Like his 2011 film Take Shelter, Jeff Nichols‘ Midnight Special was born out of fear, specifically the fear of losing his son.

“I think, really, we’re terrified of losing them, so we’re going to try to figure out who they are to try to help them. Help them become the ones who manifest their own destiny,” the director told me during an interview I conducted a couple of weeks back. That fatherly fear is at the core of the film, though the story blossoms into something much bigger, touching on themes of friendship, homeland security, science, and religion, all in the mode of a sci-fi thriller.

Michael Shannon stars as a man escorting his supernaturally gifted son to a secret location, all while evading an armed religious sect and U.S. military forces. Aiding them on their journey is an old friend (Joel Edgerton) and the boy’s mother (Kirsten Dunst); a government scientist (Adam Driver), meanwhile, tries to understand the family’s plight as he tracks their location.

Terrifically thrilling and deeply affecting, Midnight Special is yet another showcase by one of this generation’s very best visual storytellers and opens in theaters this weekend.

Some people consider your movies to be vague or overly ambiguous. That’s maybe the biggest criticism levied against you.
It’s funny how everybody wants to be polite. Obviously, I made the film with an open ending on purpose. It’s like, let’s talk about it! If you don’t like it…maybe, rather than just being entrenched in your position, if we talk about it, you might be illuminated on something. It was funny, I had a good conversation with a lady in Berlin about [the movie]. She had a very specific place where she thought I should end the movie. She was very specific about not liking the end of the movie, and I said, “That’s cool. Where would you end the movie?” She told me, and I thought, that would be a terrible ending! She was like, “Well, it’s right. That’s where you should have ended it.” I was like, I really don’t think you’re right! I didn’t convince her, but it was at least fun to have a conversation.

So you do enjoy those conversations.
I do, yeah.

I do, too. If I meet a filmmaker and I didn’t like their movie, maybe, and I get illuminated by their insight…I love that.
The reality is, making movies is really complex. It’s a strange algebra. There are so many variables that go into them. I would be shocked if you met a filmmaker who said, “My film’s perfect,” you know? I don’t know if I want to be friends with that person.

Tommy Wiseau.
[laughs] It goes beyond ego. I want these films to be conversation starters, so of course it makes sense that I would want to have conversations about them. As long as people don’t ask me too many specifics about things. It’s cool to see how people’s minds work on them and work on the problems I created. It’s cool to hear how people interpret things, sometimes random, sometimes spot-on, sometimes differently. It’s fun.

In some ways, this movie is like the Superman movie I always wanted in terms of tone and taste, do you know what I mean?
I do.

The existential crisis of Superman is something that’s seldom handled well.
That’s very interesting. I think Zack Snyder scratched the surface of it. I think someone—maybe it was JJ Abrams—was talking about [doing] a Superman film and he was like, “I just wonder how he didn’t kill anybody as a baby.” I know that there are other people who have takes on it. I never saw this character as a superhero—I just saw him as a boy. His illnesses I just thought of as being organic, even though they’re supernatural. The same thing happened with

The same thing happened with Take Shelter. To your comment, specifically—wanting to see a certain version of a kind of movie…This is going to sound ridiculous, but Take Shelter was kind of my zombie movie. Take Shelter was my take on all those cool feelings in a zombie film where people are preparing for a disaster or preparing for the zombie stuff. I just wanted to make a movie that lived in that part. Then you start to make it deeper and more meaningful and relate it to your life, but that was very much the case with Take Shelter and here [with Midnight Special] too. I really liked those movies of the ’80s and sci-fi movies from that period. I kind of wanted to live in that world for a little bit, which doesn’t negate, though, my approach to the story or how I broaden its veins into my own life. It doesn’t discount that feeling, that sense you get after having seen stuff like that. I felt that way with Mud, too. I had this notion of what a classic American film was. I couldn’t tell you one specifically, but I can tell you a combination of several. Cool Hand Luke, The Getaway…I kind of wanted it to feel like some of the things I felt during those movies.

