Rating: 
Summary: extremely good
Review: This is one of those movies I really like, where seemingly unrelated characters are tied together, without their knowledge, by a series of events that have a profound impact on all of their lives. Matthew McConoughey is a public defender who is sure that he makes his own luck, and tells it to a man at the bar who is sure that the other shoe is going to drop. McConoughey is involved in an accident that makes his charmed life turn into the more sinister guilty one of those he defends in court. The man at the bar, in the meantime, is head of a department with a man who is always cheerful. To win a bet to wipe the smile off the guy's face, he lays him off. In a third story, a young woman is a housecleaner, with an enormous amount of faith in the universe, and that good things happen to good people. Till she gets hurt in a freak accident, and questions her beliefs. There is a lot of talking (as denoted by the title) and not much action but it is still an entertaining little movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Thirteen tedious therapy sessions
Review: The film starts out promising but inevitably gives way to an all-too familiar format in which we see various peoples lives connect with each other. Its a subdued version of 'Magnolia' but in that film at least were some interesting experiments with music within the film. In 'Conversations', bad sound engineering and a poor score only serve to hinder this pastiche of apologetic narratives. The film eventually gets caught up in its own tediousness enough so as to not have anything resonate. People touch-and-go in strangers' lives and have deep conversations that only a recent film-school grad could imagine.
Rating:
Summary: Thirteen Fortune Cookies
Review: Jill Sprecher's "13 conversations about one thing" is about the lives of five New Yorkers, whose lives revolve in their own little spheres, circumscribed by their work and lifestyle, but these spheres ricochet off each other at several points in the movie, Magnolia-style. When Troy (Matthew McConaughey) does a hit-and-run on Beatrice (Clea DuVall), he seriously injures her. Beatrice ends up hospitalized and Troy ends up traumatized. In the closing sequence, Patricia (Amy Iriving), sitting inside a subway compartment, looks at Gene (Alan Arkin) on the platform, and smiles - the train then hurries away. These are chance collissions, and the lives of the characters are affected sometimes in essential and sometimes in trivial ways. The movie is demarcated by thirteen captions - "Fortune smiles on some and laughs at others", "Ignorance is bliss", "Once I knew a happy man. His happiness was a curse." The captions are like fortune cookies - they relate to the characters in the movie, but they are generic and non-directed. They could be about somebody in the movie, but they could also be about anybody. The characters go about their daily lives, and there is more than just conversation. When the conversations happen, they are normal conversations - conversations of regular New Yorkers about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So, what is the "one thing" that the "conversations" are about? It would seem that Sprecher is trying to tackle the difficult topic of happiness. How does one find happiness? Does it come suddenly as a realization? Should one obsessively chase it? Or should one let happiness come by and by, and just keep on the sunny side of life? Is contentment the same as happiness? Overall, the tone of the movie is heavy and slow-moving, like the topic deserves, but accurate, gripping portrayals by the actors bring the story to life.
Walker (John Turturro) is a college professor with a mid-life crisis - he feels that his life is too contented, and he wants that extra something out of life, that je-ne-sais-quoi. Walker goes out and has an affair with one of his colleagues Helen (Barbara Sukowa). Particia (Amy Irving), his wife, is left hanging as he moves out of the home he shares with her. Her source of happiness is Walker, but Walker is himself not happy. Is Walker right to leave a life of contentment and make the big leap? Should he have instead settled for what he already had? Meanwhile, in his classes, one of his students, would like to know his grade. He needs to pass the class to make it into medical school. As he proves later in the movie, the key to his happiness is Walker. The key to Walker's happiness is Helen. How do you achieve happiness when your happiness is dependent on somebody else's happiness, something that is even more uncontrollable than your own happiness? Troy is a prosecutor, who has just won a case. A case won is cause for celebration, and he is spreading the joy around at a bar. Gene is the lucky recipient of the happiness, but Gene is old and cynical - cynical that Troy could really be happy, cynical but right. On the way home, Troy hits a woman (Beatrice played by Clea DuVall), but he drives away without knowing whether the woman even survived. He escapes with just a cut on his head, but he is not able to escape the memory. Troy, the public prosecutor, who always thought he saw the difference between the killers and himself, is not so sure any more - he is reduced to freshening the cut as he shaves, a distinctive dripping reminder everywhere he is. As he confronts the possibility of having killed someone, his moral universe collapses, and with the collapse of the moral universe collapses his happiness. Gene (Alan Arkin) hopes to be the next vice-president of his insurance company - he has been chasing success all his life, and he is the archetypical hard-driving, hard-working hard-.... The problem is that Gene is a dysfunctional father and husband. His son is a juvenile delinquent, an addict. Ultimately, his job is all that Gene has left. How do you deal with chasing success obsessively all your life, and then finding that someone else has won the lottery? Wade (William Wise) works for Gene, but he comes in to work with a smile and leaves with a smile. Although he spends his time auditing other people's misfortunes, and is certainly not as successful, he is happier. How do you deal with an employee, who is obsessively happy as you are obsessively work-obsessed? Is being contented the key to happiness after all? Beatrice is a house-maid whose life seems to be alright. A childhood expeince convinves here that she is in a state of bliss. Is that the same as ignorance? Her life is completely altered when Troy does a hit-and-run on her. She is hospitalized, and coming out of the hospital, she finds her life altered completely altered. Not only does her life creep only slowly back to normal, she finds herself out of a job. She begins to ponder about what she may have done to deserve it, and we ponder with her. Why did tragedy strike such a double blow to Beatrice? Does a life of contentment leave you blindsided? Is happiness all up to chance? "13 conversations" raises interesting questions, but of course, gives no answers. Some people find happiness, some people don't. Happiness finds some people, and sadness finds others, but everybody is seeking happiness. In their own unique ways, just like everybody else.
