Driving by his deep will of keeping his ill brother, Roger Greenberg, a talented but failure musician, who works as a carpenter in New York to earn his livings, returns to Los Angeles, where he falls for his brother's assistant.
Noah Baumbach again investigates psychologically screwed-up people, although this time with much less comedic impact.
Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
March 09, 2011
Baumbach's writing and direction of these characters display more of a novelistic touch...but the approach produces a deeply felt view of flawed individuals.
His sharpest observations are reserved for preternaturally intelligent, hyper-self-conscious outsiders whose existential crises are the failure of the world-and, to some extent, themselves-to live up to their own high expectations.
A film of powerful, memorable moments -- some striking dialogue, some great performances, a handful of beautifully played, bracingly discomfiting love scenes -- in search of a structure and, perhaps, a soul.
Obviously there's running commentary from director Noah Baumbach -- his characters are never free of context -- but they don't have epiphanies, they don't learn and they don't apologize. It's kind of refreshing.
In many ways this is Baumbach's best film, filled with his bitter but often funny misanthropic perspective, but buoyed by the undeniable likability of Stiller and Gerwig.
What saves it, however, is Gerwig. The love story ain't credible, but her performance is, perfectly capturing a young woman who doesn't lack confidence so much as a sense of self.
Greenberg is not an enjoyable movie, but it's a unique experience that will mostly appeal to cinephiles with insatiable appetites for character-driven small films.
As a study of stasis and of people conscious of not living the lives they had imagined for themselves, the picture offers a bracing undertow of seriousness beneath the deceptively casual, dramatically offhand surface.
Gallery of "Greenberg"
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Annabelle: Creation
2017
IMDb: 7
109 min
Country: United States
Genre: Thriller, Horror, Mystery
Twelve years after the tragic death of their little girl, a dollmaker and his wife welcome a
nun and several girls from a shuttered orphanage into ...
