Please Give (2010)

At a glance:
Writer/director Nicole Holofcener expertly creates characters that portray the difference between caring, pity, and indifference in this gentle New-York-based comedy/drama

Our review (with spoilers):
Wonderful slice of life dramedy about Kate and Alex (Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt), a middle aged couple  who live quite nicely by buying furniture from the children of recently deceased New Yorkers. Kate’s got a conscience, however, that is being exposed by her incessant profit-taking. It isn’t helped when she and Alex buy the next door apartment and have to deal with the ‘direct’ elderly woman (Ann Morgan Guilbert) who lives in it, along with her very different twenty-something daughters.

There are poignant moments as well as some laugh out loud ones in this gentle drama. Keener and Platt are both wonderful, but it was especially great to see Guilbert (who started her career long ago as Millie Helper on The Dick Van Dyke Show) still going. There also good supporting work from Rebecca Hall, Elise Ivy, and Sarah Steele. This is my first acquaintance with writer/director Nicole Holofcener, and it was a pleasant one.

Rating:  3 of 4

Other reviewers said:
"Nicole Holofcener, who writes the most interesting female characters in the movies, delivers another dazzling role to her muse, Catherine Keener, in Please Give, a delightfully dry dramedy about guilt."
- Roger Moore (Orlando Sentinel)