Cashback, a [Brief] Review/Critique

I've been seeing mention of the movie "Cashback" floating around on the web a few times, now--the first about a week ago. Someone mentioned they found it when browsing the instant movies on netflix, and sure enough it was easy to find.

The beginning pulled me in by the sheer artistic-ness of the movie, and the narration over a silent scene. A breakup at the beginning was faintly different, but the fact that our main character (Ben) was a blossoming artist in art school only added to the obviousness that this was going to be a "love story". Unfortunately, most of the movie intrigued me more because of the artistic-ness, than anything else. The love story part was long in the coming, as we watched Ben through his insomnia...to the point that I wondered if they were trying to make the audience understand how much time could drag out when boring things are occurring. Then the time-freezing started. When he first talked about it, Ben told us about the time freezing as though this were his way of coping with the insomnia and extra hours in his day. I'm a sucker for Fight Club, Running With Scissors, Shutter Island, etc. and I was hoping this was another movie that would dive into the mental side of things, but it didn't really, which I suppose was a bit of a disappointment. With only about 20 minutes of the movie left, I was wondering if there was actually a plot, and if the movie had hoped to accomplish anything other than showing off the artistic side of the female form (many, many female forms, might I add...). I won't give away the ending, but apparently the writers realized they needed to tie things up eventually, so they got the job done. Artistically, if nothing else.

Overall, I liked the movie. Despite the fact that it seemed to drag on at parts in the middle, there was something about it that kept me watching, almost as if I knew there had to be some good bits in there, somewhere. If you just want to see an indie film that really pulls out the artistic side of life, or you're a bit of an insomniac yourself, it's certainly worth a watch.

***Note: Something I wasn't quite expecting was the sheer amount of female nudity in the film. Artistically, it works. And I'm sure if you're into watching naked girls, it works for that, too...