Rating: 
Summary: In the count of me---for the love of expression
Review: I do not think there is any need for critcism for this distinctive film. If this film was made for the purpose of racial exploitation the characters would more likely be urban drugdealers. If Mr.David Gordon Green was at all to pretend himself into any sophistication---His hero would be Woody Allen, not McCabe and MrsMiller. The feeling from my heart about this experience is that the quality was overwhelming, and more than that---there's magic in the frames. There's humour too---unconventional humor, and much more that gave me a peak of what material really is exciting to make. But anyway, Perhaps the film's too quiet for this generation or what have you, or this film's true viewers aren't yet born, but believe me, the real intentions of this film, is like the director said himself on Charlie Rose: You won't just think oh, what's for dinner, but that this experience is something that lingers.
So really, get that chance to see it if you're genuinely interested. thank you
Rating:
Summary: My two cents
Review: I just finished reading all the reviews here, and had to put my two cents in about the film.
Simply put...this is a great movie. There are many reasons why I think this movie works for me, but heres just a couple.
First off, cinematography is my favorite part of films, and this director (and the DP) has set a new standard for the number of beautiful shots in one movie. Some of the scenes, when mixed with the perfect ambient score, start to resemble something like a Ron Fricke movie if he had filmed in the lower class South.
Secondly, I am shocked at all the reviews that speak negatively about the actors and the dialogue. The character of Nasia was especially brilliant. One of my favorite lines in the movie is where vernon is talking to nasia in the kitchen, and she tells him that she broke up with buddy because she needed a more "mature" man who has something to talk about. Vernon looks at her and says, "Talk about what?! He's 13 and you're 12! You're supposed to be talkin' about little kid sh-t!"
There are so many ideas and subjects addressed in this film. I haven't seen anything else from the director, but I think this film is very deserving of being a Criterion release. If you are a fan of beautifully shot films, or just looking for a deep experience when you watch a movie...George Washington is one you will rewatch over and over.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Film
Review: I liked _George Washington_. It is a beautiful film that follows a group of adolescent children one summer in North Carolina. The languorous mood, and gorgeous cinematography, along with the non-professional cast, creates a sense of pathos in the viewer. I wish more movies of this caliber were made.
Rating: 
Summary: A poignant landscape of a dusty, delapidated South
Review: I saw this film at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2000, and thought it one of the most original and haunting films I have seen in years. It is a very subjective, impressionistic and almost transcendental movie about a group of kids, and how they follow their own particular code of honour in the face of misfortune. Kind of like Harmony Korine but at an easier pace, and with more unity of vision.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible
Review: If I could give it "0" stars I would. Had I seen this in the theatre I would have walked out. It was THAT BAD. The dialogue of the children is pompous, self-important, self-conscious and worst of all wanting us, the audience, to actually believe that the characters would be spouting this mess! The blond little girl was at least interesting until she opened her mouth and tried to wax philosophica. Pitiful and unbelievable! Do not waste your money, time or energy on this movie. The writing, acting and directing were all horrible.
Rating:
Summary: Hypnotic
Review: In one of the opening scenes of George Washington, a boy and a girl break up. There is not much else to this scene, which makes it like most breaks ups. It makes it like many of our experiences is childhood: they just happen. The movie George Washington, however, mixes such everyday happenings in a poor, rural/industrial landscape with a level of complexity that is suprising and revealing. The characters experience love, loss, friendship, joy, forgiveness, boredom, and a longing for something more. The characters like each other. Some are white, and most of them are black, but they are all friends. Every summer, kids all over the country experience the kinds of events that many kids experience, yet there is a tragedy that occurs in this movie that renders this story unique. Tragedy aside, George Washington is simply a beautiful and quiet film about one hot summer in the south and it's children.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful film
Review: In the tradition of Terrence Malick's films this is a beautifully photographed and conceived film.
Considering that actors are non-professional, their performances are wonderful.
Despite the characters of this film are mostly poor, there is no sense of anger in this film, just a passing glimpse of a few people's lives.
