Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Movie_Muse_Reviews The saga of the Millennial college graduate who moves back home and begins a maddening search for direction — that's what Lena Dunham sets off to depict in "Tiny Furniture" and she does it in the most Millennial way possible: completely DIY including casting her mother and sister to play — her mother and sister.Dunham captures the mundanity of post-undergrad life at home, even though her character Aura's life is a little more unusual; home is a Manhattan loft where mom (Laurie Simmons) is an a photographer/visual artist (she actually is in real life) of solid notoriety. Sister Nadine (Grace Dunham) lives there too, but she's in the no-pressure zone of high school. There isn't so much a plot synopsis as a list of friends new and old and other influences who make Aura's new life as a young adult and dreams of becoming a successful artist complicated and messy.The authenticity of Dunham's voice as a writer rings clear. A lot of it is the semi- autobiographical form; it's impossible for any peers watching (and maybe some a little older) not to relate in some way to Aura's "struggle." It might be nice if more stuff happened in the film instead of a whole lot of stuff that could be stuff but doesn't ever become stuff, but there's also something refreshing about taking it in as a contemporary portrait of an emerging generation. Also, you could argue that there's a certain poetic truth to the fact that nothing really happens.The "action" is how Aura navigates internal and external pressures. Everyone around her, for example, seems to have found a measure of success. Her mother, for one, has been successful forever; she meets a successful-ish YouTube star in Jed (Alex Karpovsky) who's talking to networks about a TV show and even her sister was recognized nationally for her poetry, which Aura can't help but demean. Then there's her oldest childhood friend, Charlotte (Jemima Kirke, Dunham's actually oldest childhood friend) who sports the couldn't-care-less attitude that plays in contrast to it all.Aura's first foray into the "real world" involves getting a job, since that's what people are supposed to do, but of course being a daytime closed-hours hostess at a restaurant is a far cry from her aspirations, even though she seems to believe its in her best interest. Throughout the course of the film, Dunham exposes a bit more of Aura's psychology, namely the complex nature of her relationship to her family and home in the specific and broadest sense. Done for as low a budget as possible, the actors here are all amateurs but it doesn't show. Dunham's strength is obviously her writing, but she's a sufficient stand in for the average 22-year-old, and as a director, she makes the most of it with some interesting shot framing to bring varying perspectives to the talk-heavy action."Tiny Furniture" is a really impressive debut for a fledgling filmmaker, especially one whose talent is writing and simply needed to round up a cast and crew to realize her story into some kind of finished product. It could certainly use a plot, but Dunham is able to effectively touch on the melange of post-college emotions in the 21st century in a way that's yet to be articulated, and which she effectively continued to expound upon in her HBO series "Girls," which this movie made possible. Dunham recognizes the complexity of her generation. There is a self-centered component, there's a familial dependency, but there's also a mixed bag of influences and life philosophies that can take hold of the wheel at any moment. We are pitiable and pitiful, lost yet driven, naive and all too aware of how the world works.~Steven CThanks for reading! Visit Movie Muse Reviews for more

Steve Pulaski The characters in Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture are the kind that mistake the phrase "eight grade crying" for "integrated grinding," used in the context of describing a local dance. They are the kind of people who seem to have quite a bit to be thankful for - very nice homes/apartments, possessions that make people envious, lovely outfits, and more - but scarcely seem to recognize that and just go ahead and direct their attention to the first problem on their mind; one in particular is quoted that another spends a day "watching Rachel Maddow, eating coconut-macaroons and laying on a heating pad." They are also the kind of people who hit their friend with a wooden spoon in what seems to be a playful manner when they are legitimately angry at that same person. These are likely some of the most eclectic people ever committed to film.But Dunham commits them and drags them along in a tired and often boring array of archetypal, indie-situational comedy that never seems to be interesting enough to become invested in or relatable or believable enough to take seriously on a personal level. I almost feel that the people who look up to this film now - post-college kids and twentysomethings trying to latch on to a specific direction in life - will look back on this film in maybe twenty years and smirk and perhaps hide their face at the characters' naivete and almost disturbingly ungrateful attitude.The film is centered around Aura (Lena Dunham), who returns home from her liberal arts college to her mother's loft, which serves as her studio for her art. Aura majored in film studies and has no particular direction in life, and is caught in the middle of two men while trying to find motivation to even get up in the morning. The two men are pretty basic caricatures, much like herself - Jed (Alex Karpovsky), who has