Broke and alone on New Year's Eve, Wilson (Scoot McNairy) just wants to spend the rest of a very bad year in bed. But, when his best friend convinces him to post a personal ad, he meets a woman (Sara Simmonds) bent on finding the right guy to be with at midnight.
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A cynical young sad-sack is facing New Year's Eve alone. Depressed about the world situation, in constant terror of being "humiliated," he whines about his love life (or lack thereof) to his confident, upbeat best friend and his friend's sexy girlfriend. The dialogue is fast and occasionally funny, and the film is shot in arty black-and-white, in unusual locations all around a large metropolitan city that fascinates the filmmaker. No, it's not an early Woody Allen comedy. It's this rookie feature from Alex Holdridge, shot in--surprise!--Los Angeles. With his characters getting around on foot or via subway (the fledgling L.A. Metro), Holdridge has made a Woody Allen comedy without New York--and, unfortunately, without enough laughs, besides being a tad derivative. Wilson (Scoot McNairy), dumped by his previous girlfriend, has come to L. A. to peddle a screenplay, which has since been stolen, along with his laptop. Fired from his video store job, he's egged on by his roommate, Jacob (Brian Matthew McGuire), and Jacob's live-in girlfriend, Min (Katie Luong) to post a personals ad on Craigslist for a New Year's Eve date. Advertising himself as a misanthrope, he's contacted by "misanthropee," Vivian (Sara Simmonds), a chain-smoking blonde, who schedules him into a brisk round of speed-dating appointments at a local bistro. Vivian doesn't believe in wasting time; she doesn't want to be stiuck with "a dud" come nightfall. So far, it's all a little ho-hum, marked with would-be pithy observations like, "Everything good in life eventually, tragically fails," and "L. A. is where love comes to die." Updating the comedy to the era of texting and Internet porn doesn't really make the concept any fresher. But things perk up when Wilson and Vivian (a wannabe actress on the lam from a psycho boyfriend) begin touring around crumbling districts from the city's era of bygone glamour; locations include the shuttered Los Angeles Stock Exchange building, and such evocatively derelict old theatres as the Mayan, the Pantages, and the Orpheum. Holdridge has a photojournalist's eye for details of neglected architectural grandeur, and can't resist a photographic interlude on lost shoes throughout the city. And, to his credit, he comes up with a more thoughtful, less pat resolution than we might expect. He gets points for the package; if only the content were more involving.
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