Droll stories, or droll vignettes, or droll sketches, of the walking wounded in the vicinity of a Brooklyn cigar store. Occasionally, at least once anyhow, something poignant occurs: a grieving widower, paging through the storekeeper's "conceptual" photo album of identically framed snapshots taken outside his shop at the same time of day for 4000 straight days, comes upon some preserved vestiges of his dead wife. And occasionally something amusing: a jump cut from the heights of passion in a family squabble to the depths of deflation in its aftermath. For the most part, director Wayne Wang's placid, complacent camera plays second fiddle, so to speak, to Paul Auster's stilted, bookish dialogue. Harold Perrineau, Jr., in his big-screen debut, is an engaging presence, but unfortunately for him, and even more for us, he usually has to play opposite William Hurt, who inverts the standard definition of good acting and makes everything look so damn difficult. Talking, walking, breathing, everything. With Harvey Keitel, Forest Whitaker, Stockard Channing, Ashley Judd. (1995) — Duncan Shepherd
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