Popular reviews

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  Review by Karst ★★★★★

  dale cooper would have a field day with this town. i’m getting too predictable but this was a home run, so delightful and hilarious and life-affirming. nashville but weirder and happier, even some stuff (parade scene) that reminded me of tati. thank you to the one person in my twitch chat who would tell me to watch this every stream

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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 ★★★★★ 12

  "I really enjoy forgetting. When I first come to a place, I notice all the little details. I notice the way the sky looks. The color of white paper. The way people walk. Doorknobs. Everything. Then I get used to the place and I don't notice those things anymore. So only by forgetting can I see the place again as it really is."

  On Brett Goldstein's podcast "Films To Be Buried With," he always asks his guests "Which film do you most relate to?" and for a while I have thought my answer to that question would be Brigsby Bear. Now I think it's this.

  I'm so impressed by what David Byrne did here. Such a rare and difficult thing to…

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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 sydney ★★★★★ 7

  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 Holli ★★★★★

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

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  Review by iana ★★★★★ 2

  i want david byrne to adopt me

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  Review by cinephile... 🕯️

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

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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 Joe ★★★★½ 6

  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 karen h.

  john goodman is truly one of the most charming screen presences of all time