SnoopyStyle A woman withdraws money from an ATM but a $20 bill gets away. Homeless Angeline (Linda Hunt) chases it down. The serial number strikes her as the winning numbers for the $14 million draw that night but a kid steals the bill. The story follows it passing from one person to the next. There is the groom Sam Mastrewski (Brendan Fraser) and a stripper (Melora Walters). There is the grandson and his girlfriend both underage trying to get alcohol. There is petty criminal Frank (Steve Buscemi) recruited by Jimmy (Christopher Lloyd) to go on a robbery spree. There is waitress aspiring-writer Emily Adams (Elisabeth Shue) and her boyfriend Neil. These and others characters are all connected by the $20 bill.This is a high-concept film. It's more compelling as a concept than an actual film. The problem is that the $20 bill is nothing special. There is a reason why this story written so long ago has been sitting around. It's hard to make the story consistently compelling when the characters keep changing. Lloyd and Buscemi are a memorable duo but this is mostly a bunch of random people's stories. With such a flimsy piece of paper tying the movie together, it eventually falls apart. This is more of a writing exercise than a compelling watch.

Woodyanders A twenty dollar bill gets passed on to a diverse assortment of folks over the course of several days. Director Keva Rosenfeld keeps the offbeat, original, and interesting premise moving along at a constant brisk pace as the characters from each individual segment overlap in subtle and surprising ways. The clever script by Leslie and Endre Bohem offers a nifty meditation on fate, chance, and destiny. The best and most absorbing anecdote centers on a pair of radically contrasting criminals who embark on an all night robbing spree: Christopher Lloyd contributes a superbly chilling and understated portrayal as a polite and soft-spoken buttoned down professional and Steve Buscemi does his usual live-wire bit with spot-on smarmy results as an antsy and scruffy punk amateur. Moreover, there are excellent performances from Linda Hunt as a flaky bag lady who's obsessed with winning the lottery, Elisabeth Shue as struggling writer Emily Adams, Brendon Fraser as hapless blue collar schmoe Sam Mestrewski, William H. Macy as a harried police property clerk, and Spalding Gray as a philosophical priest. In an especially inspired touch, Melora Walters appears in two segments as both a stripper and a funeral home director; this speaks volumes on how people sometimes have dual lives and further makes a provocative point on how some folks had to work a second part-time gig on the side in order to keep themselves afloat in the recession-stricken 1990's. Both the jaunty score by David Robbins and Emmanuel Lubezki's polished cinematography are up to speed. A real sleeper.

M G This script was mildly original when it was written in 1935, but the poor performances and the inconsistent quality level make it impossible to recommend. Some of the vignettes are absolutely terrible and the dialogue is never natural. A few of the plot twists were creative, but I was very surprised to see it so highly rated here at the IMDB. A few scenes are worthwhile, it's as a film that if fails completely to entertain. If you like this sort of montage, run don't walk and get "Tales of Manhattan" (1942) a marvelous film that follows the life and times of a topcoat.

mystic80 Probably one of the best indies I've seen in a long time. This film monitors the life of a $20 bill from it's birth at an ATM machine to it's sudden death at an airport. It changes lives and it destroys lives with a surprisingly big all star cast from the likes of Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi, Elisabeth Shue, Christopher Lloyd, William H. Macy, and David Schwimmer among them. The performances are solid. Particular standout performances include David Schwimmer as a thinly veiled disguise of Ross as a whiny, neurotic who takes hair baldness prevention chemicals and Christopher Lloyd and Steve Buscemi as a mismatched pair of convenience store robbers. Definitely a film that should be seen by all.