Midnight Special applies to that. So many people try to make these one-to-one analogies with these films, especially with the endings and other things. Those are kind of lost on me. That’s not how I thought about them. I just thought about the essence of those films.

Hitchcock’s movies were driven by his personal fears. Would you say you’re the same?
Absolutely. One hundred percent. The interesting thing about Hitchcock is that he chose fear as a predominant format to work in, which makes sense because that’s best for directors.

How so?
The feeling of fear is most directly linked to the toolbox that a director has to work with. This shot plus this shot equals this feeling. This music here, this framing here. I’m not going to give you much lead space in front of your eyes, and that’s going to freak people out. It’s different in comedy or drama…they’re not really genres. They’re these feelings. Fear most directly relates most to what a director does. I approach it a little differently. Definitely in Take Shelter, there are some scary moments, and they’re intended to be scary. I was getting to use that toolbox. I approach fear more from the standpoint of a writer. I use fear as a catalyst. Fear makes for a scary scene—“This is going to be a scary moment”—that’s what I’m talking about with Hitchcock. What I’m talking about as a writer…fear is a catalyst for a bigger idea. It’s a catalyst for the thought that you’re trying to convey to the audience, which for me is always an emotion—it’s not a story. It’s not plot. It’s not, “I’m going to tell you a story about what happened to a guy.” It’s, “I’m going to tell you a story about how a guy feels.”

Fear is a great place to start from. Fear is what motivates us as humans to get out and gather the food and build the shelter. It’s like a foundational element of humanity. But fear is only a catalyst. For instance, this film is about the fear of losing my son. That brings up a lot of emotions and other things, but that’s not a thought in and of itself. I can’t just make a movie about a guy afraid of losing his son. What does he do with that? What’s he trying to do with that fear? I think that forced me to think about the actual nature of parenthood. What are we trying to do? We’re trying to, I think, define for ourselves who our children are, in the purest way we possibly can. Sometimes, our own point of view gets in the way and we project that onto our kids. But I think, really, we’re terrified of losing them, so we’re going to try to figure out who they are to try to help them. Help them become the ones who manifest their own destiny. We have no control over that destiny. We have no control over who they become. At best, we can try to help them realize who they are and help them become that.

That became a thought. Fear produced that thought, which became the backbone for this movie. In Take Shelter, I was afraid of the world falling apart. I was afraid of not being a good provider for my family, or an adult, or a good husband. I was afraid of all those things, and there was a bunch of anxiety that came from that. But that’s not what that movie’s about—that movie’s about communicating in marriage. That movie’s about the foundational principles of marriage, which I think is communication. That’s why I made the daughter deaf. I think, in order to get that, I needed to have fear. Shotgun Stories is about the fear of losing one of my brothers. But ultimately that’s not what the movie’s about. It’s about the fruitlessness of revenge, a revenge that was born out of that fear.

I think there’s a huge misunderstanding among moviegoers in this country. People are obsessed with plot. That’s how they critique movies—solely on the plot! From the stunning opening of this movie, it’s clear you’re not interested in exposition. This is cinema, that’s it. We’re dealing with emotions, images, and sound. I wish more people appreciated that. I think maybe they do, subconsciously.
Maybe they do, you know? It depends on what people want out of a film. At different times you want different things. A lot of people—and I’m this audience sometimes—want escapism. Look at the way people use score. Score, even more than expositional dialogue, is the way to telegraph a pass, like in basketball. You never telegraph a pass—you never want the defense to know where you’re looking, because they’ll know where you’re going to throw the ball and then they’ll steal it. You can telegraph so much by having two characters speak, and then you put this music underneath it. Everybody knows they’re supposed to be scared, or they’re supposed to be happy, or they’re supposed to be sad. When you remove score, which I mostly did in Shotgun Stories, it’s very offputting to people. All of a sudden, they’re having to judge a scene on its own merits, not on this feeling that you’re giving them. They actually have to start listening. That’s just an example of my broader approach: If you remove certain things, people have to listen.

