dansview I was waiting for some kind of clever liberal message, as I do with almost everything I watch these days. I didn't really detect one. It's about an Operations Manager for a Hazardous Waste disposal company. I don't know why the guy would have to travel all the way to Durham, NC for a warehouse and ultimately a processing center, but I guess there is only so much room in his home state of Texas. You probably know the story. This guy sets up these waste disposal centers in cities that could use the work and the revenue. He encounters some locals who then encounter each other.As other reviewers have pointed out, Durham is not a small dying city. It has a couple hundred thousand people and is part of a thriving region. But this picture could have been set at an earlier time. There are no computers or smart phones, so maybe it is supposed to be earlier than 2010, although there is no indication of that.Anyways, it is not about any of this. It's about hope, transition, renewal, and fear. Most importantly, it's about ordinary people. Having said that, these actors did an excellent job with the material. I too don't understand why they need to give the work to two Brits, but they did well.As other reviewers have mentioned, you keep waiting for the Colin Firth character to turn into a slime, but he doesn't. He is genuine. The best part is when the young woman calls her ex-boyfriend a "loser" for staying in town and accepting a potentially humble life. You could see that a part of her meant it, and that he was deeply hurt, but also that she didn't really want to hurt anyone, and didn't fully believe what she said.I loved the way they portrayed the ex high school sweethearts. Faced with the girl leaving town, the guy tells her straight out that he loves her and always has. That's what you have to do. Stake your claim. She reciprocated.Ellen Burstyn could have easily relied on clichés, but she didn't. Her facial expressions and reactions set her performance apart from that. I don't get the ending. I won't give it away, but it seems like the guy is admitting that he was never comfortable doing what he does to begin with. He fooled me.What a bizarre concept for a movie. That's why I like it. Because there is potential intrigue in the most mundane of circumstances. The main character mentions that a city's fate is dependent on how its' residents look at it. The same thing goes for a movie plot. You can turn a seemingly boring circumstance into something compelling with good writing, settings, and performances. They did that adequately here.

Amy Adler Georgianna Carr (Ellen Burstyn) lives in a sleepy North Carolina town that has seen better days. Her father was a prominent businessman, in his day, and he kept a large warehouse for the tobacco farmers to store their product until it was manufactured into cigarettes and so on. That was long ago and this is now. Miss Carr is not wealthy and may have to sell her house. But, unbelievably, a Texan man, Gus Leroy (Colin Firth) wants to rent her warehouse and gives her six months rent in advance. Is this her way to keep her house? She agrees but finds out, too late, that he is storing hazardous waste, in government-regulated bins, until it can be properly disposed. Now, Miss Carr is so worried she asks her daughter, Willa (Patricia Clarkson) to help her find a way out. Meanwhile, Mary (Amber Tamblyn) a young twenty-something, beautiful lady discovers that the man she has been dating is married, technically, with two kids and won't seek a divorce until the children are adults. Whew! She contemplates moving to Atlanta, to the sorrow of Harris (Orlando Bloom) the town's sheriff who secretly, passionately loves her. Also, her parents are very reluctant to see her go as well. As to the warehouse, Willa tries to discuss things with Gus and finds out that they, both divorcees, may have a mutual attraction. Hey, this may not be a sleepy little town after all! When a heavy rain storm arrives, things get even more complicated. What will happen to these fine folk? Don't be fooled by the cover, with a smiling Mr. Firth in the center. This is not a light-hearted story but a fairly heavy look at a bevy of diverse topics. Among these are hazardous waste, aging Southern towns and the pursuits of the heart. The script, written by Horton Foote before his death, may have attracted the big name cast and they really are terrific. Firth has a genuine Texas twang so that's fun and Bloom sports a Southern drawl as well. More importantly, all of the principals give very touching turns. The small Dixie city has its charms, especially Miss Carr's house, and costumes, photography and direction are up to snuff. But, its generally a slow-moving, reflective film so not everyone will appreciate its better qualities. If you think you will, go for it.

