REVIEW: THIRTEEN CONVERSATIONS ABOUT ONE THING - After seeing Sunshine State and Tadpole, it's fitting that my arthouse trifecta ended on Sunday with this intelligent, engrossing film from director Jill Sprecher (Clockwatchers). Like Sayles' movie, Thirteen Conversations follows multiple characters who are eventually connected to each other -- although in this case they aren't brought together because they inhabit the same little town. In fact, they live in perhaps the one city where people have a reasonable expectation of anonymity and isolation -- Manhattan. But this isn't the romanticized version of the city that Tadpole presents. John Tuturro's character, a by-the-book physics professor, has his equilibrium tipped when he is mugged and badly beaten. Troy (Matthew McConaughey) is a hot-shot lawyer in the D.A.'s office who learns just how fragile his own moral code is when he accidentally hits a young woman with his car on an empty street, then flees the scene, convinced she is dead. The young woman is named Beatrice (Clea DuVall). We see her before the accident, cleaning rich peoples' houses, explaining to her lazy co-worker that life won't always be bad because she knows someone is looking out for her; understandably, her outlook isn't quite so optimistic after the accident. All three of these characters were content before a traumatic event forced them to re-evaluate their lives. Now they can never be content. They can never go back. They're all searching for happiness -- the "one thing" that all characters, all people, are ultimately searching for. The fourth character in Sprecher's series of vignettes is Gene, a insurance claims manager with a drug-addicted son who gets so fed up with one of his happy-go-lucky employees that he "downsizes" him just to try and wipe the smile off the guy's face. In terms of theme and structure, Thirteen Conversations is undeniably similar to both Altman's Short Cuts and Pulp Fiction. Sprecher effectively utilizes a non-linear construction to unite her characters just as Tarantino did. For example, when we see Gene and Troy meet in a bar at the beginning of the film, we are actually seeing the end of Gene's story, while Troy's fall has yet to take place. I think it's more interesting, however, to juxtapose Sprecher's film with M. Night Shyamalan's current hit, Signs, because both movies explicitly deal with establishing a sense of order within chaos, and finding connections in seemingly unrelated people and events. Both filmmakers purport to show that the world is not as random as we think and that all of our actions have consequences. The difference is that Shyamalan puts his faith in a higher power who is pulling all of the strings, while Sprecher takes a humanist approach. When Beatrice stands on a street corner looking for a sign to tell her that everything will be fine, that there is goodness in the world, it isn't God who answers. It's a man standing on the opposite corner who smiles at her from across the street. Thirteen Conversations is about those little connections -- how a simple gesture, whether it be a smile or a wave at a woman sitting dejectedly on the subway, can make the difference in someone's life and instill hope.

Who got it right: Almost every critic who reviewed it. "The movie is brilliant, really. It is philosophy, illustrated through everyday events," writes Roger Ebert in his 4-star review. The New Republic's Stanley Kauffman says, "The basis of the art in Sprecher's film is that from the start she knew the tone, the scale of acting, the timbre of dialogue -- the key -- that the film needed in order to be itself."

Who got it wrong: EW's Ty Burr, who ridiculously lumps Thirteen Conversations into the same category with another "connection" movie, the sappy Grand Canyon.

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