There's more to making a movie than hiring actors and pointing a camera at them.
Added 6/11/2009
This movie has a fine stock of potentially interesting characters. Unfortunately, you never get to know them. The movie suffers from an acute lack of directing, editing, script and continuity. Having a story to tell doesn't count unless you know how to tell it.
The cinematography does have its moments. But intimate moments are shot from too far away to tell what's happening to the people; establishing shots don't fit together enough to establish anything. Musical passages are chosen not so much to create or enhance mood as to just cover up gaps in dialog.
In order for a "small town romance" -- or any kind of romance -- to work, you have to care about the people. Without this foundation, all you have is random people going through random events.
The high points of the movie are some of the supporting actors, and Zooey Deschanel, who manages to come off naturally even when she isn't given enough to do.
1 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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A real love roller coaster
Added 1/17/2009
If this movie didn't make people with southern accents look so stupid,
I might have given it a higher rating.
The slow empty music is irritating in a drama like this.
The sound tract is generally tentative.
Ain't you been listening, girl? He has slept with everybody ( 26 is his count). Young love...so this time it is the real thing?
His mom doesn't believe it either.
They share secrets, then it hits the rocks.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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All The Real Girls was David Gordon Green's 2003 follow up film to his 2000 debut film George Washington, which became an underground classic. The good news is that it is a superior film to that earlier excellent film, and Green shows real growth as a filmmaker. Like the earlier film, this film breaks with traditional narrative, and spends the first third, or so, of its hour and forty eight minutes running time devoted to simply introducing the viewer to the main characters of the small southern town it's set in, with rapturous cinematography by Tim Orr. Although the film was shot in and around Asheville, North Carolina, it's not set in any specific time nor place. There is very little, in terms of technology nor cultural references, to date it.
The film grabs the viewer from its terrific opening scene, where two unknown lovers talk about why the boy has not even tried to kiss the girl. It is an awkward, but tender, scene, and we will soon learn the reasons why he has not kissed her, but it is the sort of scene that no Hollywood producer would let any film of theirs open with. We soon learn that these two main characters are the town's noted Lothario, Paul (Paul Schneider), an aimless but earnest fellow in his early twenties, and his odd girlfriend Noel (Zooey Deschanel), the college aged sister of Paul's best friend, Tip (Shea Whigham), who looks like he just stepped out of a James Dean film. Of course, Tip objects to the relationship between his best friend and baby sister, for he knows that Paul is as big a poon hound as he is, and violence ensues. Yet, it is not in the Hollywood fashion, and plays no major role in the film, which follows the realistic ups and downs of the first real love relationship for both characters. Even though Noel is a virgin when they meet, as she comes back to town after being away at boarding school, it is Paul who is the more insecure about himself. This may be because Noel's family is from a richer social class, but the viewer need not be spoonfed such information for the scenes unfold, one after the other, and give us snippets not only into the lead characters, but into the lesser characters, too, and this, in turn, lets us know more about their social and family milieu than direct exposition through straight ahead narrative.... This film is thus one that transcends its chronological bounds on film. The viewer has seen more than enough of the lead characters to care for them, so this film is really more about the place this little romance unfolds in, not its particular participants. The film's producers, Lisa Muskat and Jean Doumanian should be commended for supporting such fine work. It will ease your angst, and make almost two hours of your life a little brighter.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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GOD-AWFUL, artsy-fartsy soap opera...
Added 7/22/2008
I'm giving this movie two stars rather than one SOLELY because I found female lead Zooey Deschanel very easy on the eyes and a fairly decent actress. Unfortunately, male lead Paul Shneider couldn't act his way out of a paper bag, and we the audience are stuck with him being on screen most of the time. (Plus he's way too dorky-looking to play the part of the town Cassanova.) If I had to choose one word to sum up this movie, it'd be: TEDIOUS. Not just painfully slow, but painfully OBVIOUS and predictable and cliche-ridden, and the script is one of the worst I've ever been subjected to in years. It's as though whoever wrote the dialogue is trying be as artfully artless, dull, terse and Hemingway-esque as possible, and instead has created a completely dead, stultifying corpse of a movie, with some of the most cringe-inducing lines I've heard in years (and this from someone who goes out of his way to avoid movies with horrible dialogue, i.e. Hollywood blockbusters). Patricia Clarkson can't save this movie, no matter how good she is in her all too minor role.
ZZZZZZZ!
