'The Unbelievable Truth'

The folly of undertaking such a cataclysmic task of watching all these movies or listening to a bunch of records is not understanding context.

Money has a lot to do with it. There's a huge difference in Independence Day or Titanic compared to The Unbelievable Truth, Hal Hartley's first feature film. Or, to compare apples to apples, there's a gigantic difference in Sleepless in Seattle and The Unbelievable Truth.

Titanic required the huge budget to achieve groundbreaking special effects to fake a gigantic luxury liner sinking into the frigid Atlantic. The amount of money to tell the story of two star-crossed lovers was, comparatively, cheaper.

Sleepless in Seattle required $21 million to essentially tell the same story as The Unbelievable Truth, which required $75,000. The two films were released four years apart.

Granted, Sleepless in Seattle is better than The Unbelievable Truth mostly because they spent more for better actors, better writing, better production and all the warm fuzzies that you get from watching the Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks romantic comedy. The other side of the picture is that no one was going to put $21 million into a film from an unknown director about a teenage girl that inexplicably falls for a guy just out of prison for manslaughter.

My point: The Unbelievable Truth wasn't even good for $75,000 and probably would have been exponentially better had they spent $4 million or $14 million. I suspect. Sometimes selling out is not the worst thing in the world.