Search - Ten Tiny Love Stories on DVD

True drama!

I. Jurek | 03/10/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This movie was excellent! To appreciate this film, a person has to know what great acting really is, and this film shows just that. This all star cast of 10 women telling their "LOVE" stories play with your emotions till the end. They tell you everything that comes along with being in love, in the raw!
NOTE: If anyone says anything distasteful about this excellent film, they don't know film. Trust me, I'm a writer/director"

5 out of 10 is phenomenal...in baseball

Ned K. Wynn | Northern California | 10/28/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I gave this 3 stars for the five monologues that I did enjoy the most. There are two or three really good performances in this, particularly Lisa Gay Hamilton, Kathy Baker, and Rhada Mitchell in a too-short piece that leads off. The rest are either adequate (Kimberley Williams, Alicia Witt and Rebecca Tilney), or less-than-adequate, and a few just plain bad like Deborah Unger (tremulous and melodramatic). A real clunker for me was the morbid, over-the-top, deadly dull story from Elizabeth Pena's monologue which is also way too long, on top of which she doesn't do it well at all.

Hamilton's monologue is probably the best-written of the ten, the finest balanced including deep humiliation with a willingness to confide this without resorting to bathos. Most I found merely self-conscious and stagy with a tinny theatricality that made the person speaking sound so forced and unconnected to reality that I lost contact. This happened especially in Pena's long, drab monologue about a distinctly unhappy marriage. Why Garcia felt the need to stretch this one out like he did I have no idea, but I finally fast-forwarded (turns out I was two seconds from the end of it anyway) and got to Baker's which restored some freshness and balance and gave a better ending to the proceedings (it's wonderful to see an actor with the skill and confidence of Baker simply step into the role and wear it instantly with a minimum of fuss and affectation (certainly one of Ms. Unger's problems)). I don't know if Garcia has a problem with marriage, relationships, or women, but he has an axe to grind somewhere. He has done other ensemble pieces with some of the same women. It seems to be his specialty. While I am a man, I am one who enjoys a good chick flick (Muriel's Wedding, for instance), and I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy Ten Tiny Love Stories. I did, but it was definitely uneven and weighted to the negative side in overall quality.

I think the women were given a bit too much freedom in their interpretations so that some of the less-skilled among them, like Unger, struggled to find the pitch. She just keeps coming apart at the seams during hers leaving herself nowhere to go to modulate her performance. Depending upon the length of the piece, Unger seemed to run out of space and yet sounded so constantly on the brink of disaster emotionally, that it began to sound like a pitiful whine long before it was over. And finally, I felt that some of these monologues were not true in the sense that they had a phony feel to them. They sounded like they were supposed to be candid but they came off stilted. For the three of four good pieces, it's certainly worth the effort."

Refreshing take on love

I. Jurek | Riverside, ILLINOIS USA | 09/10/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The acting and writing in this film are nearly flawless, to such an extent that at first I didn't realize I was viewing fiction. Each actress was perfectly cast, and since each story was completely different from the next, I was later amazed to learn that they were all written by one man. The only underlying theme in all of the stories is "the reality of the situation, is very different from the idealized fantasy." This film is not about Prince Charming coming along, and completing a fairy tale ending. As a woman, I don't believe that this film was misogynistic in any way, so I disagree with the first review. A few of the characters could be described as being weak and lacking self-respect, but we are also shown strong female characters. Each story is so potent, and full of depth and wonderful idiosyncricies, that it becomes a nearly impossible task to review them all. If you enjoy films which are character- driven, which explore the various relationships between humans, and which don't always end in an oversentimentalized, indulgent Hollywood way, you will enjoy this film."

I Thought I Was Watching Interviews

Www.SubjectiveArt.Com | Miami, FL USA | 09/14/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I Thought I was watching actual interviews but found that the whole thing was an written story. I find the style unique and refreshing. Each story has its own philosophy in itself, and I see womens' strength to be honest."