Some people don’t want that experience when they go to the theater, and that’s okay. I’ll catch you the next time, or maybe I’ll catch you on a Sunday night, when you’ve got a little more free time. It’s my job, though, to try and understand the nature of how people receive stories. It’s natural to search for plot. That’s how our brains work. I don’t hold it against anybody, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to challenge them through a new type of organization of information. Because that’s all it is—you’re just organizing information in a certain way so that it lands at certain times. My movies have plot. I just don’t think it’s the going concern. I think writers are so concerned sometimes with just making things clear.

I know that studios are. They test these things to make sure that no stone is unturned and that people are getting what they want. But what people want isn’t always what they need. I’m fascinated by story dynamics. I’m fascinated by what works for an audience and what doesn’t, what keeps them engaged and what doesn’t. If you’re not working on the edge of all that, you’re never going to have a situation where someone says, “My nails were dug into the edge of my chair,” and one person writes, “This movie is boring as hell.” I have to be okay with both of those responses. I don’t think I could get either if I was just trying to walk down the middle of the road.

About the opening, again, which I love so much…
I think it’s the best opening I’ll ever do.

Some people might consider it disorienting, but I think, for this story, you get exactly the amount of information you need.
What’s funny for me is, I think it’s so obvious. I’m wondering, like, will people just know that, once he picks the boy up into his arms in the hotel room, that obviously he’s not a kidnapper? Yes, they do, but since it hasn’t been so specifically told to them, they feel it, but they don’t know it yet. That’s a really great place to be. To me, it’s just so obvious. “That mystery’s solved.” But it’s not yet. It’s not totally solved. I have this line of Sam Shepard revealing, “The birth father, Roy Tomlin.” I wrote that scene specifically to be a surprise to the FBI, because they haven’t had the ranch under surveillance long enough to know that he was the birth father. The thing I’m wondering is, is it a surprise to the audience? That’s what I [mean] when I talk about narrative mechanics. I’m just so fascinated. When did you know? Here’s when I tell you, or here’s where I specifically don’t tell you.

Obviously, Joel Edgerton’s profession in the film—that was really specific. I remember giving [the script] to this young girl who was going to be a PA on our film. I gave her the script, and maybe she wasn’t the sharpest tack in the drawer, but she read it and just so clearly was like, “You have to tell us sooner that he’s a state trooper. We need to know that because I was really turned off when he did what he did at the end of the film. If I had known that, I’d have felt a lot better about his character a lot sooner.” She was so earnest in her argument. But it’s like, don’t you understand that you having all these emotions is part of the process? It’s part of the story. It just made me smile, and she probably thought I was a dickhead.

Joel gives you so much.
He’s a great actor.

In that scene in particular, he tells you what you need to know in how he behaves.
There you go! I thought it was pretty obvious. He walks over to the fallen state trooper and speaks in a way that no normal person would speak on the police radio. I was like, well, I’m just letting people know there. That’s what his character would do. A bad version of that writing would be [for him] to go over and say, “Hey, hey, there’s a police officer shot.” That wouldn’t be honest to him either. He wants that guy to get help. That’s why he goes and does it. He did not want to go shoot that guy. You could have Jeff Nichols the writer brain go, “If I have him speak that way, I’ll show my cards too soon.” But that’s as dishonest as having him explain that he’s a state trooper. Both of those things are dishonest. My fear for this movie…any shortcoming is when I might have been to purposefully ambiguous in a scene. I’ve read that critique, and I’ve gone back in and I’ve looked at it, and I don’t know. I’ve been able to reason out why they would behave that way. Point being, character behavior trumps all narrative desire.

I paint myself into corners all the time. It’s like, okay, I have this very strict rule about character behavior and dialogue, but I need this piece of information in the movie. It’s my job to craft a scene that allows that piece of information to come through, or we don’t get it. Then I deal with that consequence. It’s like an austerity to the writing you have to apply. You really have to stick to it. You really do.

