Critic’s Pick: ‘Please Give’

Director Nicole Holofcener tends to use ordinary encounters to examine what people value in life, and she’s at it again in her incisive new comedy, “Please Give,” a clever dissection of liberal guilt and the notion that money equals charity, which it does and it doesn’t. Catherine Keener, a favorite of the filmmaker, is a New Yorker of some means who can’t give away money fast enough to strangers but fails to see what her own daughter (Sarah Steele) needs. There are complicating and mitigating factors as the lives of two families intersect over the annexation of an apartment. The fine cast includes Rebecca Hall, Amanda Peet and Oliver Platt portraying characters who help create and clean up the mess.