my Movie

Movie Details

Title:   Cinema Verite
Director:   Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini
Year:   2011
Genre:   Movie About Movies
Times Seen:   1
Last Seen:   11.05.11

Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)

Notes History
Date Viewed Venue Note
11.05.11DVRThis Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2011
This was an HBO movie about the 1973 TV show "An American Family" which I had no idea existed but I guess was the birth of "reality television" since it followed everyone in a family arouned EdTV-style until they got a divorce (spoiler!). Diane Lane plays the 70s liberated wife and Tim Robbins plays the slimy adultering husband. James Gandolfini plays the manipulative show producer. It's funny, I don't usually think of PBS producers as shady and manipulative even with their full 70s beards, and although he's not exactly an angel in the ethics department, the prevalence and escalation of this kind of "filmmaking" today sort of proves that his ideas had merit, that people wanted to see the dirt swept under the rugs.

Having no prior knowledge of the show, I found this movie to be pretty interesting. Of course I have no idea, but it all felt pretty authentic and that the directors had no qualms of inserting original footage to set up chapters of the film gave its authenticity confidence. I'm a big fan of showing the original subject somewhere in these dramatization movies to see how close they made up the actors and how well the actors matched performances. I know it's bad to want them to mimic and actors bring their own ideas or whatever but whatever to that.

This is one of the better HBO films that I've seen. It's weird how casual their films seem to me. I'll watch them and they'll play out and end and that's it. There's no prescene or impact with most of their stuff really but I felt this was pretty well done and definitely worth watching. Lane and Robbins are pretty good playing a 70s couple.

Next up is a Michael Winterbottom movie. yay!