hard Eight'.Ileana Douglas is perfect as Claire's decent-hearted, energetic busybody neighbor and Teri Garr is rock solid as the mute, wheelchair-bound Mom but hilarious and deliciously campy in a second role as the Mom's crazy sister in Pomona! With its strong vision and execution, 'Expired' should certainly put writer/director Cecilia Miniucchi on the Hollywood map.