The film's real fascination is with the documentary's maker, Craig Gilbert, played with wonderful faux innocence by James Gandolfini.

Full Review | Jun 10, 2020

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.

Full Review | Jun 10, 2020

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.

Full Review | Jun 10, 2020

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.

Full Review | Jun 10, 2020

They'd found good matches for the original participants, and there was a certain fascination in watching the segues between documentary artifice and artificial documentary. But the script was so clunky it virtually came with visible bullet points.

Full Review | Jun 10, 2020

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.

Full Review | Jun 10, 2020

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.

Full Review | Jun 10, 2020

There's probably too much time given to the agenda of producer Craig Gilbert, played by ex-Sopranos star James Gandolfini... but Cinema Verite is still a searing indictment of the casualties that occur when normal people became famous.

Full Review | Jun 10, 2020

What we get here is a complex story of the pressure of media fame reduced to a simply but accurately delivered cautionary tale.

Full Review | Jun 10, 2020

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 4, 2020

There's plenty for this drama to get its teeth into. But it plods along, with honking dialogue, one-note characterisation and clunking exposition that's shamefully pat about the ethics of filming the whole shebang.

Full Review | Jun 4, 2020

Cinema Verite didn't get bogged down in making points about reality TV or documentary ethics, focusing instead, as all good films should, on character. Brilliant performances from Diane Lane, Tim Robbins and James Gandolfini... saw to that.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 4, 2020

Lane is glorious as Pat, Robbins is pitch-perfect as Bill and Gandolfini, who seems terrible at first, actually nails it as Gilbert.

Full Review | Jun 4, 2020

Not a dull or wasted moment, and Lane may have just turned in the one of the best performances of her career.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jun 4, 2020

A film that ends up packing an emotional punch that's as surprising as it is eloquent.

Full Review | Jun 4, 2020

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.

Full Review | Jun 4, 2020

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.

Full Review | Jun 4, 2020

A clever, beautifully made but somehow underwhelming re-enactment of the breakup of the Loud marriage, on camera and off.

Full Review | Jun 4, 2020

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.

Full Review | Jun 3, 2020

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 3, 2020