S... Year

2010

1 hr. 30 min.

Drama

List

33%

9 Reviews

Tomatometer

55%

50+ Ratings

Audience Score

A desperate actress in the twilight of her career has an affair with a much young actor.

Read More

Read Less

Apple TV

Rent S... Year on Apple TV, or buy it on Apple TV.

Audience Member

One of Ellen Barkinâ(TM)s best performances ever!

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/27/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Though, at times, Archer's film is pretentious -- Ellen Barkin's performance is strong enough to hold interest. The film has a haunting quality that I quite enjoyed.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/22/23

Full Review

Audience Member

A visually compelling (although occasionally flawed) expressionistic portrait of a woman who, after retiring from a successful acting career and leaving a relationship, must decide who she is.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/10/23

Full Review

Audience Member

If you liked 'Wild Tigers I Have Known', or care about breathtaking cinematography at all, see this film. Any negative reviews it received have been carelessly jotted down by viewers who are either not familiar with Archer's visually based filmmaking or miss the point of the film entirely. In Shit Year and his first feature, Wild Tigers I Have Known, Archer uses surreal, abstract, and sometimes disorienting visual elements in order to immerse the viewer into the world and psyche of the protagonist. If you are looking for an action packed or linear, single layered plot, Shit Year isn't for you. If you enjoy films that balance beautiful experimental elements with complex and unconventional characters, do your eyes and mind a favor and watch this film tonight.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

02/25/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Even after the fourth time, this is as good as movies get. Ellen Barkin is on another level.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/25/23

Full Review

Audience Member

"Shit Year" wins the award for best movie title of the year but definitely not best movie of the year. It is a highly avant-garde hand-made film shot on black-and-white video. Ellen Barkin plays a famous screen actress around age 60 just realizing how alone she is. She has just had a brief affair with a 22-year-old actor who had co-starred with her in a play, and the affair has left her in a funk. It's not clear whether she has fallen in love with him or just cannot stomach being single anymore. Writer/director Cam Archer, who is not particularly deep, seems to have written the 22-year-old into the script just so he could film a nearly naked 22-year-old boy. And he does so with all the depth of a Calvin Klein ad. The attention to the main character is fairly deep, but not enough to trigger much caring on the part of the audience. I was mostly bored while watching "Shit Year." The avant-garde techniques weren't that interesting either. The film is more like theater than cinema. The actors step in front of the camera the way an actor would step onto a bare stage to do a scene. They perform what are basically monologues to give you a sense of what the character might be going through. Nothing is meant to be realistic -- more like re-enactment of pivotal moments in someone's life, where the audience understands that it is seeing highly stylized, fragmentary re-enactments, not the actual occurrences. This distancing effect and the general use of techniques from stage drama and art video I found moderately interesting. But for this kind of thing to work in cinema, it has to take one's breath away. The audience also has to care deeply about something. None of this happened in "Shit Year." Barkin gives a good performance. (When is Barkin not fabulous?) But unfortunately she's lost in a movie that never takes off.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

02/04/23

Full Review

Read all reviews

Post a rating

Cam Archer

Director

Ellen Barkin

Colleen West

Luke Grimes

Harvey West

Bob Einstein

Rick

Theresa Randle

Marion

Melora Walters

Shelly

Show Less Cast & Crew

Show More Cast & Crew

77%

61%

Ain't Them Bodies Saints

76%

35%

Unforgivable

82%

68%

Mademoiselle Chambon

80%

43%

All the Light in the Sky

50%

74%

Girlfriend

Discover more movies and TV shows.

View More

View more photos

Eric Kohn

indieWire

While I admire Archer's attempt to tackle the well-worn path of the fading superstar narrative with ingenuity, his high-minded conceits muddy the vitality of Barkin's performance.

Sep 12, 2012

Full Review

Jay Weissberg

Variety

Archer's given a gift to Barkin fans, offering the actress a fully-developed central role that takes advantage of her reflexive ability to shape her character's deep insecurities with an overlay of lived-in confidence and power.

Feb 23, 2012

Full Review

Glenn Heath Jr.

Slant Magazine

Cam Archer's Shit Year is a volatile but intoxicating examination of personal emptiness.

Rated: 3/4

Sep 27, 2011

Full Review

Allen Almachar

The MacGuffin

Movies that require work and participation from the viewer are more than welcomed, but not something that is as frustrating and impenetrable as this.

Rated: C-

Jul 29, 2020

Full Review

Read all reviews

Synopsis

A desperate actress in the twilight of her career has an affair with a much young actor.

Director: Cam Archer
Executive Producer: Dallas Brennan, Chris Gilligan, Tory Lenosky, Rabinder Sira
Screenwriter: Cam Archer
Production Co: Parts & Labor
Genre: Drama
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): Sep 20, 2016

Most Popular at Home Now