Rating:
Summary: Make that 14 conversations...
Review: A brilliantly conceived and executed meditation on life, the pursuit of happiness, and fate. What is the "one thing" of the title? It's actually not one thing but several, and the genius of the film is that it makes you--and those watching with you--want to talk about what it means, thus generating a 14th conversation. Alan Arkin is remarkable in this movie, but it's hard to single out any one aspect of the film as better than any other. The script is literate and intelligent; the performances crisp; the structure is unusual and finally persuades viewers of its inevitability. A rare film that manages to evoke emotions and provoke thinking. Buy it! Watch it! Talk about it!
Rating: 
Summary: "If things are bad, they can always get worse"
Review: " Thirteen Conversations About 1 Thing" is like 60's French Existentialist film on Quaaludes. The main message seems to be "If things are bad, they can always get worse". and "If things are good, they will get bad". How to make yourself worried and depressed in a hurry!
Rating: 
Summary: It's hard to say...
Review: I'm giving this movie 4 stars cause it's not that bad to earn 3 stars, but it's not good enough to receive 5 stars. Maybe I need to watch it again. I'm open to an indie film like this one, but it didn't make that much sense to me. We have 4 characters that don't know each other, but through fate, they interact with one another. The ONLY strong performance is by Matthew McConaughey. This is by far one of his best performances of his career! His character Troy is a successful DA who hits a housecleaner, played by Clea DuVall. McConaughey's character thinks he has killed her, but what he doesn't know is that she didn't die. He's agonizing for weeks and he feels so guilty about it, he's torturing himself. Towards the end of the movie, I got confused on the timeline of the movie. It was confusing for me, but like I said, I might have to watch it again for it to make sense to me.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad. Only the editing could be better.
Review: This is a quite French styled movie and nicesly scripted, only with some gliches garbled by uncleared editing. But in general, this is a good movie and should be watched when you have the energy to stay focused and wouldn't fall asleep during watching the slow going of it. Casting is good, script is good, performance is good, except the "circling" which linked every part of the whole story together. The deputy DA and the girl he hit and run parts should be a little bit more clearly scripted and developed. All in all, this is a rarely good movie about Life itself, nicely scrpted, performed with a feather touch to the heart, leaving you with no such great feelings as any great movie that might cast certain impact in your realistic life, only shaking your head when you stood up to take it from the dvd player.
Rating:
Summary: Exceptional movie but may not appeal to all
Review: This movie is about life and our perception of it. There are 4 groupings of lives we see and at different points they all intersect, not necessarily in a way you'd expect. There's the lawyer in the DA's office proud, about putting another bad guy away. He is proud of his good work.
Then there's the manager in an insurance company. He is bitter and resentful of everyone and thing around him. He can't see the good in anything.
There's a young cleaning lady, that buoys up her co-workers bitter moods, that feels she is alive for a reason.
Then there's the physic's teacher that has become as rigid as his theorems and plods along each day. Ironically, these people have all something in common, their pursuit of happiness. Some live their lives with the sense of some purpose (if it is not there their world crumbles). Others look at people like this as fools and live to rain on their parade and are only to happy to prove them wrong. However without these people (to complain about) they too have little to live for. Then there are others who see no purpose, nor are aware that others do either. Which one are you?
Rating:
Summary: does require some concentration, but rewarding...
