Please Give

The most underrated American director this side of Richard Linklater, Nicole Holofcener, continues to be a master of The Moment: a tiny but meaningful exchange or look or gesture that conveys more emotion than any awards-bait monologue could. Her muse, Catherine Keener---this is their fourth film---owns a New York antique shop supplied by the possessions of dead people, swindled from their grieving relatives and marked up ridiculously for resale. She and her husband (Oliver Platt) have purchased the apartment next door and befriended the granddaughters (caustic Amanda Peet and sweet Rebecca Hall) of its elderly tenant (hilarious Ann Guilbert) until she expires as well. Keener has begun to question the ethics of her business practices while Platt faces an ethical dilemma of his own, and the grandkids struggle to deal with early onset loneliness. Holofcener remains uninterested in visual trickery, pointing her camera at the middle and letting her fine script and finer actors carry the work to its bittersweet conclusion. –Tara Thorne