The Listener

One-actor movies "Buried" & "Locke" were surprisingly good, but "The Listener" is more the art-house bore many would expect such films to be. Samaritans-style helpline worker Tessa Thompson does a night-shift at home taking random, unrelated calls (from various voices inc Rebecca Hall) whose tones range from disturbing to sad to quirky. It'll shine on Thompson's CV (especially as she is great) and Steve Buscemi directs his first film since 2007 with intimate warmth, but Alessandro Camon's plotless character-study screenplay is too self-indulgently pretentious to make it entertaining. Props indeed to helpline workers... but this one's still a dull movie. Flush it.