The defence The Sentimental Softie
“Sincerity is not manipulation.”
The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.
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Gas Food Lodging
Drama · Romance · 1992
Nora, a single mother raising two teenage daughters, Shade and Trudi, waits tables at a truck-stop diner in a small New Mexico town. The beautiful and rebellious Trudi drops out of school and gets a job alongside Nora, while the younger Shade whittles away her time at Spanish movie matinees. Their lives are turned upside down when Trudi becomes pregnant and the girls' absent father returns.
Movie details
Gas Food Lodging
“When Shade's good, she's very good. But when Trudi's bad, she's better.”
1992 Drama · Romance 1h 41m
Critical arithmetic
One number, for now.
Scores change. Arguments endure.
TMDB
6.3 / 10
Community rating
Nora, a single mother raising two teenage daughters, Shade and Trudi, waits tables at a truck-stop diner in a small New Mexico town. The beautiful and rebellious Trudi drops out of school and gets a job alongside Nora, while the younger Shade whittles away her time at Spanish movie matinees. Their lives are turned upside down when Trudi becomes pregnant and the girls' absent father returns.
CriticWise case file
What this film says about your taste.
Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.
The archetype split
Who fights over Gas Food Lodging?
For the defence
The Sentimental Softie
“You came to feel something, and you will.”
Read their case For the prosecution
The Cool Ironist
“Feeling things is a little embarrassing.”
Read their objectionThe split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.
Taste neighbourhood
Nearby on the taste map.
TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.
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White Palace
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Monster's Ball
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Untamed Heart
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Caroline, a young waitress who seems to have bad taste in men, is on her way home one night when thugs attempt to rape her. Adam, the mysterious busboy who works at the same diner, helps fight off the assailants, and she begins a relationship with him -- but not all their fellow Minnesotans are happy for them. Meanwhile, the couple face their own difficulties when Caroline finds about Adam's past, including his unique health condition.
The Burning Plain
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A trailer is burning in the middle of a plain. The bodies of two adulterous lovers are found. Scenes from both families, before and after the dramatic events, suggest an unusual connection between them. But what is their secret?
American Woman
Drama · 2018
A young grandmother in a small Pennsylvania town raises her daughter's child after the girl disappears. All the while, a desperate search for her continues.
The Tender Bar
Drama · 2021
JR is a fatherless boy growing up in the glow of a bar where the bartender, his Uncle Charlie, is the sharpest and most colorful of an assortment of quirky and demonstrative father figures. As the boy’s determined mother struggles to provide her son with opportunities denied to her — and leave the dilapidated home of her outrageous if begrudgingly supportive father — JR begins to gamely, if not always gracefully, pursue his romantic and professional dreams, with one foot persistently placed in Uncle Charlie’s bar.
Broken
Drama · 2012
Three suburban English families' lives intertwine with tragic consequences.
Where it lives
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Names above the title
The people responsible.
Cast & crew
Directed by
Allison Anders
Written by
Allison Anders
Brooke Adams
Nora
Ione Skye
Trudi
Fairuza Balk
Shade
James Brolin
John Evans
Robert Knepper
Dank
David Lansbury
Hamlet
Jacob Vargas
Javier
Court is in session
Put Gas Food Lodging on trial.
Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.
The prosecution The Cool Ironist
“The strings are showing.”
Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.