achieved moderate internet fame thanks to his Youtube videos and Keith (David Call), who works at the same restaurant Aura does.Right off the bat, these characters seem to be nothing more than vessels spewing cute phrases that are a cross between directionless collegiate talk and a product of screen writing quirkiness. Despite Dunham approaching this topic with the mindset to capture this point in people's lives with a sense of authenticity. But just like that, everybody here feels inauthentic and quirky to the point of being barely able to function. Everything, from their moments to their speech to their speech-patterns, seems to be meticulously laid out and almost robotic, so as nothing is natural and almost exists as this artificial dream world.Consider the scene where Aura and Jed have sex in a thin, tight metal pipe in the middle of the street in what is one of the most awkward and damning scenes I've seen in a while. There's no particular wit or humor in a scene like this. It's only awkward and serves as yet another moment when Dunham seems to be concocting a long line of eccentric events in the film for the sole purpose of having eccentric events take place.Then there are scenes like the one where Aura throws an all out temper-tantrum at her mother in a scene that is nothing but whiny in tone and only adds to the unlikability of its characters. This scene, however, is still a bold act on Dunham's behalf because she's unafraid to show her characters in two separate lights, or even make a stern note of the distasteful acts she commits. Yet by the time we start seeing this unlikable side to the characters, Tiny Furniture hasn't given us much to really like or appreciate about the characters, so by the time these aspects are introduced there's nothing for us to remind ourselves that these characters are somewhat decent people.I suppose by definition of technicalities, Tiny Furniture is considered a mumblecore film, for it has a heavy focus/attachment to its characters, makes an attempt at naturalistic dialog (by Dunham's definition not mine), and rather low-budget production values that use color as a way of disguising their cheapness. Dunham and another mumblecore filmmaker I have a great fondness for, Joe Swanberg, seem to do a lot of similar things from infusing their films with the likes of uniquely characters to focusing sights on their sexual adventures; the difficulty is stating why one does it better than the other. Maybe it's because Swanberg's approach seems to be catering to a wider demographic where you don't need to be a part of the characters' specific group in order to like or understand them. In Tiny Furniture, it seems the only way to have any kind of positive feeling towards these characters is if you have similar circumstances to them and, with the way Dunham has drawn these vapid and often contemptible people, I doubt a great many people have.Certain parts of Tiny Furniture work - the framing is top-notch and tightly-formatted, giving the sense we know exactly what Dunham wants to include and exclude in the shot and, on occasion, Dunham stages some strong monologues. Regardless of how I feel about Tiny Furniture, there's little denying that Lena Dunham will be a central figure to monitor with the popularity of indie film along with her HBO show Girls. Like it or not, Dunham has now been billed as "a voice of her generation" so much now that she (a) knows it and (b) will continue to produce films that stay true to her specific style. How you'll feel about this statement will differ. I just believe I'm stating a fact.Starring: Lena Dunham, Alex Karpovsky, and David Call. Directed by: Lena Dunham.

tieman64 Directed by Lena Dunham, "Tiny Furniture" stars Dunham herself as Aura, a young woman who returns from college to her family home. She's returned with nothing but a film studies degree, a broken heart and a lack of direction. At home Aura mingles with many adolescents in a similar situation, and her mother, who is a successful artist.Whilst there is very little overt humour in the film, "Tiny Furniture" is nevertheless a satire of sorts, Dunham taking aim at the narcissism of both contemporary youths and a certain subset of pretentious, artsy-fartsy, liberal hipsters (all white and born of privilege). It's an insufferable film about insufferable people who talk about and do insufferable things. But that's the point.Somewhat autobiographical, the film was also made at that point in Dunham's own life immediately prior to the moment in which she slid from aimless, awkward kid to successful artist with her own HBO franchise. In its contrasts between a once wayward but now successful mother and her currently wayward daughter, the film foreshadows Dunham's own real-life rise. The film's not contemptuous of self-absorbed artists who take "pictures of tiny furniture" and "miss the forest for the trees", but rather sees adolescent self absorption, silly experimentation (Dunham's sexual escapades, her lame home movies etc) and private suffering as a kind of phase, a necessary step in perhaps becoming something better.What the film also unintentionally captures is the vacuity of late capitalism. Dunham's young adults hang suspended in limbo, aimless and lethargic. This has led to some viewers chastising them, denouncing their sense of entitlement (Dunham refuses to work in a coffee shop), their unwillingness to "get with the program" and "get a useful job". But with the adult world long discredited, and no viable alternatives apparent, the inability of these kids to function is wholly understandable. It's no coincidence that a rise