The Phoenix Network:
 
 
About  |  Advertise
Adult  |  Moonsigns  |  Band Guide  |  Blogs  |  In Pictures
 
Features  |  Reviews
FIND MOVIES
Find a Movie
Movie List
Loading ...
or
Find Theaters and Movie Times
or
Search Movies

Lonesome Jim

Buscemi's third feature deserves a better ending
By PETER KEOUGH  |  May 9, 2006
2.5 2.5 Stars
Lonesome JimFrom the title of the movie onward, Lonesome Jim (Casey Affleck) can’t catch a break. Failing in New York City as a writer and a dog walker, he takes the bus to move back in with his folks (Mary Kay Place and Seymour Cassel) in Indiana. There he’s greeted by his brother Tim (Kevin Corrigan, no less), who’s over 30, divorced, and the coach of a kids’ basketball team that has never scored a single point. He too lives at home. After a one-nighter with a nurse (Liv Tyler) he meets at a bar fizzles, Jim watches Tim’s team fail yet again to score a single point. He tells his brother he can’t believe he doesn’t kill himself; Tim drives off into a tree. It seems things can’t get any worse, and then they do. Steve Buscemi’s third feature mirrors his on-screen persona: hopeless, sardonic, deadpan. The comic timing and his Jarmusch-like minimalism carry the slim material most of the way, but a pat ending doesn’t do justice to Jim’s quiet but well-earned desperation.
Related: The Oscars go to Hell, Bad will hunting, The Last Kiss, More more >
  Topics: Reviews , Casey Affleck, Steve Buscemi, Kevin Corrigan,  More more >
  • Share:
  • Share this entry with Facebook
  • Share this entry with Digg
  • Share this entry with Delicious
  • RSS feed
  • Email this article to a friend
  • Print this article
Comments

More Information
ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   REVIEW: BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS  |  November 24, 2009
    Nicolas Cage is at his best in Bad Lieutenant
  •   REVIEW: THE ROAD  |  November 24, 2009
    John Hillcoat doesn't stray from Cormac McCarthy's Road For those who found the Coen Brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men too lighthearted, John Hillcoat's relentlessly faithful version of the author's post-apocalyptic Pulitzer-winning novel might hit the spot.
  •   INTERVIEW: NICOLAS CAGE  |  November 24, 2009
    "When people like to label any kind of performance as over the top, I suggest that if you were to go to the Guggenheim and look at a Francis Bacon, would you call that over the top?"
  •   REVIEW: FANTASTIC MR. FOX  |  November 25, 2009
    In The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Wes Anderson excelled at telling adult stories with childlike whimsy. Telling children’s stories with adult whimsy is another matter.
  •   SWINE FEVER: AN EVENING WITH HUNTER S. THOMPSON  |  November 24, 2009
    Only Hunter S. Thompson could come up with a line like that; no one else had his knack for the near-Biblical proverb. Few writers outside of Madison Avenue or the New Testament can sum up a zeitgeist so cannily in a phrase.

 See all articles by: PETER KEOUGH

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed 



  |  Sign In  |  Register
 
thePhoenix.com:
Phoenix Media/Communications Group:
TODAY'S FEATURED ADVERTISERS
Copyright © 2009 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group