Tiny Furniture 2010

Tom Long, Detroit News: Artful, smart, funny, sad and in its own small way dazzling. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: By playing a version of herself (and asking her family to go along for the ride), and by closing the distance between art and life, she has gotten at something real. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: The funny thing? It all works reasonably well, especially if you have a yen for the urbane register of city kids and their amazingly cool parents. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Sharp observations, thin on entertainment value -- "Mumblecore" at its heart. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: There's not much to it, but you do sense, after watching it, that this filmmaker might someday make something very good, once she starts looking beyond her own immediate vicinity. Read more

Noel Murray, AV Club: Tiny Furniture offers a 21st-century, East Coast spin on The Graduate, but with comedy-writer-ish dialogue and a mannered style that never fully gels. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Many of us have been here - that first flush of post-college terror, remember? - and Dunham makes it funny and involving before entropy kicks in at the two-thirds mark. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Dunham definitely has a knack for shaping a comic scene, but Aura is so culturally and financially privileged that her woes begin to seem as trivial as the miniatures her mother uses in her artwork. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: It's a find -- funny and rueful and verbally dexterous, leavening a quippy screenplay with just enough honesty to make it stick. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Dunham has a sharp eye for visual composition and a sharp ear, too. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: It's one of the loveliest lowest-budget features to come down the pike. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: It's a tiny tale of inertia, and it's also the grand triumph of a young artist with a mature trust in her own unique voice. Read more

Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter: How Lena Dunham made her movie is more impressive or at least unique than the actual story she chooses to tell. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: The setup is pat, but Dunham's approach is utterly singular. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR: The end result is that Tiny Furniture plays like situation comedy, but with an overlay of performance art. Read more

V.A. Musetto, New York Post: The actors, mostly nonprofessionals, deliver their lines with understated charm, the pacing is just right and Jody Lee Lipes' cinematography is clear and concise. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: I like to encourage young wannabes for pure guts, if nothing else. But Lena Dunham makes a 98-minute home video seem like 98 days of hard labor. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: There's a fierce, self-lacerating wit on display in Lena Dunham's tiny indie Tiny Furniture: as big and bold as the production is modest and (literally) homemade. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: If you're working with your own family in your own house and depicting passive aggression, selfishness and discontent and you produce a film this good, you can direct just about anybody in just about anything. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Tiny Furniture, winner of the SXSW festival's best narrative feature prize, gets under your skin. It's the work of a filmmaker with a stunning future. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: This is a quirky little comedy, not a film that will change your view of reality or anything, but it's funny, wrenching and sharply observed, with a dispassion that suggests a real artist is at work. Read more

Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle: What Dunham lacks in polish, she makes up for in her ability to observe her generation, with the hardest truths coming at her own expense. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: For a DIY second feature from a very young director, Tiny Furniture feels surprisingly assured, even elegant. Read more

Claude Peck, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Just when you think "Tiny Furniture" is of the nothing-happens school of indie-filmdom, something more dramatic happens. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: In skewering the neuroses of New York bohemians, Durham has left us too little to care about. Read more

Trevor Johnston, Time Out: A deft self-portrait of someone who hasn't reached the point where they can take themselves seriously. Read more

Joe Leydon, Variety: Written and directed by newcomer Lena Dunham, who also plays the lead role, this technically polished indie often feels like a semi-autographical effort by a filmmaker trying to work out issues in her art that she's still confronting in life. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Tiny Furniture is a comedy of youthful confusion that gets its kick not only for evoking a world of unromantic hookups, casual BJs, and iPhone porn, but for satirizing New York's bourgeois bohemia. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: Dunham's dramatic comedy (comic drama?) renders the artist's life with candor, wit and 360-degree clarity. More, please. Read more