Blucher One of the worst movies I've ever seen

Dotbankey A lot of fun.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Ddey65 I discovered this movie on IFC, and I thought it would be interesting. For "tiny" love stories, some of the stories really dragged on in this movie. The fact that none of these women had names almost makes you suspect that the actresses were talking about their own real sex lives, including Kathy Baker and Alicia Witt. I have to admit, I want to start seeing some more romantic views of first sexual encounters again, like in "Strike!(1998)," when Odette Sinclair's acquaintances started asking about her presumed first time, and Tweety asked "Was it beautiful?"Some might think re-enactments and flashbacks would improve this movie. I think it would make things even worse. It doesn't necessarily have to be hardcore porn to get my attention, but somehow I just expected more.

oedipustex The idea of watching ten different monologues of women reminiscing about men may seem like a slow death to some viewers, but I found it intriguing to watch these actresses mine the most out of their characters with no safety net provided. As a heterosexual guy, I would recommend this film to other men as learning aid on how to listen to women in the very least, even if some scenes stretch credibility. I was particularly impressed with Kimberly Williams who I had not given much credit to as an actress before seeing this. She paints a vivid picture of the story she tells not only with her voice but with entire body language. I also continue to be impressed with Alicia Witt who continues to show more daring in her craft than most young actors.

tedg Spoilers herein.This has been termed an experiment because it is unusual, but it is more of an adventure into the space of the written word.Garcia is a writer. Writers use words as knives to open spaces to inhabit. With this particular kind of writer, it is the words themselves that have an energy as if they were alive. That life follows the discovered grain of compacted emotions, natural but unexpected. This is wholly different from how the majority of writers work, those who think characters can take you places, or the minority who believe in situations or emotions having life and leading the way.But how to invite readers into those newly open pockets? Shakespeare had a solution: use actors as readers not characters. I don' t think most movie-goers appreciate the different threads available to filmmakers and us as viewers, the different ways we have of connecting ourselves to the mind of the filmmaker through the medium. Most of use just assume that actors are meant to be characters and characters have something to do with real people.Garcia works a different thread. His remarkable "Thing You Can Tell..." exists first as words, then sensitive literary conceits, then as intentions in the collective minds of small ensembles, and only then as cinematic images of characters. The reason it works so effectively is because he shifts from one ensemble to another as if to emphasize: folks, this is NOT about these people you think you are seeing. It is about something deeper, more visceral and universal than whatever individuals are being conjured up.That project exploited many cinematic tricks: repeated patterns and strophes in the mannerisms and situations of the characters. This project goes further, much further.There are no ensembles. No mannerisms. No characters to speak of. The sets are homes, but homes framed with unnatural depth as if they were freshly opened crevices of imagination. The camera never moves. The dialog is as internal as one can get, as directly between us and the creator of those words.So we have two things going on here. The first is the connection between us and Garcia's poetry. I personally find it a little cloying, too artificially feminine, steeped in the crisis of the intelligent Latin male and promise of Spanish literature, that world of writing where the reality of the viewer creates the reality of the viewed.But those reservations are minor compared to what else is going on here. All ten of these "stories" have the same soul, but he has given them to ten different women to interpret their own way, with no directions whatsoever. Then they show up and do it, often only meeting Garcia for the first time that day.So what we have is something between real acting and reading, assuming that "real" acting is the process of creating a person while eliminating the actor. What we have are ten glimpses into the souls of actresses rather than ten glimpses at characters. I have watched this over and over, sometimes with just the sound. It is pretty remarkable. With only a few exceptions, these are not good actresses, not actresses who can transcend themselves with the material. They are people whose own emotional foibles get mixed with the words. What gets exposed is what it means to be an actress manipulated by forces not quite in their control. With their characters, it is the activity of a man. With the actresses, it is the words of a man.Spend some time with this.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 4: Worth watching.

bikerman This is a movie about how men think women think about love. No woman describes a one-night sexual encounter and declares it a love story.Of the ten monologues I felt only three really had any kind of truth ring through them. I kept waiting for the film to get better, and it did a bit, but never better enough.This is an interesting concept, and I kept wanting it to be good, but it never succeeded. Maybe if they actually WERE love stories it would have worked.