It is a great character study that ranks with Paul Thomas Anderson's epic "Magnolia."

Guaranteed-to-bum-you-out conclusion.

This kind of episodic chain of interlocking encounters has become a formulaic favorite in American indie cinema, and Mattei's take on the genre is narrow and schematic.

Mattei is tiresomely grave and long-winded, as if circularity itself indicated profundity.

Sluggishly paced and shot in the sort of grubby digital video that renders even the dewiest skin tone liverwurst gray, the film comes across as little more than a series of acting workshop exercises wrapped in a tissue of cliché.

The film ultimately offers nothing more than people in an urban jungle needing other people to survive. Kane's character observes that "We’re all connected by love" -- and that sounds familiar, too.

Mattei's script was written in 1998, and the absence of any sense of the impact of 9/11 on New Yorkers is palpable. While watching "Love," I was thinking what great potential there was - still is - for a Manhattan "La Ronde" set in the days following 9/11, when strangers sought comfort from each other in spontaneous sexual alliances.

The characters who cross paths here in the hard shadows of late-'90s New York City are meant to convey loneliness, bitterness, neediness, loss, and bad karma. Mostly, they convey bad Sundance.

Anemic chronicle of money grubbing New Yorkers and their serial loveless hook ups.

What keeps Love in the Time of Money from being truly awful is the fact that the actors give it their all -- they may be in contrived situations, but by golly they'll make the best of them.

Manages to make sex look like no fun at all.

The idea, I suppose, is that love connects us all, even when it goes wrong. Fortunately, even love doesn't usually go quite so badly as this movie does.

An exercise in cynicism every bit as ugly as the shabby digital photography and muddy sound.

Neither original nor presented in a convincing way.