Jackpot

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Filled with bleak, beautiful Hopperesque tableaus and strange characters whose lives intersect.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It's a movie full of quietly assured flourishes: elegant camera compositions, wonderful uses of silence and an entertainingly eclectic cast, including Peggy Lipton as a sensitive bartender.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Its doomed portrait of guileless dreamers may be found lacking in plot activity and empathetic characters. But for anyone interested in a movie that wipes clean the grungy patina of self-delusionment, Jackpot hits solid pay dirt.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Gries and Morris act up a storm as the optimistically named Sunny Holiday and his long-suffering manager.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The acting is primo and the cinematography, on high-definition video by the gifted M. David Mullen, is striking.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

Potential irony is everywhere in this movie's subtly surreal situations and candy-colored imagery.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Bummer theater.

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

The more we realize that we're stuck in the company of a totally relentless loser, the drearier the entire experience becomes.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

It's as self consciously arty and fragmented as ''Twin Falls'' was controlled and organically built.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Barely enough chuckles to keep from running out of gas. Yet it's the sharpest-looking movie shot so far on digital video, outdistancing even "The Anniversary Party."

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

The filmmakers throw in an extended flatulence routine and enough graphic references to female anatomy to make "The Vagina Monologues" blush.

USA Today Claudia Plig

Essentially a one-gag film.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Jackpot ends up a lot like Sunny's singing: pointless and more than a little flat.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

In its mastery of its moments, Jackpot has charm, humor and poignancy. What it lacks is necessity. There's a sense in which we're always waiting for it to kick in.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Jackpot has much that is sweet and funny, but it is not overly original--and it is overly long and not as coherent as it might be.

Variety Ken Eisner

A candidate for quiet cult status.

New Times (L.A.) Luke Y. Thompson

Where "Twin Falls" was slow, brooding and haunting in a manner that fit the subject matter -- the imminent death of one of the principal characters -- Jackpot is just slow and uneventful, like a cross-country Greyhound bus trip that never stops.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The movie is smart in small ways, yet an underachiever in big ones -- but it will probably play very well on television. On the big screen, it's distended and diffuse.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

This dogged journey of self-delusion is interrupted periodically by snippets of footage...that promise a dark revelation that would give an edge to the otherwise tedious goings-on but, sadly, never materializes.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Shows that there's a limit to how much mileage one can get from offbeat, creepy and symbiotic.

Portland Oregonian Barry Johnson

A very depressing movie.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

The mood is hermetic to the point of claustrophobia, embellished with a sense of everyday surrealism indebted to David Lynch.

Village Voice Amy Taubin

Michael and Mark Polish's debut feature, "Twin Falls, Idaho," was a cloying oddball love story involving adult male Siamese twins; their follow-up, Jackpot, is another piece of whimsical Americana.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

Nobody hits the jackpot here, certainly not filmmakers Michael and Mark Polish, whose audacious, empathic first film, "Twin Falls Idaho," showed such promise.