2 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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A hard pill to swallow
Added 3/31/2008
I did give it three stars for being different and interesting, but I say that with a bit of reservation. For this film is unbelievably bleak. While I hate those fairy tale love stories like "sleepless in Seattle" as much as the next guy, this goes in a complete opposite extreme. This guy meets a girl who he thinks is different from the rest, and he does his best to do right by her and offers her the respect he thinks she deserves. Yet, she does not reciprocate that respect and the inevitable disillusionment sets in because of it. He soon realizes that the person he loved never really existed at all. That she only seemed that way due to her boarding school upbringing, that she isn't as she is by choice, but by environment alone. Now that she is out of school she quickly morphs back into a "real girl" if you will. As interesting as I found it I also found the cynicism of it all rather depressing. I say this because if this is what "all the real girls" are like, who would want one. For according to this, "all the real girls" are not worthy of a man's respect. At least, that is the way I saw it. In the end, it gave a voice to my own cynicism and disillusionment. For this movie resembles my love life. I just hope to God this isn't really true.
2 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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There's more to making a movie than hiring actors and pointing a camera at them.
Added 6/11/2009
This movie has a fine stock of potentially interesting characters. Unfortunately, you never get to know them. The movie suffers from an acute lack of directing, editing, script and continuity. Having a story to tell doesn't count unless you know how to tell it.
The cinematography does have its moments. But intimate moments are shot from too far away to tell what's happening to the people; establishing shots don't fit together enough to establish anything. Musical passages are chosen not so much to create or enhance mood as to just cover up gaps in dialog.
In order for a "small town romance" -- or any kind of romance -- to work, you have to care about the people. Without this foundation, all you have is random people going through random events.
The high points of the movie are some of the supporting actors, and Zooey Deschanel, who manages to come off naturally even when she isn't given enough to do.
1 out of 3 people found this helpful.
|
A real love roller coaster
Added 1/17/2009
If this movie didn't make people with southern accents look so stupid,
I might have given it a higher rating.
The slow empty music is irritating in a drama like this.
The sound tract is generally tentative.
Ain't you been listening, girl? He has slept with everybody ( 26 is his count). Young love...so this time it is the real thing?
His mom doesn't believe it either.
They share secrets, then it hits the rocks.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
|
All The Real Girls was David Gordon Green's 2003 follow up film to his 2000 debut film George Washington, which became an underground classic. The good news is that it is a superior film to that earlier excellent film, and Green shows real growth as a filmmaker. Like the earlier film, this film breaks with traditional narrative, and spends the first third, or so, of its hour and forty eight minutes running time devoted to simply introducing the viewer to the main characters of the small southern town it's set in, with rapturous cinematography by Tim Orr. Although the film was shot in and around Asheville, North Carolina, it's not set in any specific time nor place. There is very little, in terms of technology nor cultural references, to date it.
The film grabs the viewer from its terrific opening scene, where two unknown lovers talk about why the boy has not even tried to kiss the girl. It is an awkward, but tender, scene, and we will soon learn the reasons why he has not kissed her, but it is the sort of scene that no Hollywood producer would let any film of theirs open with. We soon learn that these two main characters are the town's noted Lothario, Paul (Paul Schneider), an aimless but earnest fellow in his early twenties, and his odd girlfriend Noel (Zooey Deschanel), the college aged sister of Paul's best friend, Tip (Shea Whigham), who looks like he just stepped out of a James Dean film. Of course, Tip objects to the relationship between his best friend and baby sister, for he knows that Paul is as big a poon hound as he is, and violence ensues. Yet, it is not in the Hollywood fashion, and plays no major role in the film, which follows the realistic ups and downs of the first real love relationship for both characters. Even though Noel is a virgin when they meet, as she comes back to town after being away at boarding school, it is Paul who is the more insecure about himself. This may be because Noel's family is from a richer social class, but the viewer need not be spoonfed such information for the scenes unfold, one after the other, and give us snippets not only into the lead characters, but into the lesser characters, too, and this, in turn, lets us know more about their social and family milieu than direct exposition through straight ahead narrative.... This film is thus one that transcends its chronological bounds on film. The viewer has seen more than enough of the lead characters to care for them, so this film is really more about the place this little romance unfolds in, not its particular participants. The film's producers, Lisa Muskat and Jean Doumanian should be commended for supporting such fine work. It will ease your angst, and make almost two hours of your life a little brighter.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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