Cinema Verite
HBO | Release Date: April 23, 2011
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
74
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 23 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
9
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleDavid WiegandApr 21, 2011
Season 1 Review: 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. Read full review
100
NewsdayVerne GayApr 20, 2011
Season 1 Review: Not a dull or wasted moment, and Lane may have just turned in the one of the best performances of her career. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterTim GoodmanApr 15, 2011
Season 1 Review: 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. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalDorothy RabinowitzApr 15, 2011
Season 1 Review: They [the Loud family] are to the contrary enlarged, explained, their family loyalty honored, in a film that ends up packing an emotional punch that's as surprising as it is eloquent. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyKen TuckerApr 15, 2011
Season 1 Review: This wonderful docudrama about its [An American Family] making, chronicles a loss of media innocence. [22/29 Apr 2011, p.92] Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesPaige WiserApr 21, 2011
Season 1 Review: At the end, Cinema Verite shows how the Louds dealt with the notoriety after the series aired, and where they are now. Cinema Verite blurs the lines even more - but there's a perverse logic to that. Read full review
83
Boston HeraldMark A. PerigardApr 25, 2011
Season 1 Review: Additional time would have made Verite more convincing. At 90 minutes, it runs short, especially as the family copes with its newfound notoriety Read full review
83
Uncle BarkyEd BarkApr 21, 2011
Season 1 Review: Cinema Verite's strength is in dramatizing the off-camera seductions and betrayals that led to the Louds being vilified in many quarters before the entire family went on The Dick Cavett Show to both tell their side of the story and confront filmmaker Craig Gilbert. Read full review
80
Orlando SentinelHal BoedekerApr 25, 2011
Season 1 Review: Cinema Verite is short (not even 90 minutes), smooth and brisk. Read full review
80
Miami HeraldGlenn GarvinApr 25, 2011
Season 1 Review: HBO's drama Cinema Verite is a searing and irresistible look at the making of An American Family and an incisive dissection of the mendacity of what we so absurdly call reality TV. Read full review
80
Boston GlobeMatthew GilbertApr 21, 2011
Season 1 Review: 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, and it adds in both real and expertly re-created footage from the 12 episodes of "An American Family." Read full review
75
New York PostLinda StasiApr 21, 2011
Season 1 Review: Cinema Verite works in the same off-kilter way that HBO's "Grey Gardens" worked. Read full review
70
TV Guide MagazineMatt RoushApr 22, 2011
Season 1 Review: HBO's punchy, pungent but ultimately facile Cinema Verite dramatizes the making of 1973's revolutionary PBS (!) docu-series An American Family, a precursor to today's exhibitionistic "reality" freak shows. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineRob HumanickApr 25, 2011
Season 1 Review: Looks notwithstanding, these TV and movie vets fashion thoughtful, flesh-and-blood individuals whose efforts at achieving happiness seem locked in a perpetual reach for self-awareness. Too bad they're nearly wasted in this hour and a half of paint-by-colors television. Read full review
60
TimeJames PoniewozikApr 25, 2011
Season 1 Review: Cinema Verite is not a bad movie at all but its failing is an ironic one: it smooths out the messiness and non sequiturs of real life to fit its story into a neat feature-film arc. Read full review
60
Washington PostHank StueverApr 25, 2011
Season 1 Review: An intriguing but often clumsy new movie about the making of the TV show. Read full review
60
SlateTroy PattersonApr 22, 2011
Season 1 Review: It plays, for better and worse, like a slightly elevated version of one of those issue-of-the-week telefilms of the old school, with their teen traumas and kitchen-sink melodramas. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsDavid HinckleyApr 22, 2011
Season 1 Review: As the Loud family fractures and then reunites to fight back against their critics, Cinema Verite settles into melodrama that Lane's solid performance can only partly hold together. Read full review
60
The New York TimesAlessandra StanleyApr 21, 2011
Season 1 Review: Cinema Verite is a clever, beautifully made but somehow underwhelming re-enactment of the breakup of the Loud marriage, on camera and off. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesRobert LloydApr 22, 2011
Season 1 Review: 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 and a few explicitly, loudly and briefly argued ideas about where one should draw the line when you point a camera into innocent people's lives. Read full review
50
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob OwenApr 22, 2011
Season 1 Review: Cinema Verite dramatizes the making of "An American Family," but it dwells too long on the setup and doesn't spend nearly enough time on the public response to the program and the impact that reaction (much of it negative) had on the Louds. Read full review
50
SalonMatt Zoller SeitzApr 21, 2011
Season 1 Review: Cinema Verite is smart and often moving, but unsatisfying overall. Read full review
50
VarietyBrian LowryApr 21, 2011
Season 1 Review: Cinema Verite harbors some merit, and is worth seeing if only for Lane. That said, it's a disappointingly shallow treatment considering the wealth of potential within the premise and period. Read full review
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