Expired (2007)

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

A romantic story, but also tragic. The nasty ways of Jay are hard to watch, though there is a history to it and in another way he seems to be trying to... change? be good? I don't know, but Jason Patric does make some humanity shine through at moments. In the end it isn't enough and when Claire (wonderfully played by Samantha Morton) discovers his internet porn habit, she (after one last 'try') feels whatever little magic there was or may have been, it's surely gone now...I found it all - this second time around - hard to watch, again. Sometimes such an effort pays off, but I'm not sure that 'Expired' really does. This slice of life, combined with the day to day practice of parking ticket officers and some sad stories going on in their private lives, is a bit (too) much.Another thing I must mention is the camera work; was it a financial 'thing' to use just one camera switching from character to character and event to event, or an artistic choice? In any case, for me that didn't really work and distracted me from the actual drama going on.6 out of 10.

This movie was absolutely wonderful. At times hard to watch because it was so honest, it had humor, sadness, well rounded characters and was unique. Jason Patric was fantastic, the best performance I've ever seen from him. How he managed to get us to like him even though he was such an awful human being is a testament to his fine acting. I was not as impressed with Samantha Morton's performance but they work off each other so wonderfully and have such chemistry that you can't help but love them together and it works. Illeana Douglas was terrific too... you wonder why you don't see her working more.Just loved it. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't like this movie other than they just don't get it.

Some meter maids are men. Thus the line of work leads Jay (Jason Patric) to run into Claire (Samantha Morton). Both are in the business of giving out parking tickets on Los Angeles streets. Claire is a sweet person, who is willing to provide drivers with a break once in a while. She can make allowances. Unfortunately, when she serves tickets, a lot of people are just as mad at her as they'd be at anybody else in her job. She gets the finger, is yelled at, cars sideswipe her. With Jay it's another story. Nasty encounters with furious drivers are barely enough to satisfy his endless need to express pent up anger, and rather than diffuse conflicts, he foments them.Jay lives alone in a sterile apartment where he masturbates to phone sex arranged on the Internet. It has been a long time since he has had contact with a real woman. Claire lives in a cozy place with her mother (Teri Garr), who is muted by a stroke. They eat Chinese takeout; she puts up decorative lights. It's Christmas.When Jay starts to show interest in Claire and eventually takes her on dates, the action of this movie grows more cringe-worthy from one scene to the next. The kindly, patient Claire is too inexperienced and needy to be able to admit that Jay is an asshole, or to recognize even when he tells her his story and she sees him momentarily run into his son (whose car he tickets), how weird and dysfunctional this man is. To the audience, everything Jay says is borderline offensive. He is a bundle of narrow macho defenses, unconvincing superiority and that anger.Jay is trying. He brings flowers. He kisses her. When Claire's mother suddenly dies, he comes over to help. But even moments like this tend to turn rather ugly with Jay, and perverse. Is he helping or exploiting? He has little evident control over himself. He begins to be affectionate and it turns insulting.Garr also plays Claire's mother's crazy sister; both are fresh and peculiar performances.Essential to this tale are Claire's and Jay's different performance evaluations at work. If it weren't for those, we might think they're both losers. But one is and one isn't; one is redeemable and the other is hopeless; and the parking department finally tells us which is which.This is a fairly distinctive piece of work in which the laughs are all uncomfortable. It's also the kind of movie that's very specialized in how much of life it shows us. it's obvious to begin with that people don't very often reveal their positive side when being served with a parking ticket (the film is misleading in almost implying that people tend to be present when parking tickets are given out; of course most aren't). Unfortunately the main characters have problems rather than depths. The mother is plucky, but monosyllabic; her sister is a shrill annoyance. Where are the real people, the ordinary people, in this world? This is where Patric and Morton come in to save, somewhat, the day. Both are interesting actors bold in taking unsympathetic roles, and both are able to give a texture to their limited characters that makes them troublingly alive, even as facets of a rounded portrayal aren't provided by the script.There are very minor characters who seem nice, or normal, and one best friend who is helpful and honest to Claire: it's she, along with the parking department, who provides the essential perspective. Indeed, at the end the perspective is perhaps a little too clear. Clair and Jay may have been left in doubt, but the audience has been left nothing to ponder.Ultimately this story reads as writer-director Cecilia Miniucchi's pitying, but nonetheless very jaundiced, feminine view of certain extreme aspects of the problems men have with women. Neil LaBute has depicted many assholes, but as chauvinistic and boorish as LaBute's men are, they are not as asocial and dysfunctional as Jay.It's interesting to compare Expired with Delbert Mann's seminal work of pop verismo (written by Paddy Chayevsky), the 1955 film 'Marty,' which is about another lonely couple groping toward each other. Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair are both shy, depressed, lonely people who need someone. Their scenes together are also cringe-inducing, in a way, and now seem rather corny, but the conception of their plight comes out of a sympathetic humanism. Expired is an ugly world that hovers on the edge of caricature--grotesque as it seems, in 'Marty's' terms, to laugh at a paralyzed woman or a hostile sister. It's hard to see the couple's work context as very much more than a joke framework given a realistic edge. It's never certain if we're supposed to be sympathetic to these people and their jobs or distance them, while looking on with a kind of appalled curiosity. Are these people? Well, maybe, sometimes.Claire begs Jay to be nice to her, insisting that she cares for him. But the more Jay touts his own niceness the more obviously insensitive he seems. Jason Patric's performance is chilling in its spot-on unpleasantness.It's not so much that, compared to Chayevsky's and Mann's day, these are different times, though they certainly are, as that the contexts of comedy have been so altered that decency and kindness are harder and harder to access through such means.

Ever since I saw EXPIRED at its premiere at Sundance, a few weeks ago, I haven't been able to get it out my mind. The two main characters, played by Samantha Morton and Jason Patric, are so real, so funny, so honest and so human and so well performed that they went deep into my heart. I wish all independent films were this honest, this intelligent, this well written and directed and this human. I can't wait to see it again in the theaters and no wonder why it got the best reviews at Sundnace! The story is so simple and yet so captivating. The essence of this original love story among these two people, whom I have never seen portrayed in such an original way on the screen before, is universal. We can all relate to it. ASnd learn from it too! Go people, go to see it when it comes out and let the film take you into a heart felt journey of passion, hurt, love, goodness and surprise.