Greenberg (2010)

Nobody does awkward like Ben Stiller, unless you count director Noah Baumbach, and they have met their match in co-star Greta Gerwig. Jack and I found this movie painful but brilliant. Baumbach (writer/director of, among others, The Squid and the Whale (2005) and Margot at the Wedding (2007), both cringe-fests featuring people behaving badly; and writer of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), which is full of outcasts, and Fantastic Mr. Fox) made us laugh and squirm uncomfortably throughout this tale of Roger Greenberg's house-sitting for his brother's family, meeting the family's quirky personal assistant, played to perfection by Gerwig (new to me, she has worked as a writer and co-director as well as a few other acting gigs), and getting together with his old band mates, most notably Rhys Ifans (so talented, he can portray the sublime, as the crazy stalker in Enduring Love (2004), to the ridiculous, as the guy in his underwear in Notting Hill (1999), and the full-of-himself rock star in Pirate Radio, and much more). Stiller (as I said in a previous post of a movie I disliked, my Stiller favorites are 1996's Flirting with Disaster and Your Friends and Neighbors) is the perfect neurotic and conflicted Greenberg. Baumbach's wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh, also known for playing awkward characters (some of my faves: Dorothy Parker in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994), Georgia (1995), Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996), and The Anniversary Party (2001), which she co wrote and co-directed with co-star Alan Cumming), though in Margot at the Wedding she was the saner sister, acted as producer and has a small part here as Beth.

One cannot discuss this movie without referring to the great playlist of what I like to call "alternative" songs. The actual soundtrack listing is here. It's likely that more songs were actually in the movie, but I haven't been able to find a reference. If I do, I will edit this (though I don't know when--how did I turn my play into work??). Baumbach told a reporter from the L.A. Times that the movie was inspired by an LCD Soundsystem tune, All My Friends (I've discovered that if I google the artist name and the song title, I can listen right from the google page, but if I proceed to the sites, e.g. Lala or Rhapsody, they require signing in, and just googling the band name gives me a selection to play). Though Baumbach tapped LCD lead singer James Murphy for the soundtrack, All My Friends is not on the CD. Go figure.

I suspect people will not be on the fence after they see this; you will either love or hate it. Read some of these snippets on rottentomatoes for samples. If you do see it and love it, you'll want to watch this 52 minute Charlie Rose interview that Judy told us about.

Forgive me, faithful readers, for being on hiatus so long. Jack and I have been traveling, and, though we saw this and three others in the last 10 days, I have not had a minute to write until now. I'll be catching up slowly but surely.

Almost forgot! Musso & Frank's, the restaurant where Stiller and Ifans celebrate Greenberg's birthday, is a Hollywood Boulevard institution where the waiters are almost as old as the room, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were playing themselves in that scene.