Jack and I really liked this tour de force by Jason Segal as author David Foster Wallace, whose five days with Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky and Lipsky's subsequent book is the basis of this movie. I haven't seen nor read any Wallace, but Segal's (last blogged for This is 40) performance is remarkable--one gets no glimpse of the comedian as he transforms into the complex writer. Jesse Eisenberg (most recently in Now You See Me, and there's a sequel in the works) doesn't do anything amazing as Lipsky, but he's still very good.
This is mostly a buddy/road trip picture ("the tour" is a book tour for Wallace's hugely successful novel Infinite Jest), but a few women show up in supporting roles, including Mamie Gummer (Meryl Streep's daughter, she's been in, among others, Taking Woodstock, all 13 episodes of Off the Map, Side Effects, seven episodes of The Good Wife, and Cake, though I didn't mention her in the linked ones and haven't yet written about her co-starring role in Ricki and the Flash), Mickey Sumner (Sting's daughter, last in Girl Most Likely), and Anna Chlumsky (after I covered her in In the Loop the former child actress has been in 38 episodes and counting of Veep).
Pulitzer Prize winning playwright (for Dinner with Friends) Donald Margulies wrote the screenplay, which was on the 2013 Blacklist (the year's top unproduced movie screenplays), and gave it to director James Ponsoldt (most recently made The Spectacular Now), one of his former students at Yale.
The prolific and talented Danny Elfman (most recently co-scored Avengers: Age of Ultron) provides a dreamy score (stream some of it here), which is supplemented by songs from Tindersticks, R.E.M., and more (songs).
Rotten Tomatoes' averages, at 92% critics and 89 audiences, are more in line with our opinions this time. We recommend it.
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