Alex Garland’s Ex Machina is what happens when 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner have a minimalist, British baby who grew up reading Philip K. Dick while listening to Aphex Twin. It’s sleek. It’s terrifying. It’s smarter than you. And by the time the credits roll, it’s already halfway through writing its own graduate … Read More “Ex Machina (2014): Come for the AI, Stay for the Existential Dread and Abs of Doom” »
Noah Baumbach’s White Noise is the cinematic equivalent of being stuck on hold with an insurance company while an existential philosophy professor whispers Don DeLillo quotes into your other ear. Adapted from DeLillo’s “unfilmable” 1985 novel—a label Baumbach boldly accepted as a challenge, then promptly proved accurate—White Noise is a surrealist black comedy that thinks … Read More “White Noise (2022): An Apocalyptic Art Film That Drowns in Its Own Static” »
Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) sounds like a book you’d buy at an airport Hudson News because it had a Pulitzer finalist sticker on it and then abandon in the seat-back pocket by page 12. Unfortunately, it’s a film—one that plays like an emotionally constipated dinner party where everyone has a liberal … Read More “The Meyerowitz Stories (2017): A Dysfunctional Family Portrait Best Left in the Attic” »
Noah Baumbach’s Mistress America is a film that tries to be a screwball comedy for the modern age—but forgets to bring the comedy, the screwball, or even a functioning plot. Co-written by Baumbach and Greta Gerwig (who also stars), this 2015 indie calamity is like watching someone try to recreate Bringing Up Baby after downing … Read More “Mistress America (2015): A Screwball Comedy That Screws Up Everything Except the Budget” »
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” »
