Angelina Jolie critic Peter Stack wrote, "Jolie, working through an overwritten part, is a sensation as the desperate club crawler learning truths about what she's willing to gamble." She won the Breakthrough Performance Award from the National Board of Review. In 1999, Jolie starred in the comedy-drama "Pushing Tin", alongside John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett. The film met with mixed reception from critics, and Jolie's character—Thornton's seductive wife—was particularly criticized; writing for "The Washington Post", Desson Howe dismissed her as "a completely ludicrous writer's creation of a free-spirited woman who weeps over hibiscus plants that die, wears lots of
Angelina Jolie alike. "The New York Times" critic Elvis Mitchell questioned Jolie's decision to follow her Oscar-winning performance with "soft-core nonsense." The romantic comedy "Life or Something Like It" (2002), though equally unsuccessful, marked an unusual choice for Jolie. "Salon"s Allen Barra considered her ambitious newscaster character a rare attempt at playing a conventional women's role, noting that her performance "doesn't get off the ground until a scene where she goes punk and leads a group of striking bus workers in singing 'Satisfaction'". Despite her lack of box office success, Jolie remained in demand as an actress; in 2002, she established herself