Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

This is How Movies Should Be Made

Crappy film

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

So the film definitely has some of the most unlikeable characters I've seen in a drama in a while, but the writing is constantly interesting and when you think the film is about to collapse it comes back to life. Still, not to say it isn't flawed or that it's "great" because it's not, but definitely effective. The whole cast is pretty great, although I wish someone else had been cast in Jack Black's role. Kidman especially is a force here, and it's mind-boggling how she failed to get an Oscar nomination for this. It also helps that she has a constantly unpredictable character, and where you shake your head at her and the others you also empathize with them in other ways.

I have never seen a gaggle of characters more self absorbed more toxic more nasty to one another ever. And I just finished watching "Another Happy Day". These are characters you simply don't care about. The fact that they are loosely a 'family' is merely a rhetorical crutch for the setting. They could just as easily be total strangers, survivors of a boat sinking. It's as if you've come across people who actually WANT to have narcissistic personality disorder.Now let's move on. It's Baumbach so there's no beginning or end to the film. It drops you in medias res but you're left not really caring what or why. And it takes off in its unstudied warbling random way from there. No real plot arc little continuity. Scenes trail one another which serve as little more than a framework for overeducated moderately successful New York literary and academic types, employed or not, to push the boundaries of tact and taste, particularly in the creepy way they speak to their own adolescent children. Occasionally there will be a scene tossed in which has no purpose and doesn't fit. Often there are things you think will be useful later but never seen again. And then of course there's the usual assortment of random body fluids and functions because, why not? And then as I said, it's Baumbach, so there's no ending either. No spoiler there. It just ends because...well who knows? In any case it's supposed to be a morality tale of the agony of being a family of rich NYC-Hampton writerly types who've spent every waking moment not having a filter between their brains and their mouths and who live to claw out each other's eyes between gulps of white wine.The thing is, it's not a terrible movie. It's simply populated with terrible people saying and doing terrible things from the script of a terrible writer. But it is the longest 90 minute film you'll ever watch

This is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall film about dysfunctional sisters, written and directed by Noah Baumbach, husband of Jennifer Jason Leigh, who plays one of the sisters. It is interesting to see Nicole Kidman, the other sister, wholly out-classed by Leigh, who acts circles round her. Kidman is not easy to steal scenes from, but Leigh does this without even trying. No matter how attractive, arch-browed, pensive, thoughtfully-leaning, and lens-loving Kidman is, no matter how many times she tilts her head to one side and invites our enraptured gaze, no matter how many screen tricks she pulls to make everybody watch her in preference to everybody else, she fails. Leigh just has the magic. We stare at her instead, even when she slouches, looks a mess, and is after all only a tiny creature compared to the more statuesque Kidman. I declare an interest in saying this, however, because I suspect Leigh must be my favourite actress. And so maybe I want to justify my opinion of her by always insisting she puts others in the shade. Anyone who saw her in WASHINGTON SQUARE (1997, see my review) however cannot possibly deny that she is a genius, can they? Is it possible for anyone not to recognise that Leigh is way out there ahead of the pack? There are other things in her favour besides her talent. She has integrity. I can never forgive Jodie Foster and Julia Roberts for appearing in those two horrible films PRETTY WOMAN (1990) and THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991). I regard those films not merely as wicked but as evil. One of them glorified prostitution and made us think it was OK for the cute little girl next door-type to be a hooker, and the other glorified a cannibal psychopath and made it both fashionable and acceptable to kill people and eat them. Am I the only person in the world who recognises the immorality of those films? Are we so decadent in our society that we are numb to the inadmissible? Jennifer Jason Leigh rejected both of those roles and refused to appear in those films, so that Jodie Foster and Julia Roberts were left to pick up the vomit and drink it. Leigh therefore qualifies as a heroine, not just as a brilliant actress. As for this film, the sound quality is not always up to scratch because the film's 'French New Wave' directorial style meant the camera was always moving around and it is difficult to mike people when they are intimately mumbling to each other while the camera keeps circling and dodging. I would say that the directing did manage a fresh and alive quality by all this frenetic shifting about, and it did succeed in making this a very desperate 'slice of life' indeed. There is plenty of black comedy, but then, when did families ever not generate black comedy in their daily lives? The other outstanding performance in this film is by child actor Zane Pais, who plays the boy who is ostensibly Kidman's son but more probably the son of Leigh, who could not cope at the time and handed him over to her sister to bring up instead. Although this is only hinted at, it seems the most likely answer to some riddles of the story. I wonder why Baumbach played it down so much. Pais is absolutely brilliant, and his performance goes far towards making this film work. I wonder why he has only appeared in this one film. He has a strange androgynous quality, and at first with his long hair I thought he was a girl. I thought that John Turturro and Ciaran Hinds as the two men in Kidman's life were both pretty creepy, but perhaps they were meant to be. Flora Cross was very good as the young girl Ingrid, but she didn't have much of a scripted part. As for Jack Black, well, what do I say? He was very good of course, funny and engaging. But he is no looker and how are we expected to believe that a gorgeous gal like Leigh would want to marry him? Was Baumbach afraid to cast his wife opposite a more convincing love match? The casting of all the men in this film is bizarre to say the least, and one wonders what Baumbach was getting at. The neighbours from hell named Vogler were convincing, but I think overdone. I did not understand why it was necessary to cut down that nice tree. There are numerous aspects of the film which puzzled me. Well, it was Baumbach's 'thing' and directors will be directors and director-writers will be director-writers, you know how it is.

