The Station Agent
Director: Thomas McCarthy
Year Released: 2003
Rating: 2.0
Bare-bones script about a vertically challenged train fanatic and the contrived relationship he develops with an aggressive food vendor and a depressed artist. The characters are not radically developed and their 'being together' is mostly due to the food vendor's crush on the artist - when it comes to the third act, it resorts to obvious drama, like suicide attempts, drunken yelling and the ever-useful red-neck locals who exist merely to be ignorant. Low-key movies that are unrushed and go according to their own rules can be quite pleasurable, but this is never gets into any sort of gear - by the end, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to think 'happened' to the main characters: Is it simply that we have to recognize that everyone around us has a cross of some kind to bear?
