Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story is a film that desperately wants to punch you in the gut and then write a New Yorker essay about how deeply it hurt itself doing it. Billed as a searing portrait of a marriage’s slow, painful death, it ends up as little more than a two-hour, Oscar-bait therapy session between … Read More ““Marriage Story” (2019) – The Feel-Bad Divorce of the Yea” »
Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s De Palma is that rare cinematic unicorn—a documentary about a legendary filmmaker that doesn’t try to lionize him so much as let him talk. And boy, does he talk. For 110 minutes, Brian De Palma sits in a chair and unloads decades of stories, triumphs, grievances, and glorious cinematic vengeance … Read More ““De Palma” (2015) – A Glorious, Bloody, One-Man Crime Spree Through Cinema’s Back Alleys” »
Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young is a film that sets out to dissect the generational divide between Gen X and millennial hipsters—and promptly slices its own credibility open like a thrift store beanbag chair full of stale irony and kombucha. It wants to be clever, insightful, maybe even profound. What it ends up being is … Read More ““While We’re Young” (2014) – A Midlife Crisis Wrapped in a Hipster Nightmare” »
Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha is a film that dares to ask, “What if we made a movie about someone with no money, no plan, no boyfriend, no real job, and no discernible growth—and then pretended it was charming?” It’s shot in crisp black and white to give it a timeless, European, Nouvelle Vague sheen, but … Read More “Frances Ha (2012): A Quirky Celebration of Nothing in Glorious Black and White” »
Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg is what happens when you hand a midlife crisis a craft beer and ask it to monologue for 107 minutes. It’s a film about a man so insufferable, so emotionally constipated, so allergic to human joy, that watching him move through the world feels like being trapped in a Whole Foods parking … Read More “Greenberg (2010): An Indie Character Study That Makes You Wish the Character Stayed in Therapy” »
Noah Baumbach’s Margot at the Wedding is not so much a movie as it is a 90-minute anxiety attack on a beach. It’s the story of family dysfunction, resentment, and smug emotional cruelty—imagine Thanksgiving hosted by a pack of New Yorker columnists who all secretly loathe each other and think therapy is for poor people. … Read More ““Margot at the Wedding” (2007) – A Family Gathering So Toxic Even the Trees Want a Divorce” »
Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale is the cinematic equivalent of a therapy session you didn’t ask for, conducted by a therapist who chain-smokes Gitanes and insists on reading you passages from Franny and Zooey. Touted as Baumbach’s semi-autobiographical masterpiece, this 2005 indie darling is less a film than a 90-minute sigh filtered through … Read More “The Squid and the Whale (2005): A Divorce Drama That’s More Squid Than Whale” »
Noah Baumbach’s Mr. Jealousy (1997) is a movie about insecurity, relationships, and literary self-loathing—all subjects that could make for a solid character study if the characters weren’t so thoroughly unlikeable and the dialogue didn’t sound like it was ripped from a rejected New Yorker cartoon. It’s a film that desperately wants to be witty and … Read More ““Mr. Jealousy” (1997) – Neurotic Romance for People Who Find Eyelid Twitching Too Subtle” »
There’s a special kind of cinematic purgatory reserved for films about overeducated 20-somethings who smoke clove cigarettes, quote Foucault, and treat emotional stagnation like a badge of honor. Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming (1995) is the flag-bearing film of that movement—a shaggy, aimless little debut about a group of freshly minted liberal arts graduates who … Read More “Kicking and Screaming (1995): A Film About Nothing Starring People Who Feel Nothing, For an Audience That Ends Up Feeling Nothing” »
Atom Egoyan’s Seven Veils is a film about trauma, obsession, and the high-stakes world of opera production—three things that should never be left alone in a room together, let alone stretched over 100 minutes of whispery monologues and symbolic lighting. Released in 2023, this is Egoyan back in his element: emotionally repressed women, theatrical self-importance, … Read More “Seven Veils (2023): A Pretentious Opera About Opera That Should’ve Been Left on Mute” »