This film has more feeling and dept than 90% of the over-produced garbage that comes out of Hollywood.
Rating:
Summary: Film is Art
Review: Like Abbas Kiarostami's "Taste of Cherry", George Washington is a masterpiece that uses images as a narrative. I admit that this film is not for everyone. But for those who are reluctant to see this film, please give it a try. This film is the best evidence in years that film is art.
Rating:
Summary: It's Difficult To Explain Just How Bad This Is
Review: The most striking thing about George Washington is the incredibly unrealistic dialogue of the children. The funniest thing is that I later read the director say he was seeking realism. I would strongly warn against anyone considering buying this without having seen it first. I was also thinking of this after reading a review that favorably compared the film's narrative to that of Harmony Korine's Gummo, which I like very much. That's all I really wanted to point out. As well, I'll just say that the reviewer who posted the 'myths debunked' review is, if not involved in the production of the film, in some way profiting from the sales of it. All the others who have posted five-star reviews can just be put down to poor taste (click more about each one and see five stars given to a 98 Degrees album and similar products).
Rating:
Summary: Warning: College film student pretensions run amok.
Review: This is a film that I loathed with such visceral intensity that I felt compelled to publicly ridicule it. I realize that this isn't perhaps the most welcoming disclaimer for the following review, but if even one--and only one--person resists the urge to trust the (usually more discriminating) film selectors at the Criterion Collection and thereby withholds the approval and appreciation that additional sales of this DVD might signify to the writer-director of this film, then this review has been successful. First, let me say a good thing about George Washington: its cinematography is exceptional. But needless to say, cinematography is generally not a sufficient reason to watch or to want to watch a movie. As if intent on not allowing the audience to appreciate its sullen, dilapidated visual aesthetic, George Washington betrays its beauty at every step--populating these sad and evocative landscapes of the South with the pretentious musings of children who are supposedly capable of articulating profound truths about their own situations and, more philosophically, about life itself. The problem, of course, is that children of these ages do not speak this way because--and this would seem apparent--they are children. That isn't to say that some children are not gifted, intelligent, and astute, but simply that this is not their "voice." Instead, it's the unmistakeable voice of a young film school graduate who imagines (1) that he has poignant insights about these characters and their situations and (2) that he has the artistic maturity to integrate these insights into a film without being didactic, preachy, and--worst of all--false. Unfortunately, the director has neither the insights nor the talent that a film like George Washington demands. Mostly, the "profound" self-revelatory dialogue (uttered, I must remind you, by pre-teens) is achingly contrived and ponderous--expressly foreign to the general experience of being a child--and, moreover, the non-professional child actors are incapable of delivering their line-readings without sounding self-conscious and unnatural. Of course, the blame isn't all theirs; their readings are unnatural because the dialogue, purportedly earnest and naturalistic, is at all times unnatural and false. Occasionally, the film lapses into such fits of self-indulgent ponderousness and the dialogue becomes so clumsy and unwieldly that it becomes unintentionally humorous. Ostensibly, the film is (roughly) about the interactions of a group of poor Southern children who sense the oppression of their impoverished, dead-end environment. If the plot sounds excessively vague and uneventful, then rest assured that tragedy strikes and one of the children dies; the others are peripherally involved and try to cover up the death, after which the child who is/feels most responsible for the death enages in eccentric and symbolic behavior (like dressing in a super hero outfit and directing traffic). It probably doesn't even need to be mentioned that this child has a psychopathically abusive father, who figures largely in one of the more absurdly maudlin threads of this storyline. Within all of this coming-of-age ilk, there is a discernible exploitative quality. One cannot escape the realization that this a film about miseries of rural (and for the most part black) southern poverty created by a young white (pseudo-)intellectual film-maker who shows, by his writing and direction, that he possesses no deep understanding of this particular milieu. Even if he grew up within it, its (more prosaic) realities evidently eluded him. There is, in short, a mawkish do-good sentimentality which undlies and seems to motivate this film, and it is nothing short of embarrassing. It wants to exalt but instead degrades its subjects.
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