Three Days of Rain: Critic Reviews

Inspired by Chekhov's short stories, Three Days of Rain belongs to the now-familiar genre of overlapping tales of urban desperation.

The real subversion is director Michael Meredith's insistence on not capturing interactions between human beings in a frame; with some forethought he could have filmed the actors individually and spliced.

The ends of each story work beautifully, but getting there requires traveling some washed-out roads, despite the imprimatur of executive producer Wim Wenders.

In the genre of interlocking stories about lonely lives, Three Days of Rain is only a sketch compared to the power of Rodrigo Garcia's Nine Lives, which continues to grow in my memory.

Rain strives for a Magnolia-type tapestry of quiet desperation. But after 90 unremitting minutes of badly acted, atrociously written histrionic misery, pic leaves one praying for frogs.

A well-written and -acted drama that's also unrelentingly grim.

Meredith has created a mood piece that avoids self-indulgence as it explores the self-indulgent nature of a handful of diverse people, caught up in the major and minor miseries of life's foolish ironies and genuine woes.

A hypnotic mood piece -- where characters' blank existential stares are framed through rain-beaded car windows -- and a murky riff on urban Midwestern ennui (by way of the Russian steppes).

It's simply a pleasure watching these seasoned pros, a collection of recognizable faces, if not exactly household names, massage these characters and bring them and their stories to life.

As a filmmaker, Meredith has a strong, if derivative, visual sense, although his screenplay is packed with too many cliches and familiar riffs.