Sorry, Thanks (2009)

This movie seems like it was made by film students whose lives are like this and they got a kick out of putting it on film. The actors/characters just seemed like people they liked, thought were cool, and wanted to put them in a movie. The photography was competent enough but the direction and editing left it in the realm of many independent films that have a lot of non essential scenes that do not push the story forward. There were enough scenes of devoid of both verbal and non-verbal acting. An attempt to carry a "moral' character that was to straighten the hero out and get him to get his s**t together but that never really seemed to take hold. The antihero protagonist character was just annoying but I can see how the filmmakers who like that kind of character feel great about seeing him in a movie. He's cool to them. But just not to most people.

I agree with most of the other reviewers that this is the most pointless movie ever made. I have never reviewed a movie before, but this one just got my goat, and I had to tell somebody.The acting is lack-lustre, the direction is non-existent, and the script is pathetic. I feel sorry for the poor actors, but I guess it's a way of getting your face on the screen, at least.The ending, or lack thereof, is the most annoying part. Why oh why do people insist on making movies like this, under the guise of being "artsy" ?If you have nothing better to do, and you feel like being bored out of your mind, then I suppose you could watch this movie(?), but I wouldn't advise it.

"Sorry, Thanks" is an independent film that takes place in San Francisco. The story focuses on two main characters, Max, a loser with a dead-end job and no plans, and Kira, an artist who, according to her friends, settles for less than what she's worth. Kira is in a period of transition, having just gotten out of a long relationship and her old job. She is looking for the next step in her life when she decides on a crap job and has a couple of romantic encounters with the incredibly unappealing Max despite his having a girlfriend who loves him dearly and treats him well. The film is a series of scenes which were, for the most part, completely unnecessary to the plot, or repetitive, driving in the point that Max is a lazy bum with no morals and no motivation, such as the scene at the beginning in which his bearded friend gives him a ride and tells him how lazy his, or when he and a group of friends are eating and they tell him that he has no morals. I felt that the first half of the film could have been removed and the plot would have been more concrete and the characters just as understood.This film was not emotionally appealing in any way, it does not come off as comedic as the director seemed to think, and the acting and cinematography were uncomfortable to watch. The idea, from what director Dia Sokol said in a Q and A, was to put together a film displaying a very normal, everyday existence. The characters based on people that she and others involved on the project knew personally in San Francisco and the title is meant to be something so common that one would normally never think about it. To achieve her goal of creating a nondescript environment, she wanted to keep the movie fairly devoid of chemistry or romance, which she certainly achieved, to negative results. The lack of passion from characters and of a conclusion to the abrupt ending leave this film without any particular intrigue. The viewer isn't made to care much about any of the characters and there is no apparent moral. It simply falls flat.

If you're an Andrew Bujalski fan, this is not to be missed. Bujalski's in top-form here (and he gets a bigger acting part than usual), playing a friend who has zero patience for his lamer by the day man-child BFF, but all the patience in the world for his beard.Remember Wiley Wiggins (from "Dazed and Confused")? He's no longer the scrawny freshman, but he's still a man-child here. He plays pathetic like a real pro, and it's truly funny stuff. To its credit, this movie doesn't use the man-child character the way most bromances do. It just sets him up to implode. And we watch. Made me cringe, but it was also a welcome relief.All around, I'd say "Sorry, Thanks" takes the best impulses of a "buddy comedy" and a "relationship movie" combined, but without all the Hollywood fluff tricks. This movie is just something much more interesting. Highly recommend.