SnoopyStyle Maria Coughlin (Adrienne Shelly) announces to her parents her plans to quit high school, pregnancy, and intention to marry her boyfriend Anthony. Her boyfriend refuses and her father drops dead soon from the shock. Her mother kicks her out of the house. She meets Matthew Slaughter (Martin Donovan) who takes her in. He's an electronics repairman who hates TV's cultural influence. He quits his job and fights with his father. He steals a hand grenade from his veteran father. Maria and Matthew start a relationship based on respect, admiration, and trust = love.Hal Hartley's mannered dialogue is similar to Wes Anderson but it doesn't have his later polish. This doesn't have quite the comedic tone needed. What it has is the magnetic Adrienne Shelly. She keeps this movie alive when it starts to sputter with its insistent style. There also has Edie Falco as the older sister. Hal Hartley definitely has a style and seems intent on using it no matter what.

Jackson Booth-Millard When I heard the title in the book of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die I wrongly assumed it might be a foreign film, it was certainly an obscure probably not that well known film I wouldn't have heard of without the book, and one I was willing to try too. Basically Maria Coughlin (Waitress actress and director Adrienne Shelly) is a high school dropout, and causes her father Jim (John MacKay) to drop dead from heart failure and mother Jean (Merritt Nelson) to throw her out when she announces to her parents that she is pregnant, her boyfriend dumps her as well, leaving her alone and homeless. With nowhere to go she wanders into her Long Island town hoping to find somewhere to stay, and there she meets educated high school graduate Matthew Slaughter (Insomnia's Martin Donovan), who also has a great talent for fixing electronic devices, but he can't keep any job he finds because of his moodiness, he just lost his job repairing televisions because the company wanted him to cut corners, and he carries a hand grenade in case of an emergency. Matthew volunteers to help Maria any way he can, including letting her stay with him and anything he can do during her pregnancy, but she is highly considering getting an abortion, because of all the hassle a baby would cause, and spending time with each other the two misfits change each other and form an unusual non sexual relationship based on trust, but of course each other's families try to interfere, without success. Also starring The Sopranos' Edie Falco as Peg Coughlin, Gary Sauer as Anthony and In the Company of Men's Matt Malloy as Ed. This is one of those Marmite kind of independent films, you either love it or don't understand it (I doubt anyone will hate it), I found it a really interesting alternative love story with a good tragicomedy element to it, it was funny with it's dark humour, and it definitely unusual, I agree it may not be the most involving story all the way through, but it is a watchable drama. Good!

oneguyrambling Probably one of the least seen films that I have discussed over the last 6 months, this was a movie that I remember vividly as a teen, though in more glowing terms than I now see it.Trust was made by indie filmmaker Hal Hartley, who was renowned for his dialogue heavy films exploring regular people going about their lives. Now that I revisit this some 20 years later I think that perhaps his work also merits the dreaded "quirky" tag.The film starts with a domestic between a young girl and her Dad, the scene culminates with the Dad keeling over dead of a heart attack.The girl is one of two leads, her name is Maria, she is apparently high school age, is pregnant to the quarterback who she now wants nothing to do with, and not wanted at home as her mother blames her for the death of her dad. She also looks a lot like a duck.The other lead is Matthew, played by Martin Donovan in deadpan mode. He is a marginally psychotic TV repairman who is bullied by his single Dad and carries a grenade around with him.Real people dealing with real issues.There is much more of a plot than Maria and Matthew meet, share their problems and decide to make a go of things together, the action occurs as they progress through and come into contact with the various other characters in the film.No-one seems to get along, Maria's mum hates her, and later Matthew. Matthew's dad hates him, and everyone else it seems. Matthew is an angry loner who hates everyone and everyone hates, which leaves Maria and her unborn child as the victim of a tug of war.Everyone in the film seems to be 5% off-normal, not quite enough to be a caricature, but more than enough that they could all aptly be described as weird (at least) by normal people.In this vein Hartley is like Kevin Smith (really), he puts people that you might almost convince yourself that could exist, and in fact you might know someone who really reminds of one of them, only he fills every role with these one-in-a-million characters, so you have a town full of people that would ordinarily be the nut-job.The dialogue is scripted down to the nth degree, which unfortunately leads to conversations that alternate between snappy and robotic, at times in the same scene. At times it is almost like the characters are starting their response before the other sentence is finished.This film is most notable to me as being the first film I can remember seeing that had a character say the C-word, and a female character at that. If this sounds juvenile it is because when I watched the film I was, so it was a genuine surprise to me to see such a taboo word bandied about in an art house film.Even now that I watch this movie and see that I perhaps was looking at my memories with rose coloured glasses, there are moments that are both calculated that still have an impact, you know that the director is trying to scream "this is important" and want to ignore it but it still works.Like a good sad ballad, you know it is simply trying to manipulate your emotions, but turn off the lights and crank it loud and you can't help but caught up in it. Only Trust is a 90+ minute movie, it's hard to be "swept along" for that long when everything is so mechanical.Final Rating - 6.5 - 10. As I said at times it works, there are just too many dead spots in between those times.If you liked this review (or even if you didn't) check out oneguyrambling.com

david-a-goddard I first saw this film in 1990 while I was in college and I loved it. I watched it over and over on VHS. I told everyone that this was my favorite movie of all time and watched every Hal Hartley movie I could find. Last night I stumbled across Trust on Netflix Instant and I thought I'd check it out to see if this film that I was so passionate about when I was 20 years old held up over time or if the 40 year old me would find it silly or dated. To my surprise I was blown away all over again by how ridiculously great it is. The smart stylized dialog, the music, the starkness, the silences, the camera framing, all of the whacked out but fully human characters, Martin Donovan and Adrienne Shelly so young and beautiful. As the final, simple, beautiful, frame of the film disappeared and credits rolled I was left sitting on the couch in a state of shocked amazement at the effect this film still has on me. Hands down my favorite movie of all time!