Excellent Story Great Acting Quirky Florida Biofiction
Added 2/11/2009
For those who grew up in Florida and experienced the explotation of developers and the grass-roots fight to save its native beauty, you will love this story and the players who tell it. It is a historical fiction that will delight you and confirm your own story. A must view for floridians.
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Florida born and raised
Added 1/8/2008
We loved this movie, and have bought many copies to give to FL friends and relatives. Scenes of FL as it used to be, as well as scenes from FL as it is now. Great fun!
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Great Movie
Added 12/26/2007
My boyfriend, a huge John Sayles fan, introduced me to this movie when it was still on the big screen, and I loved it! I am not sure what I like best between the wonderful actors, many little play lines, or the quotes that we now share after watching this movie, but it is a treasure that we pull out every couple months or so. Now that our VCR has finally died we are replacing the VHS copy with a DVD. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
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Whoa! Too many storylines to resolve.
Added 9/13/2007
Here's a movie that you hate to give an average rating to but it can't be helped. "Sunshine State" has a lot of great characters with a lot of great promise. That's the good, as well as, the bad part for this picture.
The cast delivers an A-list performance and you're quickly drawn into the story centered around an old beach community. There's plots that branch off from the main theme dealing with homecomings, an old community scandal, issues concerning today's crumbling families, hanging onto tradition while making room for progress-I could go on and on. You sit and fully invest yourself in these people but in the end the plot is just a snap shot in the life of these characters. This thing could have been a series, or at least, a mini-series and I could have kept coming back. In the end I was just teased and left wanting to know how they all came out. Loose endings in a movie I don't mind but not this many. Obviously that's what writer and director John Sayles wanted the viewer to leave with at the closing credits. All those questions which the viewer has to resolve for themselves. Too many for my book but make a sequel and I'll be there.
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and they wondered why those hanging chads and butterfly ballots were so problematic
Added 6/18/2007
sayles is one of the most talented underrated filmmakers of our day. it seems to me a film like this should have at least made a hit with the indie-hipster crowd, but i guess the wry humor may be lost on the other 49 states, myself being a third generation floridian. if you plan on visiting florida, you really oughta watch this movie first. you'll appreciate the place better afterwards. the movie is shot entirely on location, a number of places i've been numerous times. he really nailed every beat in this slice-of-life kind of film. (over)developers have come to renovate a sleepy island town and some of the inhabitants are rather reticent about seeing their heritage replaced with convenience stores and condos. this is the premise, and from here, Sayles lets the characters take over, and in no hurry. they are all interesting enough, though, to hold our attention and are extremely believable (they could all be my neighbors). the most endearing character for me, though, is the locale itself, replete with gators, mom-and-pop stores, scars of segregation (people forget mickey's winter home is below the mason-dixon), gators, greedy commercialists, seminoles-gone-redneck, southern rock bands, and retirees. i may be biased, but this film is the transcendance of the mundane at its best
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