Tag / noah baumbach

by Jaime Rebanal

‘Marriage Story’ TIFF Review: Noah Baumbach at His Most Devastating, Complex, and Thoughtful

✯✯✯✯✯

Divorce is not an unfamiliar subject writer-director Noah Baumbach, as shown through his exploration of the psychological effect of joint custody on children in The Squid and the Whale. In Marriage Story, what Baumbach shows you is a different perspective of the divorce, rather one that takes the perspective of the adults in the situation as they are about to part their own ways. As one can imagine, it never would feel easy in any sense of the word and Noah Baumbach cuts really deep into where you really feel it hurts. These are people who know they can’t stick together any longer, but that uncertainty regarding how they feel about one another still rings so strongly. If there were anything else that best makes the film’s title fit so perfectly, it’s best described by what Baumbach shows about what we realize as something that seemed so meaningful finally must come to its own end.

Continue reading →

Advertisement
by Jaime Rebanal

Frances Ha – Review

✯✯✯✯✯

I remember the first viewing of Frances Ha well enough and how it treated me then. At the time, I was unfamiliar with Greta Gerwig and my first impression only had me thinking that what I was watching was cute and funny. The more I watch Greta Gerwig, I slowly realize what it is about the way she writes her characters that keeps me watching them as their stories are being told for us on the screen, and what I think about from then onward is the state of her own life in which she is living in. Frances Halladay is old enough to own an apartment, find a job for herself, but she spends her days living in Brooklyn as if she were younger. But it isn’t her own fault either, rather instead she lives the way that she does because it’s the result of her own environment as Gerwig and Baumbach write her to be. It is the very feeling that you know the circumstances of such a lifestyle so well enough that pulls yourself closer to Frances Ha.

Continue reading →

by Jaime Rebanal

The Meyerowitz Stories – Review

✯✯✯✯

I haven’t always been on board with Netflix’s run of original feature films but amidst a group of entertaining and otherwise mediocre genre efforts, a standout comes by and The Meyerowitz Stories is yet another one of these. Written and directed by Noah Baumbach and starring a frequent collaborator of his in Ben Stiller, he hits once again with yet another comedy-drama about a family broken apart on the count of an artist of some sort having been a part of why everyone is so distanced. While I still believe that Noah Baumbach has yet to top The Squid and the Whale, his work continues to remain charming enough yet still feel meaningful. But Baumbach also seems to carry a great power in drawing empathy from his viewers towards what they see on the screen, and it works wonders once more.

Continue reading →

by Jaime Rebanal

The Squid and the Whale – Review

✯✯✯✯✯

There’s something universal that lingers all throughout The Squid and the Whale which I find is what helps it elicit the power it contains within the brief running time it sustains. Something to which I ended up finding a whole lot more personal at the same time not only in the sense that it was on Noah Baumbach’s end but also on my own, for it hit rather heavily on a personal note everywhere I would have least expected it to land. Maybe it could be I was expecting too little, even for Noah Baumbach, but with The Squid and the Whale he has clearly left behind something that is so resonant it only touches me so deeply.

Continue reading →