tarmcgator I gather that Horton Foote chose Durham, N.C., as the setting for his MAIN STREET screenplay because of its symbolic value as a city that has undergone substantial changes in its economy in the past half-century, and he wanted to write about people trying to deal with change being imposed on them. I am not going to comment on the overall quality of the film here, except to say that, given the anemic screenplay, the reputable cast seems flat and largely listless, as if they realized once the shooting started just how bad the script was.No, what I want to address is the portrayal of my hometown, to which I chose to move and in which I have lived for the past twenty-five years. At the risk of sounding like Joe the Civic Booster, the city of Durham portrayed in MAIN STREET bears only faint, surface resemblance to the actual place. Anyone who manages to sit through this movie should NOT think they've learned much about the actual Durham. For one thing, Durham is not a small town but a city of more than 200,000 residents, part of a larger metropolitan area (Wake, Durham, and Orange counties) exceeding 2 million.Yes, downtown Durham is struggling. It was struggling before the Great Recession and it continues to struggle with reinvigorating itself as a vital city center. It needs more retail businesses, more reasons for the suburban middle-class to come downtown and enjoy the urban ambiance. In that respect, it's hardly alone among U.S. cities, small and large. Other parts of Durham – notably, the older working class neighborhoods within a mile or so of downtown – also are hurting.The downtown area is only part of the city. Moreover, downtown Durham has snapped back in the past few years. At least as far back as the early 1980s, old tobacco industry structures in the inner city were being rehabbed. Durham held its last tobacco market (where farmers would auction off their crop) in 1986, and the huge American Tobacco complex closed the following year. By 2001, the last cigarette plant in the city (Liggett Group) had gone. In the past decade, despite a slow start and the general downturn of the U.S. economy, many downtown buildings have been renovated and repurposed as residential, office, and retail spaces, or are in the process. The old tobacco warehouse district has become the Durham Central Park, and there is a growing bar and restaurant scene downtown.Downtown Durham also is the site of much new construction over the past two decades, including the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, the Durham Performing Arts Center, the new urban transit center and a new Durham County legal complex. There's a big, modern Marriott hotel and convention center there, too, rather than the seedy little hotel in which Gus LeRoy stayed in the film. New, privately funded construction has complemented the new public structures, as well as refurbished buildings that originated in the early 20th century and before (such as the Carolina Theater, where MAIN STREET was shown here). As I said, downtown is only part of Durham. MAIN STREET makes no mention of Durham's two thriving universities. Duke, with its world-class medical center, is the city's largest employer. N.C. Central University is regarded as a leader among the nation's historically black state universities. (Harris Parker, the cop in MAIN STREET, could have been attending NCCU's School of Law, one of six university law schools in North Carolina and the only one where a student can earn a law degree at night while working his or her day job.) The film also makes no mention of Research Triangle Park, which since the 1960s has been providing jobs for thousands of residents of Durham and other nearby counties at such employers as GlaxoSmithKline, Cisco, Merck, BASF, Intel, and the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, as well as at IBM's largest U.S. operation. The city has numerous suburban residential developments and shopping areas as well as several well-preserved old neighborhoods and commercial districts closer to downtown.Durham is well-integrated into the metropolitan area known as the Research Triangle. Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Cary, Carrboro, UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State University are indeed nice places for Durham residents to visit -- as well as places where many of them work --and relatively easy to get to. I missed MAIN STREET when it opened in Durham, but I caught it at a theater in Cary, an easy thirty-minute drive from my Durham home.Please – I know I sound like a Chamber of Commerce flack (which I am not), but Durham is NOT some isolated urban hellhole full of desperate, blue-collar types and faded aristocrats lamenting the passing of the city's tobacco heyday and wondering where their next job is coming from. Unfortunately, there are several other small cities and towns in North Carolina that resemble the Durham of MAIN STREET, places whose former textile and furniture mills have gone overseas and left downtowns devastated, hungry for industry and development. Durham is always after new companies and more jobs as well – especially in the current economy – but, again, it only vaguely resembles the city depicted in MAIN STREET. And, believe me, if Gus LeRoy came to town proposing to truck "hazardous waste" from Louisiana to Texas via Durham (?), the public outcry would be deafening.

barb-180 This was a beautiful film, written by Horton Foote, who wrote the screenplay of To Kill a Mockingbird. It has the same classic feel, with an updated story to fit modern times and conflicts. Top-notch actors make it even better. No, this is not a slam-bam action flick. If you want something like that, watch Transformers. There is a plot, and it's pretty straightforward -- a hazardous waste company sends a rep to a dying town to try to convince them to let them build a plant. The film covers not only what happens in this layer, but how the residents come to appreciate and love their town. The people have heart. There is no "bad guy" here, just people trying to live. Not many films these days give me a warm, cozy feeling by the time they're through. This one did. I'm satisfied it was worth the money to watch it.