Melvin Goes To Dinner - 2003 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Michael Blieden, Matt Price
Director:  Bob Odenkirk

Melvin Goes To Dinner is what I call a low-stakes/high-stakes film - low-stakes, in that it doesn't involve car chases, terminally ill people's lists, or the end of the world, but high-stakes in that it asks questions about love, career, and family that tend to be the most momentous decisions First Worlders make.  Adapted from a play (and it's pretty obvious that it must've first existed in this form), it goes overboard on cinema verite techniques, but there are still a lot of good choices.  The best thing about the film is that all four main characters appear to have actual lives, not Hollywood or Woody Allen/Noah Baumbach-y lives - everything that happens in the story feels like it actually happened to someone we might know.