Load of rubbish!!

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

She must have gotten hold of my registered screenplay 'XPIRED' synopsis somehow or talked to someone. Same film title (almost), same plot, but more of a lame chick flick. I'm am glad she got it made though, The bottom line tells part of the story From BoxOfficeMojo.com TOTAL LIFETIME GROSSES Domestic: $29,796 45.8% + Foreign: $35,207 54.2% = Worldwide: $65,003 So I guess this was an Indie Sundance trial balloon. I might come up with a better one someday that will make some money. I guess the acting was decent enough but was a little too lame to waste time and money to see it and maybe good too watch if you are one of those rainy day depressed moods.

What an astonishing performance from Mr. Patric!The movie - as it starts - seems to be pretty boring and simple. Maybe a bit too silly. Then Jason Patric appears and the story gets more interesting. It is enough to make you keep watching. Shortly you find yourself to be amazed by Mr. Patric's unique character. At this point it is hardly decidable if he is a real asshole or just a man with an unsuccessful life. Later it becomes clear that the director is a woman, so she wants this character to be a real asshole. Anyway, Mr. Patric puts so much reality into his character that you keep wondering how could this grotesque man be so real. If you're a man, you'll find the essence of yourself in "Jay". ..and this is very-very surprising after all.I've never though of Mr. Patric as one of the best actors, but he surely is. I would give him an Oscar for this performance without any doubt!

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.

The movie Expired is really unlike most of the feature films you'll see these days. It has an intensity, a committed vision that grabs you and holds you in its grips for the entire hour and a half or so. Of films in recent years that share this quality, I can think of Todd Solondz' "Happiness".Expired is the story of two L.A. parking officers, or "meter maids", one female and one male, who meet on the job and have an increasingly dysfunctional, mercurial relationship. Samantha Morton plays it extremely sweet, wide-eyed and gentle as Claire, a meter maid who lives with her stroke-incapacitated, essentially mute mother and hates having to ruin peoples' days with tickets. Jason Patric is Jay, a taut, seething, bull-shouldered ball of defensive machismo in a blue uniform with a ticket-gun and a hilarious dark mustache. He likes slapping parking tickets on folks the way some LA cops like cracking heads.The first two thirds or so of the film especially are darkly comedic, and the purposefully stylized elements- lighting, dialogue, supporting actors, visual action, set design, musical score- create a very sharp, bittersweet, somewhat tragic kind of comedy, like the best of the Coen Brothers films. This isn't broad American multiplex comedy, this is comedy that comes from true pathos, sadness and the small calamities of life. While Morton's face shows sensitivity and vulnerability- two of her big strengths- Patric's Jay character is fantastic because he offsets the angry disciplinarian guy with loose moments of real charm and also sarcastic, almost whimsical humor.The film progresses with a few traditional "plot points" that serve to accelerate the conflicts and create moments of challenge and decision for the characters, but really the film is also greatly a close-up examination of the attempted close relationship of two equally extreme opposites- the "naive, yearning do-gooder" and the "previously injured, prickly, defensive bully." At its core it's just a film about human beings- what they have, what they want and need, and the different places they're coming from emotionally.Visually, the film was shot in a crisp, almost beautiful way, at once seeming straightforwardly no-nonsense and yet heavily atmospheric. A lot of the production design strongly complements the film- from the richly hued, antique-laden apartment Claire and her Mom live in to the various LA coffee shops and streetscapes. The musical scoring is also highly evocative and appropriate- with the best of it reminding me of great melodic work Michael Penn and Jon Brion did in P.T. Anderson's film 'Hard Eight'.Ileana Douglas is perfect as Claire's decent-hearted, energetic busybody neighbor and Teri Garr is rock solid as the mute, wheelchair-bound Mom but hilarious and deliciously campy in a second role as the Mom's crazy sister in Pomona! With its strong vision and execution, 'Expired' should certainly put writer/director Cecilia Miniucchi on the Hollywood map.