Flannel Pajamas.

"Indie-film exec Jeff Lipsky's sophomore feature as writer-director shares with his distribution work a desire to restore some of the untidier virtues of 70s American film," writes Rob Nelson in the Voice.

For Nick Schager, writing in Slant, Flannel Pajamas is "a series of scenes from a love affair whose insightfulness slightly outweighs its sluggishness... [T]he film's perceptiveness is frequently bracing, capturing the way starry-eyed proclamations and promises can foreshadow uglier truths, and - as in a sterling underplayed scene - the means by which simple gestures such as asking a girlfriend to call your relatives on your behalf can signal a momentous shift in trust and togetherness."

For Sunday's New York Times, Nancy Ramsey spoke with Lipsky about tonight's opening: "My whole future is going to be carved out in 96 hours."

Updated through 11/19.

Online listening tip. Lipsky, Justin Kirk and Julianne Nicholson are recent guests on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Update, 11/15: "The twin specters of Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen hover over this talky history of a relationship between two New Yorkers," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "Flannel Pajamas nevertheless maintains a stubborn integrity, and its comfortably lived-in lead performances feel authentic."

Update, 11/16: Salon's Andrew O'Hehir: "[I]t is so truly and exceptionally fine, a spiny and dispassionate little masterpiece of a marriage movie, that I don't want to expend energy groaning over the fact that it's doomed to reach (I suspect) a very small audience."

Update, 11/19: Jeff Lipsky writes about the relationship that inspired the film for indieWIRE.

Posted by dwhudson at November 14, 2006 2:15 PM