Filled with bleak, beautiful Hopperesque tableaus and strange characters whose lives intersect.

It's a movie full of quietly assured flourishes: elegant camera compositions, wonderful uses of silence and an entertainingly eclectic cast, including Peggy Lipton as a sensitive bartender.

Its doomed portrait of guileless dreamers may be found lacking in plot activity and empathetic characters. But for anyone interested in a movie that wipes clean the grungy patina of self-delusionment, Jackpot hits solid pay dirt.

Gries and Morris act up a storm as the optimistically named Sunny Holiday and his long-suffering manager.

The acting is primo and the cinematography, on high-definition video by the gifted M. David Mullen, is striking.

Potential irony is everywhere in this movie's subtly surreal situations and candy-colored imagery.

Bummer theater.

The more we realize that we're stuck in the company of a totally relentless loser, the drearier the entire experience becomes.

It's as self consciously arty and fragmented as ''Twin Falls'' was controlled and organically built.

Barely enough chuckles to keep from running out of gas. Yet it's the sharpest-looking movie shot so far on digital video, outdistancing even "The Anniversary Party."

The filmmakers throw in an extended flatulence routine and enough graphic references to female anatomy to make "The Vagina Monologues" blush.

Essentially a one-gag film.

Jackpot ends up a lot like Sunny's singing: pointless and more than a little flat.

In its mastery of its moments, Jackpot has charm, humor and poignancy. What it lacks is necessity. There's a sense in which we're always waiting for it to kick in.