ARTICLE
Netflix and Chill with 3 Movies by American indie filmmaker Noah Baumbach!
By Say Peng / 19 Dec 2017 (Tuesday)
There are just too many films and TV series to keep up with on Netflix. So we thought we should throw light on some films that have perhaps been buried in the Netflix heap and that deserves to be more widely seen. In the first article of what will be a recurring series, we focus on three films of Noah Baumbach.
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Noah Baumbach is an independent American filmmaker that has been making work consistently since the late 1990s. He has made 11 films, including one documentary about Brian de Palma. He has also co-written two of Wes Anderson's films, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Fantastic Mr Fox, and Madagascar 3. He is perhaps most famously known for the black-and-white film Frances Ha.
1. The Meyerowitz Stories
The Meyerowitz Stories is Baumbach's latest film. It competed at Cannes Film Festival this year and stars many of our favourite A-list actors (Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, and Emma Thompson). The film follows three dysfunctional half-siblings as they converge in New York to settle the issue of real estate and the legacy of their sculptor father's artwork. If you aren't familiar with his work, you should probably start with this film. It's Baumbach at his best.
2. The Squid and the Whale
The Squid and the Whale is Baumbach's fifth film. (Fun fact: it's partly produced by Wes Anderson) Winner of Best Direction and Screenwriting at Sundance Film Festival in 2005, the film tells the semi-autobiographical story of two Brooklyn boys dealing with their parents' divorce. The elder sibling Walt, played by Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network), sides with his father and acts out at school, while the younger brother, Frank, played by Owen Kline, quietly goes with his mother. The household tension rises further when their mother's writing career takes off and surpasses the failed ambitions of her ex-husband.
3. Kicking and Screaming
Made when he was 26 years old, kicking and screaming is Baumbach's debut feature. It showcases Baumbach's abundant talent at witty dialogue. The film is a comedy about a group of college graduates unable to move on to the next phase of their lives. A reviewer from Variety modestly praised the film and said that Baumbach would "graduate to better things". Indeed, he has.