This film kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. Mainly out of anxiety for its odd badness. Everything about it felt like a stiff, stilted one-act play. Dialogue obviously, screechingly at times, forcing its way to that final contortion: the excruciating connection between the 'Lawrence of Arabia' line about not caring that it hurts and the importance of truth in a relationship, and the importance of not caring that it hurts. Somebody thought that was pure genius, and somebody was wrong. Not skillfully written, nor directed, nor acted. Carrie Preston had one or two 'moments.' Heather Raffo was a major annoyance to be overcome in order to be able to stand to view the entire film. WHAT a painful-to-watch dud . . . And I find I DO care that it hurt, enough to take the time to write the review no one else seems willing to write. And warn you. This is inept movie-making.

It's always interesting to see what a good writer can do when they let their characters take the gloves off. In this case, an obscure Peruvian wine removes the gauntlets and loosens the tongues of two couples on Halloween night. What comes out is not drunken ravings, but rather deep truths and petty insecurities - the things we go to great pains to obscure from even those closest to us. That one character does not imbibe in the truth serum while the other three do adds to the complexity of the premise and the potential for humor. Unformulaic and refreshingly honest, the film is riotously funny and brilliantly acted -well worth searching out!

What an intelligent, unusual film. Unusual in its simplicity; the setting is basically one room, yet the dialog is so strong that my wife and I found it riveting just about from the start. The writing and direction are strong throughout. All four characters are believable and interesting in their differences. I believe they had fun performing this, because I had fun watching. The film grabbed me as soon as the guests arrived. Even the opening scene is interesting; domestic bliss easily cast aside when a typical argument comes out of nowhere. Real life, real conversation. This is a film that stays with you long after you have seen it. My wife asked several times as we viewed it at home (with wine, of course) "who wrote this"?! She and I were both impressed and told our family and friends to check it out. Vino Veritas deserves wide distribution. Enjoy!

We saw this movie today as part of the monthly Camera Cinema Club program in San Jose. It's an independent film, based on a play written by David MacGregor. There are four characters: two married couples living next door to each other in suburbia. (The movie was filmed in Lincoln, Nebraska.) On Halloween, the couples get together and the hostess brings out a mysterious blue Peruvian wine made from the boiled skin of the blue dart tree frog--supposedly the same frog used to create poison darts. Drink this and you must tell the truth. Three of the four characters drink and what follows is more than an hour of some of the rawest truth you might hope to hear among four close neighbors.It's not like this field hasn't been plowed before. Yasmina Reza's "God of Carnage" comes to mind as a recent entry in this two-couples-speak-truth trope but you can go all the way back to "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and probably further back if you like. There's plenty of material to mine and "Vino Veritas" mines the topic deeply and well.This film is a comedy drama. It touches on so many land-mine subjects (life, death, truth in marriage, trials of parenthood, loss of a child, marital fidelity, sexual communication and power in marriage, loss of one's carefree youth, loss of ardor, terrorism, faith in God, and on, and on) that I simply lost count and waited for the next tick of the script. It's a high-velocity, zig-zag ramble through many, many topics and there's no way you're going to see when the next turn will occur or where it will take you. All that's required is the asking of a question to zig or zag to the next deep truth.All four actors do a spectacular job in this 4-person film. It's so suburban in appearance that most viewers will be easily able to identify with the characters, which digs the topical hooks in even deeper. This is a thinking person's film with a heart. Comedy, drama, pathos. A rare delivery in today's film choices.