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 and "plays her femme fatale with flat-out, drop-dead sexuality." Despite the poor critical reception and a slow start at the North American box office, the film went on to gross a respectable $278.3 million worldwide, cementing Jolie's appeal to international audiences. She received a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance, which gave rise to speculation that it had been given merely to ensure her high-profile presence at the awards ceremony. After directing the documentary "A Place in Time" (2007), which was distributed through the National Education Association, Jolie made her feature directorial debut with "In the Land of Blood