Release date: March 27, 2015
Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver, Ben Stiller, Charles Grodin
Directed by: Noah Baumbach
Premise: An uptight documentarian and his wife find their lives loosened up a bit after befriending a free-spirited younger couple.
Interview with DP Sam Levy (https://filmmakermagazine.com/93607-to-remove-what-feels-electronic-in-the-image-while-were-young-dp-sam-levy/#.VRWA8GSsVfU)
Good movie...there's an electric sequence towards the end that reminded me of the kinds of climaxes you'd sometimes see in 80s movies like Risky Business... The trailer made the movie seem like kind of a throwaway Baumbach effort but it turns into something more serious and heartfelt than you initially expect. Adam Driver is great. Top of the year so far.
Wide on April 10
I really enjoyed Frances Ha, but I think I may have liked this film even more. I expected it would be amusing, but it was laugh-out-loud hilarious. Baumbach's on a hot streak.
Such a poor film. Going into this film, I worried about characterization because to make a comedy about aging people at the crossroads of realization about their age and trying to be young again, you run into the traffic jam of a lot of other movies made beforehand. I didn't expect anything different as far as third plot revelations and deeper moments go because all these movies perform the layup philosophy of the protagonist finding peace with their age and realizing youth culture is more swarm with bullshit, but characterization-wise, I wondered what difference Baumbach would show before leading up to the obvious. The answer for me was not much. Making a film about a documentary filmmaker/teacher, he kept a lot of references in-house to his world and easy interest for people to identify with who were already into film. The comedy plays off recent trends and the elders having difficulty fitting in, but considering trends age and die so quickly, it won't take long for a lot of the references to feel old quickly. The film being so interested in the superficial dynamics of Stiller and Watt being obviously embarrassing about a lot of obvious situations in a lot of obvious facets of why (as characters) they would be interested in change and what that would mean just felt like a languid journey to something tediously awful because it was all too predictable.
Blu-ray (http://www.amazon.com/While-Were-Young-Blu-ray/dp/B00XJJ5LK8?SubscriptionId=AKIAIY4YSQJMFDJATNBA&tag=bluray-016-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00XJJ5LK8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER) on June 30, 2015