ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

sergelamarche Sarah and all her help do something really special here. After finding out she has a dna father from Montréal, she decides to investigate. After the findings, she decides to make this film out of it. It starts like we'll hear the usual story of straying wife but ends with so much more. Touching and hilarious simultaneously. Fabulous film for fabulous story. Most of it 'espiègle'.

MisterWhiplash Actor/director Polley's first documentary Stories We Tell is about her family, and specifically about her mother and her history, leading up to a big question that is answered in the course of the film: who is Sarah's *real* father, and what happened? While some of the magic-tricks that Polley seems to be playing – mixing actual 8mm film footage shot of her family at the time with (albeit very smoothly transitioned) reenactments with actors playing her mother, father, siblings, and the lover who turned out to be her biological father – is a bit tiring near the end, it's ultimately a fantastic story, a wonderful and bittersweet look at the ties that bind, how we delineate truth and fiction, and that love is really what should count. It's power is when it is its simplest – or when we see Polley's father in a recording booth reciting some finely written narration for her daughter (her father, by the way, is a known British actor from Canada, Michael Polley).

Red-125 Stories We Tell (2012) is a documentary written and directed by Sarah Polley. This movie is unusual because it's actually a biography of the filmmaker and her family, narrated by her father, "starring" her siblings and herself, along with Polley's relatives and family friends. But the film isn't straight biography or autobiography. It's a quest film as well.Sarah's siblings and family friends begin by talking about Sarah's mother, Diane, who died, aged 55, in 1990, when Sarah was 11 . (There's some actual 8mm footage of the family, intermixed with staged footage that has the same grainy look of old amateur filmmaking.)Sarah's mother was beautiful, and she was vivacious and fun-loving. Sarah's dad was a handsome, decent person, but no one would describe him as vivacious and fun-loving. The marriage wasn't terrible, but it was clear to the couple--and eventually to their children--that it wasn't a good match.That much information is established in the first half-hour of the movie. Then the question arises as to whether Sarah's dad is really her biological father. Polley decides to dig for this answer, and interview the same people she's already interviewed, although this time asking the question, "Who's my father?" Polley accumulates information bit by bit, and eventually expands her search to include people who knew Diane when she was performing in a play out of town. As Sarah embarks on this search, the camera keeps rolling, and we go along at her side. It's a fascinating ride, because everyone has part of the picture, but only two people had the answer, and one of them is no longer alive.Stories We Tell is a quiet, careful movie. There's anger, but no shouting, sadness, but no tears. Sarah Polley is in the middle of it all, but she's credited as the director, not as the star. In a way, the star of the movie really is the late Diane Polley, but she's the one person who can't tell her side of the story. That's what makes the whole thing so fascinating.This is a movie you will want to see if you enjoy quiet, thoughtful, serious films. It will work equally well on a small or large screen.

jake_fantom If you enjoy spending hours in the company of completely self-absorbed people struggling to make their banal lives somehow dramatic and important, this documentary is for you. It's hard for me to imagine a more pathetic waste of time than listening to the endless jawboning of this clan of no-talents as they rehash sordid but ultimately so-what family events with the gravitas of Walter Cronkite reporting on D-Day. The only thing that is remarkable about the assembled cast as they tell their stories to the camera is how truly clueless and narcissistic each family member is, along with the outer members of their circle. There is plenty of archival video to flesh out the threadbare story. In fact, this tribe of narcissists seems to have shot home video of virtually every moment of their dreary lives -- from having drinks in a nondescript bar to walking down the street, sitting in the kitchen, and so on. Spare us from such bores.