I think this filmmaker has a future.

Full Review | Jul 31, 2007

A good writer starts with characters and plot and allows the themes to come naturally from the story. Sean Ellis' script for Cashback is all theme, and it's not that interesting a one to begin with.

Full Review | Jul 28, 2007

Cashback aspires to be equal parts Volkswagen ad and Nicholson Baker's The Fermata, yet compares unfavorably to both.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Jul 25, 2007

Ellis seems to believe that artists have an enlightened sense of beauty and greater access to it than common folk. And he may be right: He's clearly mastered the skill of convincing art-school chicks to take their clothes off.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jul 21, 2007

As observers we can project our own fantasies onto Ben's, and [director] Ellis enhances this dreamy effect with low-budget ingenuity, like cleverly executing location changes in the same unbroken shot.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 20, 2007

Imagine Kevin Smith with a background in poetry and painting instead of comic books and bestiality jokes, and you'll have an idea of what to expect from an exciting new filmmaker named Sean Ellis, whose terrific debut is called Cashback.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 20, 2007

It's no small trick to blend fantasy, slapstick and genuine emotion, but [director] Ellis pulls it off with whimsy to spare.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 20, 2007

Beware films with protagonists depicted as vastly more sensitive than their fellow characters. The result may be a crock like Cashback.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jul 20, 2007

[Director] Ellis has rounded up all the actors for this feature adaptation but doesn't add much to the 18-minute original besides a tedious boy-meets-girl.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2007

The movie is lightweight, as it should be. It doesn't get all supercharged. Ben and Sharon, despite setbacks, are delighted to be admired by such wonderful partners, and we are happy for them.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 20, 2007

A flair for language both cinematic and verbal elevates an ordinary coming-of-age comedy of little substance.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2007

A very romantic portrait of a young artist as he ponders love, beauty and living in the moment.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 19, 2007

A sleek little meditation on beauty, desire, love and time. Now and then, it's fairly sophisticated stuff.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 19, 2007

Cashback springs from that childhood fantasy of being able to stop time and wander freely among the temporarily frozen. If only writer-director Sean Ellis had done more than use the conceit for a functional romance.

Full Review | Jul 19, 2007

How ironic that Richard Lester had to go all the way to England to make that chef-d'oeuvre of sex comedies, The Knack... and How to Get It, while Ellis stays home and churns out the British answer to American Pie.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 19, 2007

Wong Kar-wai on aisle 4 and Michel Gondry on aisle 6, with Kevin Smith as mop jockey at all points in between -- such is the lost-in-the-supermarket milieu of writer-director Sean Ellis's whimsical comedy.

Full Review | Jul 17, 2007

If they taught the film in schools, the class might be dubbed The Art of Boosting the Self and Ragging on Women Through Tired Aesthetics.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Jul 15, 2007

The feature version of a 2004 award-winning British short depicts a sensitive art student who manages to freeze time, allowing him to undress women at his Sainsbury's supermarket and sketch them nude.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 23, 2006

Slickly charming, genteelly erotic and directed with supreme polish.

Full Review | Sep 16, 2006