“Broken English”

I like to think of this as a realistic sequel to "Party Girl." It's like the effervescent downtown gal with a fabulous wardrobe and endless cool woke up 12 years later and was an unhappy thirty-something whose friends all have more successful careers, marriages, babies, and apartments. Nora (Parker Posey) works as a hotel concierge despite an expensive liberal arts degree and hooks up with jerks like the actor played by Justin Theroux, who is sporting a fantastically awful Mohawk. (Typecasting?) Entrez Julien, a sexy, laid-back Frenchman who wears a little straw boating hat and smokes cigarettes and tells Nora, "I am no trouble!" Of course you're not…

This isn't a perfect movie, but it's one that I had such a visceral reaction to that I am still recommending it to people five years later. Writer/director Zoe Cassavetes gets close to the bone with her portrayal of being a single woman in New York City, and yet there's also a sort of "Before Sunrise" wish fulfillment that takes away the sting. In a nice nod to her family's filmmaking history, she casts her own mom Gena Rowlands as Nora's mom.

Watch it on Netflix Instant!