in mental illnesses correlates with post-Fordist capitalist modes of production. Today, as much as 27 million Americans are on anti depressants. This dangerous individualizing and medicalizing of blame (ie the suffering of modern kids is "all their fault", is a "biological" problem etc) serves only to deflect away from the social causation of mental illness; it is the social sphere that is becoming increasingly toxic (humans are also becoming depressed, on average, at far young ages). We see glimpses of this in Dunham's film, kids pushed to choose irreversible life paths, groomed to be well oiled, productive machines, struggling with full time jobs, social expectations, debts, and of course conflictions over their inability to both follow passions and survive. "What do you do?" is the buzzword of this culture, a term which reveals a lot about society's obsession with work and jobs, obsessions which go so far as to shape the way we think, speak and base our identities. Maybe nobody can escapes this - continual is the cultural conditioning; a mythology which functions only to preserve the status quo – but it is the creative human beings who tries to. Who questions cultural assumptions and tests that which we take for granted throughout our lives.Aura, of course, doesn't explicitly question anything, and may in fact blossom into a quite mediocre artist, but the point is that she is anxious precisely because of these social pressures. Some have called her a narcissist, but narcissism often stems from oppression which in turns spurs the ego to compensate. Philosopher Christopher Lasch called narcissism "the fear of the emptiness that lies at the core of consumerism", but it goes beyond that. Personal gratification is the driver of both narcissism and late capitalist consumerism, which are two sides of the same coin. Consumerist marketing glorifies "projected selves" as "true selves", encouraging self-absorption even as it erodes identity, self-esteem and the resilience which enables emotional growth. The failure to attain projected ideals, or the drive to attain them, of course then leads to a myriad of anxieties. As the subject is overly dependent on socioeconomic signifiers and the approval of others, narcissism and insecurity only balloon further. Dunham's characters aren't only stuck in post graduate delirium, stuck in quarter life crises, but are essentially being pushed into self promotion, solipsism and competition; market yourself or drown.7/10 - Worth one viewing.

mojojones77 By Maurice Jones 'Tiny Furniture' has a 'hipster' creed all over it by the look, which makes most people tray away from it. Myself being one of these people, I none the less decided to check it out as you can never always tell something just by the trailer and I heard Lena Dunham's life is as portrayed in the movie, so it wasn't necessarily a style choice, not that that's important.'Tiny Furniture' opens as you'd expect it too, down to the music. It unleashes a post 'Juno' independent film vibe that makes you wish more creative thought was put into this opening, however that's not the point to the film and if that is what Lena Dunham wanted to do based on reality, so be it.Immediately from the start you get an amateurish film making shot after shot, from which you start to feel as I did; how did Lena Durham even get her own T.V. show? The acting itself, is.... well, amateurish to say the least at first and once to get to meet Aura's friends some might not be able to get past the fact that everyone in the film looks dressed straight out of the 'Urban Outfitters' catalogue but this is not unbelievable or relevant. You soon realize that the spark of the film is not the style but the fact that the way the characters react to each other is quite real even to the point that the film allows you to figure out for yourself as to what Aura actually feels for her friends and family. It doesn't beat you over the head as to how to perceive each character but rather truly puts enough out there, and leaves you to put down your own slight possibility of who they are, kind of like figuring people out in real-life, which isn't easy to portray on paper. The film is also very aware of what the audience thinks or what the audience would do in certain situations. So, when you say to yourself, I hope this goes down this way because that's what would happen, it does. And with that I give Lena Dunham credit for being true to her audience self, therefore being a true movie fan and doing something realistic for the sake of logic and not for the sake of relating, which someone might misconstrued the movies point as. A movie like this is around to show that this reality is okay and exists, because as we all know, society imitates art. If you don't relate to this movie, it's probably because you're not in your twenties or you're less neurotic of a person but trust me the setting of the movie couldn't be less of the point. This is a different looking version of a too real reality of today's twenty-somethings.In the end 'Tiny Furniture' actually respects reality and what it has to offer as entertainment, avoiding emotional clichés, unlike the movie 'Young Adult' which involves many clichés, yet expects us to think it's different after it's all said and done. There are obvious problems with 'Tiny Furniture' but I've still haven't seen many movies like it, that respects the truth so much to allow it to play out as it does, that's why I like it, it's just straight up refreshing. To understand 'Tiny Furniture' you have to sit down and watch it in its entirety and see what happens, like life itself.