Sidewalks of New York

Structured around on-the-street interviews with its characters, this sardonic yet hopeful love letter to the difficulties and dilemmas of the Manhattan mating game offers a compound parable drawn from the crossing paths of half a dozen New York denizens. Here are the six degrees of separation: writer-director Edward Burns (as a TV producer) clicks with pretty, polemic schoolteacher Rosario Dawson, whose sad-sack ex-husband (David Krumholtz) plays puppy dog to an insecure waitress (Brittany Murphy, effervescent in the film's stand-out performance), who is sleeping with a manipulative father figure (Stanley Tucci), who is cheating on his naively idealistic wife (Heather Graham), who is a real estate agent helping just-dumped Burns find a new apartment. A work of small cinematic gestures, smart dialogue and sublimely human performances, Sidewalks of New York is a refreshingly spontaneous dissection of sex (and romance) in the city. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include commentary by Ed Burns, and a 22-minute "making of" on this low-budget labor of love called "Anatomy of a Scene."] (R. Blackwelder)