Lives of several New Yorkers are interconnected in Anesthesia and some are more interesting than others. The cast is headed by Sam Waterston and Glenn Close as a philosophy professor at Columbia University and his wife and it's the eve of his retirement. He's just given a final capstone lecture and I have to say it ranks with some of the great orations that Spencer Tracy did in the classic Hollywood era. Nice to see that there are some players who can still do that.

There's a dimension to Waterston's performance that will not happen for future generations viewing this film. They won't have had 15 years of watching him as Jack McCoy the symbol of societal authority in Law And Order. When he's attacked on the street and seeks aid by randomly ringing apartment doorbells to be buzzed in it's like society itself being attacked. 50 years from now someone watching Anesthesia won't have that context.

The film opens with Waterston's mugging and with K. Todd Freeman coming to his aid and both wounded. Then it flashes back 48 hours and we see how things got to that point.

I also have to point out a small but telling performance of Twilight's Kristen Stewart as one of Waterston's students. This is a girl with a lot of issues and while she likes her teacher she finds no comfort in his answers concerning life's meaning.

Another standout is young Ben Konigsberg trying very hard to lose his virginity. His naivete even through smoke clouds of pot is appealing.

K. Todd Freeman is also a standout as a junkie himself trying to get his life back together and getting a lot of tough love from those around him.

It's a good ensemble that director Tim Blake Nelson put together for this most New York of stories.

Instantly tedious, this Manhattan melodrama provides snippets into the lives of mostly unrelated characters with all sorts of problems that make a good majority of them turn into complete narcissistic animals. I can relate to the young girl who confesses to hating the obsession with devices over real interaction with people, accusing herself of being guilty of it as well. I find her hypocritical even in her honesty, and in her therapy, there seems to be nothing that she can do. She claims to be taken totally by surprise that this has taken over society, resentful that she was never told the rules (that obviously were never created),and her distaste for the lack of proper communication, ironically spoken in modern tongue that really doesn't say much but is embedded in the mind yet can't be formulated into understandable sentences. She's a perfect representation of the "safety pin" wearing, "cutting" age, taking out her self hatred in ways that most people can't fathom.

I've had that distaste in my own aura for at least two decades, and in my own vision of what common decency and sensible behavior find that we live in a world of uncommon sense, each residing with an I.D. for our own state of confusion. I was hoping to care about the characters closer in social status and race and age to my own, and found myself caring more involved in issues that have long plagued our planet rather than those suffering from social insecurities brought on by their addiction to all things fake that make drugs and alcohol seem tame in comparison. Even with its attempts to show the evils of the technologies of today (something I truly believe),I found its methods not satisfying or presenting of a decent solution. That makes the film ultimately pointless and dangerous in revealing that the disease of technology is a plague we are simply stuck with whether we like it or not. Sam Waterston has several interesting monologues, but all it succeeded in doing was perplex me even more.

That's what this film is, a trip to the state of confusion with characters whose own mindset is selfish at best and misanthropic at its worst. I can feel for the drug addict forced into rehab, the past retirement age professor who is brutally mugged and even the socially confused youngsters. But there is no sense of wanting a desire for improvement, no desire to be a decent loving and understanding parent, and certainly no desire to respect the parent even when disappointed in them. All this does is show how messed up society has become under certain liberal agendas. That makes it at its best, boring, and at its worst, more depressing than an Edward Albee play. While the ending tries its best to be profound, it went all over the map in trying to get there and reminded me of the issues of this era I can't even begin to sympathize with, let alone the generation of dimwits who continue to blame the problems on the world on innocent people without seeing the entire picture yet continuing to thrive on the existence of their phones. Even with talents like Sam Waterston and a totally wasted Glenn Close, I think this one to really be skipable.

I knew before I started Anesthesia that I wouldn't like it, but even with the very low bar I'd set, it turned out far worse than I'd expected. Unless you have the opposite taste in movies from me, I can't recommend watching it. It's pretty terrible.

The film starts out with one long shot. The camera is stationed across the street from a florist and convenience shop in New York City at night, and we watch as Sam Waterston walks to the shops, buys flowers, picks up some groceries, speaks to passersby, and then leaves the frame. I'm assuming director Tim Blake Nelson wanted the audience to feel helpless and only able to watch the situation, but his constant attempts to appear superior and humble the audience really got on my nerves.

I rented this film, even though the synopsis gave me a pretty big clue I'd hate it, because I wanted to see some good acting. With Sam Waterston, Glenn Close, Gloria Reuben, and Kristen Stewart, I thought I'd be in for an upsetting story with fantastic performances. Unfortunately not. Glenn walks through her very small role, Gloria isn't given anything to do, and Kristen gives an understated performance that just doesn't work, given her character's troubles. Sam is always great. He's a college professor, and during most of his scenes, he gives existential lectures—on paper they're quite boring, but he's had ample experience putting passion into his speeches. There's something about him that just makes you want to cry and give him a hug, isn't there? If you feel that way about the warble in his impassioned voice and the way his entire face lights up when he smiles, you're going to want to stay far away from this movie. In the opening scene, Sam Waterston gets beaten to a bloody pulp and mugged.

The rest of the movie goes back in time and shows several different characters' lives intersecting in the days leading up to the vicious attack. Pot-smoking teenagers plot to lose their virginities, a suburban mom suspects her husband is having an affair, a man tries to put his drug-addicted brother in rehab, and a self-mutilating student turns to her teacher for help. Yes, all these stories sound deep, interesting, and raw, but when you watch them, they fail on all three counts. The entire film thinks too highly of itself, and it's not at all entertaining to watch.

Kiddy warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to drug use and gritty violence, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.