Margot at the Wedding

• Juno (Single-Disc Edition)
• Michael Clayton (Widescreen Edition)
• Atonement (Widescreen Edition)
• Death at a Funeral
• The Darjeeling Limited
• P.S. I Love You
• 27 Dresses (Widescreen Edition)
• Into the Wild
• There Will Be Blood
• Rendition

And some scenes you wondered why they were there at all - skip this one. I tried - I really did - the house and Southampton setting lured me in. I quit 20 minutes in - there is just nothing to recommend this film. And no, I don't need happy ending movies either. It was the script I guess - maybe the acting as well.

Not a very enjoyable film but watching it can add to one's understanding of humanity.Very real characters with no answers but attempting to find them with great courage. "We don't love people because they are perfect because if we did, we'd have no one to love". "A person who falls in love with themselves will have no competition

Here there is bascially none. Baumbach is very smart. Margot's lover Dick has a somewhat older daughter Maisie. I can understand that writer director Noah Baumbach did not want to make a Hollywood moviein fact, in this film, he essentially bends over backwards to make an ANTI-Hollywood moviebut surely there might be some shred of hope or positivity to identify with. When a neighborhood kid does something nasty to him, he runs to his mother.

Margot has a son Claude; Pauline has a daughter Ingrid; both are about the same age (roughly 11 or 12). I almost gave this five stars but the film's overwhelming negativity and dour nature prevented that. At the very end, when Margot finally does catch the bus, you realize it's not because she wants to be with her son as much as it is not wanting to be with her sister, the option she would have if she stayed where she was. But that's not the case here.

In this film, no single character appears to have qualities that endear the viewer to him or her; Baumbach, it seems, wanted to insure that everyone here is perceived as neurotic enough to warrant some degree of distance from overt identification. You can't help but admire this braininess, even as you cringe at the lack of heart that blasts through the film in one scene after another. (I'm not giving anything away here because in essence, there's really nothing to give away). There's an interesting parallel structure here as well. While this is not completely unexpected, at the same time, the viewer begins to see how much emotional immaturity is on display here and how this is the real essence of dysfunction, which is the essentially the point of this filmthe display of neurotic dysfunction. Thus what we really have here is not so much a linear film at all as a complex multi-character portrait in which the characters are revealed through different incidents and exchanges of conversation, all of which, as mentioned previously, are done with very high intelligence indeed.

But maybe he needs a little more sunshine in his life. He plays a woefully immature unemployed artistvery smart, but very lacking in emotional depthwho's engaged to Jennifer Jason Leigh's Pauline. Again, it's only because it's done with so much subtlety and finesse and smarts that I gave this a four-star rating.

Margot's estranged husband Jack has a somewhat similar relationship to her that Malcolm has to Pauline; both men are in some way distanced from their mates. Instead we have a film of tremendous intelligence in that it does a masterful job at portraying the neurotic complexity of a number of charactersprimarily Margot, her sister Pauline, and Pauline's fiance Malcolmplayed respectively by Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Jack Black. Black is so totally different in this film from anywhere else he's shown up that for my money, he's a real standout.

At least in Baumbach's last film, The Squid and the Whale, there was some evidence of warmth. It could very well be this lack of heart that has given this a three-star average rating here. Claude has problems, not only with his mother but also in how he relates to the world.

4.5 stars. Harsh realities, uncomfortable encounters, challenging circumstances.like I said, real life. This is real life. -pure hatred. -dark humor at your expense. I loved this movie. -poor advice with their best interest in mind.

A family drawn together for a wedding, and chaos ensues. -insecurities. -croquet with F-bombs . This movie won't appeal to many people. -unconditional and conditional love.

Phenomenal acting too, I even loved Jack Black in this less goofy role. -lies. -shouting. -judgements. Excellent movie. -bitter rage. Here's the ingredients:.

-an abundance of drama. Almost as good as Baumbach's previous work, The Squid and the Whale. -sexual content (not incestual). It's mainly just talking, not a lot of action.

The Amazon review says that "the porcelain beauty of Nicole Kidman provides the perfect face for narcissism." Let me fix that for you: "You can't take your eyes off the massive expanse of Nicole Kidman's overly-Botoxed forehead." Especially when it's juxtaposed next to the lived-in beauty of Baumbach's real-life wife, Jenneifer Jason Leigh. He'll never break the bank (this made a little less than $2M domestically), but the excellence of his work will win a hardcore, dependable constituency. I like the spotlighted customer review that starts "few know the dysfunctional family like Noah Baumbach." Exactly.

"Margot at the Wedding" continues in that same vein. Here, Zane Pais' screen debut is a notable winner just as Jesse Eisenberg's and Owen Cline's were in 'Squid.' .

Baumbach's semi-autobiographical The Squid and the Whale (Special Edition) had that in spades. Baumbach's writing is too smart and uncompromising for that. Baumbach seems to have a special talent for coaxing tremendous performances out of child stars.

Not every movie needs a happy, tied-together ending.