Review: Four stars only because there were some slow moments that could've undergone better editing...but otherwise a worthy film. This is a character- and subtext-intensive slice-of-life film, there isn't that much plot to speak of but the characters, dialogue, and cinematography make up for it. Subtext and characters are your typical modern/post-modern variety: they have suddenly been shaken up and come to realize that, "whoa, there's something wrong with this picture, with my preconceptions about myself and others and life in general." Underlying premise: to steal from Socrates, wisdom is knowing that you know nothing, having no preconceptions. Adding from Zen: knowing that knowledge itself is elusive; that there is as Bob Dylan once put it, "life and life only" which can neither be predicted, controlled nor even rationally understood...just simply must be lived, preferably with as much kindness to oneself and others as you can muster. WARNING: the DVD version has horribly low sound, and no English-subtitle option to counteract it! What in the hell is wrong with some film companies, why do they put out these annoyingly low-volume films that, even with my home theatre volume on max, youcan barely hear or understand?
Rating:
Summary: profound and moving
Review: In "13 Conversations About One Thing," the "one thing" that everyone keeps having conversations about is whether or not happiness is possible in a world that seems to be made up of little more than a series of random events haphazardly strung together. Just as everything seems to be going your way, an unexpected and unforeseen "event" may knock you completely off course, thereby depriving you of that "happiness" you felt, moments before, lay just within your grasp. This view of life seems to be rather popular among filmmakers this year, having also been explored in some depth in the sci-fi thriller "Signs" this summer. "13 Conversations" takes a more low-keyed approach, providing a series of interlocking vignettes from everyday life that, when pieced together, provide a possible answer to life's ultimate question. Writers Karen and Jill Sprecher (the latter also directed the film) have fashioned a complex narrative involving a number of characters whose paths cross in bizarre and often shocking ways. In fact, the film is rather unique in that the structure actually BECOMES the theme, as we discover that events that seem random to us - and indeed to the characters - at the outset actually come together to form a meaningful pattern. As one character says at the end of the film, life really only makes sense when we take the time to look back on it, for it is only from that perspective that we are able to discern the overarching pattern and meaning of it all. All of the many characters in the film are struggling not only to define happiness but to attain a measure of it for themselves in a world in which they are made to feel like mere helpless pawns, blown about by the whims of "fortune," "luck," "chance," "fate," whatever one wants to call the "power" that seems to determine the courses our lives end up taking. Matthew McConaughey plays a handsome and successful public defender who feels that he has achieved happiness in his career only to have it ripped from him when he runs over a young woman at a corner and leaves the scene of the crime. The woman herself (Clea Duvall), before the accident, is a sincere believer in a higher power that watches over us and guides us along the path it most wants us to take. Yet, after the accident, she loses that belief, coming instead to see life as a chaotic jumble of chance circumstances, devoid of meaning and purpose. John Turturro plays a college professor suffering from the classic symptoms of major midlife crisis. He abandons his wife (Amy Irving), conducts a meaningless affair with a coworker, and finds no relevance or fulfillment in his teaching job or in the students he could be guiding and helping. As a Physics teacher, he knows that the universe is NOT random, that it does, in fact, operate within a series of finely proscribed natural laws. Perhaps this is why he is the one character who actually tries to buck "fate" and to take proactive measures to change the course of his life. The problem is that the course change brings him no more satisfaction than did his previous life path. Perhaps, most fascinating of all is Alan Arkin, a businessman so unhappy with his own life that he takes pleasure in ruining the life of a co-worker who seems somehow to have attained the happiness that has eluded the rest of us. "13 Conversations About One Thing" is definitely a movie that grows on you. Like "Go" a few years back, the makers of this film respect the intelligence of their audience. They gather the strands of their story slowly, thereby allowing us to make connections and to eventually come up with the theme on our own. As the film's director, Jill Sprecher never hurries us along. In fact, much of the profundity of the screenplay is brought out by the elegiac, lyrical tone she establishes throughout. The quiet, unhurried pacing of the scenes puts the audience into a reflective state of mind that helps us see beneath the deceptively simple surface of the film's action. McConaughey, Duvall, Turturro and Irving are all outstanding in this film, but it is Arkin who soars in the key role of the disgruntled businessman. His sad-faced, understated portrayal of a man so caught up in petty bitterness that he will willfully destroy a harmless fellow human being to make himself feel a bit less miserable is shattering in its brilliance. He has truly never been better. Ditto for the other actors, for this is a great ensemble cast, even though most of the performers never appear in any scenes together. "13 Conversations About One Thing" is a film that feels like it has REALLY BEEN THOUGHT OUT ahead of time, not thrown together in haphazard fashion as so many other films appear to be. And that, given the theme of the film, is exactly the point.
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