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Cinema Verite
Directed by
Robert Pulcini
,
Shari Springer Berman
PG-13
2011
86m
Drama
6.5
62%
60%
5.7
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A behind-the-scenes look at the making of the first American family to be the subjects of a reality TV show.
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Where to Watch Cinema Verite
HBO Max
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HBO Max Amazon Channel
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YouTube TV
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+5 more
Cast of Cinema Verite
Diane Lane
Pat Loud
Tim Robbins
Bill Loud
James Gandolfini
Craig Gilbert
Thomas Dekker
Lance Loud
Caitlin Custer
Delilah Loud
Kaitlyn Dever
Michele Loud
Nick Eversman
Grant Loud
Johnny Simmons
Kevin Loud
Patrick Fugit
Alan Raymond
Shanna Collins
Susan Raymond
Jake Richardson
Tommy Goodwin
Kathleen Quinlan
Mary Every
Lolita Davidovich
Val
Matt O'Leary
Cameron
Stephen Caffrey
Tom
Monika Jolly
Yvonne
Willam Belli
Candy Darling
Kyle Riabko
Jackie Curtis
Dendrie Taylor
Sally
Richard Fancy
Network President
Cinema Verite Ratings & Reviews
San Jose Mercury News
Julie Hinds
Like a history lesson in the genre that's taken over so much of cable and broadcast network programming. It's also the sort of intelligent drama that has to compete with the cheaper, flashier shows that An American Family eventually spawned.
Salon.com
Matt Zoller Seitz
Cinema Verite is smart and often moving, but unsatisfying overall. It compresses seven months of shooting, 3,000 hours of raw footage, and 12 hours' worth of televised story into a little over 90 minutes, losing complexity along the way.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Ellen Gray
Just as 12 hours probably wasn't enough time to establish the Louds as real people, not soap opera stick figures, two hours isn't quite enough to explain exactly what went wrong with An American Family, either.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Neal Justin
An informative but somewhat plodding re-creation of the 1970s PBS special, An American Family. James Gandolfini steals the show as the producer who persuades the naive parents to invite cameras into their soon-to-be shattered house.
IndieWire
Kevin Jagernauth
Though you won't learn anything new, and the depth of the material might be lacking, the story of America's first reality television family still fascinates.
HollywoodChicago.com
Brian Tallerico
I don't feel like I know the Louds any more than I did before the movie. Having said that, one should appreciate Cinema Verite most of all for the performances.
New York Post
Linda Stasi
Lane is glorious as Pat, Robbins is pitch-perfect as Bill and Gandolfini, who seems terrible at first, actually nails it as Gilbert.
Newsday
Verne Gay
Not a dull or wasted moment, and Lane may have just turned in the one of the best performances of her career.
Wall Street Journal
Dorothy Rabinowitz
A film that ends up packing an emotional punch that's as surprising as it is eloquent.
TIME Magazine
James Poniewozik
While the film is well-made, it feels unnecessary. Perhaps from the need to fit the story into the confines of an hour-and-a-half feature, everyone ends up falling into types.
Boston Globe
Matthew Gilbert
A finely constructed docu-dramatic piece, Cinema Verite folds together the stories of the Louds of Santa Barbara and the PBS filmmakers who took over their home.
New York Times
Alessandra Stanley
A clever, beautifully made but somehow underwhelming re-enactment of the breakup of the Loud marriage, on camera and off.
AV Club
Phil Dyess-Nugent
Cinema Verite isn't painful to watch, but it softens and simplifies its subject enough to be really disappointing, settling for one more fashion show from the '70s.
San Francisco Chronicle
David Wiegand
Even without the original source material, Cinema Verite offers provocative insight into how far we've become lost in the reality-TV wilderness in the past 40 years.
Variety
Brian Lowry
Beyond a marvelous central performance by Diane Lane, alas, the movie provides a meticulous replica of those events without adding much insight or devoting enough time to their aftermath.
Washington Post
Hank Stuever
Cinema Verite gets too busy too fast, simplifying and overlooking much of what initially made An American Family the sociological treasure trove it still is.
Los Angeles Times
Robert Lloyd
As an attempt to tell the truth about an attempt to tell the truth about the state of domestic relations in a time of changing values, "Cinema Verite" fails -- it cannot help but fail -- as anything but a platform for some interesting performances.
Slate
Troy Patterson
The relationship between Gilbert and Pat is the strange, sexy mechanism that makes Cinema Verite work... And the movie is nicely ambiguous about what Gilbert wrought as the inventor of the reality-TV show.
The Hollywood Reporter
Tim Goodman
In Cinema Verite, 90 minutes might not do justice to the historical impact of An American Family. But it makes you wish there were 90 more minutes to the story, which is saying something.
The New Yorker
Richard Brody
A kaleidoscopic merging of fact and speculation that exposes the mighty emotional upheavals inherent in the cinéma-vérité process and in the era at large.
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