Pretty Good

i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

In an attempt to draw mainstream attention and garner distribution deals, most independent films hide a rather saccharine, Hollywood plot beneath their gritty exteriors. "All The Real Girls" is no different, with its formulaic "boy meets girl, boy loses girl" plot, and its central rights of passage, in which our promiscuous hero learns the value of trust.What's different here is the film's aesthetic strategy. Directed by David Gordon Green, "Girls" subdues its central plot, dimming it down to a mere whisper. Green then foregrounds his environment, a derelict, North Carolinan mining town, and inserts many improvised moments and sequences, using a visual style comprised almost entirely of intuitively snatched shots. The result is a fairly poetic film which conjures up the works of Terrance Malick, Cassavetes and early Nicholas Roeg.Actors Zooey Dashanel and Paul Schneider play our young lovers, and like the rest of the film they ooze a certain rawness, a certain quiet sincerity. The plot they're stuck in, however, isn't up to the pretensions of Green's aesthetic. At its worst, "All The Real Girls" is as formulaic, small minded and contrived as any Hollywood romantic comedy. At its best, however, it's a moody little film, which preaches the importance of trust and the far reaching, painful ripples caused by, not only infidelity, but thwarted expectations. Specifically the expectations placed on men by women, a message Green conveys by mirroring the film's lead couple, a promiscuous guy and a virginal girl, with the Lothario's mother, a woman whose life has been damaged by a string of men who all abandoned her whenever the times got tough.End result: the film advocates growing up, caring about the wider ramifications of your actions, and living up to your responsibilities. After this film, director David Gordon Green would proceed to do the opposite, selling his soul to work on juvenile Hollywood sex comedies, some of which are underrated and covertly espouse the same values as "Girls": be responsible, compassionate and love your fellowman.8/10 – See "The Truth About Tully". Worth one viewing.

*spoilers* Another movie where a guy who has mistreated woman in the past learns some tough, hard lessons. It's not a movie where a woman learns any lessons about how to treat guys, because those movies are rarely made. Women don't have to learn any lessons, unless it's to help the fulfillment of their own lives. Women are angels. They never mistreat men, are never manipulative, cruel, or cold, and if they are, the guy "deserved" it.Zooey finally finds a guy who she loves, trusts, cares about, enjoys being with and just staring at, and then on a whim cheats on him at a weekend party. Out of nowhere, and it totally seemed out of place for her character and their relationship. She was a virgin too. You would think she would have wanted to lose her virginity with Paul Schneider, which I think she didn't unless I missed something. I don't know why guys are being fooled by this movie. Zooey's cruel treatment of Paul after she cheated on him was awful. The only guys watching the movie who would be okay with that are the ones with male guilt complex and think guys deserve to be treated badly.Then there's the usual scene where Paul and Zooey are having sex and Zooey has an uninterested and bored look on her face, as if she's just having sex to get it over with and quickly satisfy him. She gets nothing out of it. How many times have we seen this? How's about something different, like showing a guy with a bored look on his face. That happens in real life. A lot. But movies pretend it doesn't.I don't know why people are calling this movie realistic. Did you hear the dialogue? It was very "indie". A little off. Conservations were weird and didn't make too much sense. A lot of it sounded ad-libbed, which is great but it didn't sound like the way people actually talk. Then there was a scene in a bowling alley. They are standing in a lane and Paul starts dancing while Zooey is facing away from him. Sooo indie.I gave the movie a 5 because I like Paul Schneider and as many guys I love Zooey Deschanel. They were both pretty good along with the other actors, but like I said their dialogue was painful at times. I needed someone to just say something normal for once, or to just lighten up. I know poor, rural towns can be depressing, but this is agony.

I totally agree with j. nevada! This movie was amazing! Its totally about americana and at the same time a love story. I don't want to go into great detail but the ending is open to interpretation and every person takes their own thought away from this movie depending on where their life is in correlation to this love story.I recently broke up with someone that i wish was more like an honest person. I obviously am not going to go into detail but this movie moves me and not so much for the story but the music and the perfect blend of landscape scenery and suburban factories. The music inspires and at the same time makes me feel sad. For anyone who enjoys melancholy but enlightening movies have patience and enjoy.

It's an extremely rare occurrence when we stop a film after 10 - 15 minutes and remove it from the player. While we all realize that movies can't all be the same nor look alike there is a very basic formula that must be followed to keep the audiences attention. We felt that this movie failed on that score because both of us got up and started doing other things both to each other's surpriseThe story is not a unique one. The small town, the lads, and the return of sister of one of the lads best friend. She been away, and values her virtue he on the other hand has ridden every bike in town. The two fall for each other so the story goes. Loves labors lost! Our problem was that it needed proper editing to keep the pace and momentum going. It was this little annoyance that prompted our early termination of said film. Now, this does not mean that the film is bad. We've both come across plenty of those and this isn't one of them.