Popular reviews

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  Review by ghostdinosaur ★★★½

  Who knew that the good version of Men, Women & Children had already been made eight years earlier? In spite of all the flip phones and CRT monitors this still feels contemporary, approaching technological ubiquity from an interested, ambivalent viewpoint that only rarely dips into hysterics. The montage of selfies that creates an entire romantic relationship is beautiful, poignant and disquieting in equal measure.

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★½

  Swanberg's depiction of a generation who communicate almost solely by technology is dated only in that there are some people in it who still do not check their computers much at all. (It's funny, but in a film filled with men who let physical relationships lapse to spend more time staring at screens, they speak for an audience watching today when one of them is bewildered that a love interest only checks her email once every week or so.) But if the film's arc (for lack of a better word) shows characters becoming terrifyingly cut off from the world around them, the comic interludes of multiple screens making music of recorded pals' various noises hints at possibilities of a different kind of connectedness made possibly exclusively through isolating technology.

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  Review by Post1000Tension ★★★½ 3

  Answers a question I suppose some might ask: what if the internet enabled white people born around 1980 to become as gross and annoying as possible. The Bewersdorf “Noisehead” segments on their own are quite impressive as compositions, but when tied to gif-like visual panels of people making mouth sounds, it becomes the most awful kind of sensory overload, repellent to me on an irrational, autistic level. Bewersdorf’s creativity is undeniable, but the length and nature of his musical contributions grates as his own character grows progressively unbearable. Swanberg’s innovative post-cinematic form scores some clever points: I enjoyed the e-mails framed like intertitle cards, the agonizing male selfie technique, the pornsite named winkingly after Joe and Kris’ concurrent Nerve.com webseries.…

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  Review by Matt ★★★

  Like all other mumblecore efforts this was a real grind at times, but this sophomore attempt from one of the genre's originals in Joe Swanberg had some pretty excellent ideas and the stones to explore them properly despite its meager budget of $3000.

  Tragic characters, mostly improvised dialogue and some brutal, awkwardly accurate observations of computer-obsessed young men letting their lives pass them by. Decent stuff.

  Also features the acting debut of a certain Greta Gerwig in all her nude glory.

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  Review by Drew Burnett Gregory ★★

  I think it's beautiful that Greta Gerwig met some really annoying guys and now she's directing Barbie. An inspiring story of heterosexuality.

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  Review by Sarah Genao (just2good) ★★½

  Early mumblecore, lower Swanberg fare for me unfortunately. Internet relationships are stronger explored in Uncle Kent a couple years later, though this has more of a variety of them. Kevin Bewersdorf’s 2020 Build the Wall score is so much better than the one here too. It’s honestly pretty boring. Still interesting enough as a time capsule and the ending is very strong.

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  Review by Brewce Longo ★★★½

  The most 2005 movie ever. Every piece of technology in this went out of date so quickly. The flip phones. The way people talked about checking thier email at libraries and Internet cafes. And the weird pre YouTube videos they were making. Even the look of the movie shot on mini dv. Really cool time capsule.

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  Review by Gabriel Jewett ★★★

  I’m a big fan of Joe Swanberg and mumblecore honestly, not sure why it just works for me. This definitely isn’t his best but this is a solid and very interesting early effort from him.

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  Review by BurtonMacReady ★★★

  When that nerdy guy was saying the nude pics the Greta Gerwig character (named “Greta”) was sending him weren’t sexy enough, ALL PICS OF GRETA GERWIG ARE SEXY YOU MORON! And then at one point he’s flirting with another woman at a party while Greta is leaving him a voice mail of her having a breakdown on his cellphone. She is way out of your league dude, show some respect for the queen you stupid idiot!!!

  Speaking of Gerwig, this is her first film role. Technically we never really see her, we hear her voice messages and see still pictures of her but she never actually appears in a scene. Even through the former, her natural talent is readily apparent…

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  Review by ngmi ★★★★

  Dumb small thought I was mulling over was if it felt uncomfortable to use the word "click" to describe selecting stuff on touchscreen interfaces.

  ux.stackexchange.com/questions/57666/documentation-do-we-click-push-press-or-select-a-button-on-a-touch-s

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  Review by Sam Prime ★★★

  The message remains clear and current. Technology, and the immediacy it ushers in, has the power to connect us like never before, but also and equally introduce altogether new ways for us to lose contact, drift apart, and hide ourselves behind numbers, avatars, addresses, and much more. The ideas are there, certainly, but the execution is still quite rough. Forgivably so, though.

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  Review by Harry ★★★★★

  Fantastic film covering themes that have only become more relevant since it's release. Looking at the way technology affects our relationships, but also provides new opportunities to relate and engage. The DIY work-with-what-you-have nature of the filmmaking is inspiring and provides an aesthetic that is more personal than any amount of polish or "professionalism" could hope to offer. The sequence of mobile phone photos that tracks the relationship between Greta and Chris was beautiful and genuinely moving.

  This film includes some of the most naturalistic dialogue I've ever seen in a film, including so much of the awkward filler we use when talking to our friends. Stuff that really isn't all that interesting or important, it's just something we say…