For Your Viewing Pleasure....

I have mentioned before that my poor state, New Jersey, is so often misunderstood, the butt of jokes, so I like to take every opportunity to highlight positive things about my rather wee state. This afternoon, as I was watching the T and V, a movie came on, a great NJ movie, that I want to share. Not a mobster in sight, no urban blight, not one refinery to be seen, but rather a glimpse of a different side of the Garden State. The movie is The Station Agent, and it is, without a doubt, one of my favorite movies. Set in NJ, filmed in NJ, it is a small, lovely movie about loneliness and friendship, sweet and touching and, at times, quite funny. A must see if you are not familiar with it, a movie with three great performances by Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson and Bobby Cannavale, a movie that I think will just make you smile. If you have that Netflix thingie (a truly wonderful invention BTW), I recommend you put it in your queue.

A description from the movie's web site...

Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage) is a man trying to live life on his own terms. Looking only to be left alone, he takes up residence in an rural town's old train depot. But much like the station agents that occupied small town depots before him, he finds himself reluctantly becoming enmeshed in the lives of his neighbors, especially Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), a forty-year-old artist struggling with the break up of her marriage, and Joe (Bobby Cannavale) a thirty-year-old with a talent for cooking and an insatiable hunger for conversation - whether anyone wants to talk to him or not.

The STATION AGENT is about three people with nothing in common, except their shared solitude, until chance circumstances bring their lives together. Before long, from this forgotten depot, this mismatched threesome forges an unlikely bond, which ultimately reveals that even isolation is better shared.