The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

The selfish, domineering, and egocentric ways of a Manhattan sculptor (Dustin Hoffman), whose career never quite took flight, continues to affect the lives of his grown children who include a successful financier (Ben Stiller), a spinster (Elizabeth Marvel) whom he failed to protect from an abuser, and a musician (Adam Sandler) who abandoned the discipline and has come to live with him following a divorce. Noah Baumbach returns with another film about family dysfunction, and although he elicits excellent performances from Sandler and Stiller, the movie never soars and feels too familiar yet incomplete and uninspired, just like you'd expect from a feature film released straight to an online platform.

** 1/2 out of ****

Mistress America

A student (Lola Kirke) finding her freshmen year at college to be more lonely and isolated then expected discovers she has a soon-to-be stepsister (Greta Gerwig) from her mother's impending marriage. After acquainting, the slightly older, flighty free spirit takes her under her wing, making her a partner in her many harebrained ventures. Noah Baumbach's Mistress America is well made and mostly intelligent, though given to pretensions, with a very funny final act featuring Michael Chernus and Heather Lind hysterical in late arriving, built up supporting roles. However its hard to see what Kirke's chatacter sees in Gerwig or just what the director was going for in his usually charming leading lady.

*** out of ****

While We're Young

An unsung documentary filmmaker (Ben Stiller) and his wife (Naomi Watts), feeling out of touch with their peers, are flattered when a fashionable young couple (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried) takes interest in them, and his latest project in particular. Noah Baumbach's film on hipster culture, both young and aging, makes makes some excellent obsverations, has a few good lines, and almost pulls it off in the end but Stiller is weak dramatically, Driver and Seyfried are nauseating, and Watts, beautiful and talented as she is, almost seems a bit lost in her role. Plot twists are clearly telegraphed.

** 1/2 out of ****

Frances Ha

An aspiring dancer (Greta Gerwig), 27 years old and still apprenticing, struggles with rent and relationships in the big city as she moves from apartment to apartment, but truly fears losing her best friend (Mickey Sumner) who starts becoming serious with her dope boyfriend (Patrick Heusinger) and out of the blue decides to relocate with him to Tokyo. Frances Ha is Noah Baumbach's return home to New York City (with detours to Sacramento, Poughkeepsie, and a very unexpected and melancholy trip to Paris) and also to the personal, knowing kind of filmmaking on display in his superlative The Squid and the Whale. Working digitally in beautiful black and white (which is reportedly very difficult to achieve), he aimed to capture the feeling of The French New Wave (two of Francois Truffaut's classics leapt to mind for for me, Jules and Jim for the quick paced litheness and even The 400 Blows during certain scenes of forlornness). Coauthoring the screenplay with Gerwig, they both create an original, absolutely lovely lead character which she, along with Sumner who carries the same zeal, performs with a kind of scatterbrained joy.

Greenberg

For a short while, you think Noah Baumbach has recreated the human and humorous elements that made The Squid And The Whale great, but this notion soon fades and by the end you are left with a portrait of a despicable man and some on-goings that just come off as phony. The story focuses on Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller, a beyond neurotic man who writes the airline after his New York to L.A. flight about how their seats don't recline far enough. He is fresh off a nervous breakdown and a stint in a mental home, and is staying in his brother's house while he's on vacation with his family. While in California he meets up with some ex-band members and starts a relationship with his brother's assistant (Greta Gerwig) who he treats more like a concubine. It is despicable how he uses her and how she allows herself to be used, but when we are introduced to his ex-girlfriend (Jennifer Jason Leigh) we realized Greenberg has done this before, and left her heartbroken nonetheless. The film does have nice reflective moments in it like that and is well filmed. It's just that Stiller and Gerwig don't have the acting chops to pull this off, the main character is utterly despisable, and the way his character is brought around and his relationship is portrayed is just plain false.
**1/2