Popular reviews

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  Review by demi adejuyigbe ★★★★ 8

  honestly the exact kind of beautiful, weird, specific, small town working class wonder-piece i needed time watch tonight. it’s a shame byrne didn’t direct anything else because he’s got such a specific style that feels like it could’ve been applied to an entire generation of eccentric comedies to great effect! i love you david!

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  Review by demi adejuyigbe ★★★★★ 11

  a fucking masterpiece. the more i watch byrne do his thing, the funnier it is that i used to confuse him and david lynch without any real knowledge of each other, because i do think they do a lot of similar things– just with polar opposite auras about their work. could've switched names with american utopia and worked just as well, but that's more a credit to byrne's consistency in his work/message. i could write 1,000 words on how loving and celebratory and quietly funny and sarcastic this movie is, and one day on a subsequent viewing i probably will.

  i'd like to believe david byrne has seen Joe Pera Talks With You and he loves it. :)

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  Review by Gabriel Gundacker 4

  Tremendous, meaningful nonsense. No one else can get me teary from one weird sentence. David Byrne’s surrealism never gives into self important witticisms a la Terry Gilliam’s. Surrealism often leaves people feeling like they don’t have an invitation, but David Byrne’s brand is inclusive, always focusing on feelings before intellectuality. That’s why the wacko-tacko Talking Heads didn’t get lost in their generation, and everyone I know listens to them with the same fervor as 1984. The same goes for this movie, which would have been celebrated as forward had it been released right now today, Tuesday 2020. Safe to say I had a very good time watching it!

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  Review by sydney ★★★★★ 6

  At one point during this film, the camera follows a lone sheet of newspaper floating across the lawns of some bland suburban houses. David Byrne narrates: "Look at that - who can say it isn't beautiful?", and through the eyes of TRUE STORIES, it is. It's a sort of meditation on progress, told with one of the most natural and unforced displays of strangeness I've ever seen. Gone is the underlying fear and cynicism of a lot of Talking Heads' music, replaced by an almost childlike sense of wonder and excitement for the future - the future of technology, the future of love, the way our lives might change for the better.

  Watching TRUE STORIES as a kid might be…

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  Review by iana ★★★★★ 3

  i want david byrne to adopt me

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  Review by holli ★★★★★

  sir that's my emotional support surrealist talking heads western musical

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  Review by former movie enjoyer

  i'm 6'3" and maintain a very consistent panda bear shape

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  Review by Joe ★★★★½ 5

  Literally everything David Byrne says in this movie can serve as a quote in a Letterboxd review, you pick one.

  Tempting to read this as pure satire, but if that's what it is it's extraordinarily condescending and unilluminating - instead I think the view voiced by Byrne, that suburban sprawl, shopping malls, prefabricated buildings, TV commercials, and even giant corporations can all be beautiful is more or less what's being expressed by the movie, albeit in a very funny tongue-in-cheek mode that should seem faintly familiar to fans of his band. And then there's the stuff that probably was intended as satire in 1986, like the "Puzzling Evidence" religion based on an unending conspiracy narrative, that have basically come true in the intervening 30 years. Extremely hard not to love.

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 4

  David Byrne proves to be as eccentric a filmmaker as he does a musician. This movie is a glorious spectacle, a celebration of America (inadvertently fitting considering the date I watched it), and a sly commentary on commercialism, industrialisation, and modern America at the same time. In part, it is a cross between David Lynch and John Waters and Wim Wenders, capturing small town, Middle America with an understanding of the quirks, kitsch, and expanses, but it is more than that. It has a musical soul and an appreciation of romance, and a glossy, neon eye for the absurd, that shows how the off-kilter persona Byrne has could be derived from the deceptive homogeneity of small town life.

  It also…

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  Review by Branson Reese

  David Byrne makes a great thesis statement for his whole deal

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  Review by muriel ★★★★★

  i wish i could jump inside this film and live there

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  Review by maddie ★★★★ 1

  john goodman singing people like us has just cleared my skin/brought my grades up/restored my crops/added 5 years to my lifespan and taught me how to love myself