Cashback

Ben, an art student who cannot sleep after a breakup, takes the night shift at a Sainsbury's. To pass the time he imagines freezing time and starts drawing the customers in the stopped world. Sean Ellis expanded it from his own 2004 short, which won fourteen international festival awards and was nominated for Best Live Action Short at the 2006 Academy Awards. The feature contains nearly all of the short. Ellis wrote the expanded script in seven days after getting the go-ahead in December 2005. Sean Biggerstaff and Emilia Fox star. Reviews split. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 47 percent from 53 reviews with a harsh consensus about an unlikable protagonist, messy editing and gratuitous nudity. Justin Chang in Variety called it slickly charming and gently erotic with supreme polish. Who it is for: viewers who like visually composed, painterly scenes. The frozen-time passages are the best thing in it. Who it is not for: anyone who will object to how the women are used. That is exactly where the criticism sits, and it is not unfair.