Don't waste your time or money-this one stinks really REALLY BADLY!! This film makes the Royal(flush it down the toilet)Tenenbaums look like a masterpiece!! The only reason I rented this smelly turd was because we live in the very town-East Quogue, where some of it was filmed...so naturally we had to check it out. Boy, what a mistake that was!! Can even remember having Main Street(Montauk Hwy) closed down for a day or two while they filmed-thanks Noah, the inconvenience and intrusion definitely wasn't worth it!! Plus they shot some other scenes nearby, I believe it might have been Red Creek-a really beautiful area-such a waste of some great scenery. I think I even stood behind the food crew on the "express" checkout line one morning at the local supermarket-I swear!! (buying what seemed like a half million dollars worth of food-at least ten cases of bottled water, must have been for Nicole's sustenance). I even saw the van as they loaded it up, I guess Hollywood has to make a big production out of everything. Sorry-I'm beginning to sound like this movie-haha. Anyway...This film pushed our patience, in the sense of "when is this movie going to start getting interesting". My wife and I unfortunately had to wait until nearly the end before the one scene that showcased our tiny town revealed itself. Ouch, what an agonizing wait. Even my wife thought this was painful to watch, and she gravitates towards these kind of flicks. Awful, AWFUL dialogue. Silly, banal bickering one minute, followed by seemingly hollow, half-hearted apologies and reconciliations the next. Over and OVER and OVER again-the whole movie was pretty much that. I'm not sure what Baumbach was thinking when he wrote the screenplay, and then directed this junk. Sure he had some success with "The Squid and the Whale"-which we both liked... But I guess he thinks he can just expand the wackiness-dysfunctional-kooky factor and sprinkle in some dull, laughless humor and voilà, he's got a viewable movie-well WRONG!! This movie tries too hard to be off-center, dysfunctional and wacky. I agree with other posters that while some people find these introspectives of nutjobs' lives amusing, most of us find them dull, boring and almost unlifelike. Main stream folks have their problems, but not like this.Want more? Really dopey dialogue throughout most of this film(did I just say that-well it's worth repeating), bad casting-read Jack Black, that Pais kid was rather pathetic too, horrible editing at times, several shots that just totally did not match up, hey that should never happen in this day and age, and a lousy plot... This film is just a total waste of time and space(on anyone's DVD shelf). Avoid this stinker at any cost!! Even a 99-cent rental!!!