Kirsten Dunst’s character is one of my favorite motherly characters in a while. You don’t see this stuff often. Without spoiling anything, the things she does, the way she reacts to things—it feels authentic, it feels real.
I think she’s the strongest character in the film. I think she’s able to do something the male characters can’t, specifically Michael Shannon’s. I’m not just saying this to gain the pro-women’s lib lobby. Watching my son be born and what my wife did and then what she did the year that followed…there’s no doubt in my mind that women are the stronger sex in terms of fortitude and emotions. I was very struck in high school when I read A Doll’s House by Ibsen. It’s about a mother that leaves her children. I came from a home where that would not be possible. But it is possible. That’s why the mother in Shotgun Stories hates her children. She blames them for her place in life. Their existence lowered her, in her mind. I was fascinated by the idea that there could be a mother character that would come to the conclusion first of what the inevitability of parenthood is. It made sense to me that a mother would be the one to understand the cycle of parenthood before the father, who has undeniably committed his entire life to the safety of his boy. It takes the mother to realize the cycle that they’re a part of.

I don’t think Michael’s character understands it fully or is willing to accept it fully until the boy gets out of the car. I think it’s important, but it’s also a big narrative risk. You’ve built this father-son story, the mother doesn’t come in for the first thirty minutes, and she’s tangential. Then you do this physical handoff where she’s the one who physically represents their position to their child at the end of the film. I had no idea if it would work, and for some people, I’m sure it doesn’t. I reason out, character-wise, why it would work out that way. Like I said, she’s the stronger of the two. I’m glad to hear you say you like her…because I like her.

That moment you mention where the boy gets out of the car broke my heart.
Good! That’s the one. David Fincher talks about how every movie should have an emotional punch in the gut. That was mine. I have one in each of my films. I’m glad you liked it.

Sevier (Adam Driver) is great, too.
Adam Driver is, in my opinion, going to be one of the most important actors of our generation, irrelevant of Star Wars. I think he’s that good. He’s that interesting. I want to make a detective movie with him really badly.

Why a detective movie?
Because I want to make a detective movie.

[laughs]
Because I’m a huge fan of Fletch. I just want to make a private eye movie.

There’s no away around it, and it pains me to believe it considering how big a fan I am of his previous films, but Jeff Nichols‘ much-anticipated Midnight Special is a disappointment. How a film that packs so much promise with its director, cast, and synopsis can leave such a flat impression is something that I’ll be mulling over during Berlinale and beyond. A story of a close-knit family with a boy who’s got special powers, on the run from a religious cult and the government, pulsates with potential. But not even the commanding Michael Shannon can save this film from being Nichols’ first major misfire.

As most disappointments often do, things start off so well. With zero exposition, we’re thrust into the action of Ray (Shannon) and Lucas (Joel Edgerton, at his understated best here) on-the-run with 8-year-old Alton (Jaeden Lieberher) and before the brilliant title sequence even comes up, we’ve already got a hundred questions. Why is the young lad wearing goggles? Who are these men? Why is the government, who is making this national news, after them? The mystery is instantly gripping, and even more so once the Ranch—a cult that believes Alton’s words are gospel—gets involved. They want him because they believe he’s their savior, the FBI and the NSA are after him because they think he’s a weapon, and all Roy wants to do is bring him back to his mother (Kirsten Dunst) and make sure he’s where he’s got to be on Friday, March 6th, a.k.a. Judgement Day. Oh, and the boy speaks in tongues, has telepathic connections with radio signals, and shoots blue light from his eyes.

Basically, you’d have to check your pulse if you weren’t totally sucked in by the halfway mark. But as the mystery begins to unravel further, delusions of grandeur set in. The big mystery, all those gripping question marks, amount to one big “OK, that’s it?” shrug by the end. Adam Stone’s cinematography is excellent, the performances are predictably stellar, Nichols expertly directs a couple of stand-out sequences, but the story gets lost in a vague haze of questionable decisions and a final climax utterly deflated of the emotional oomph it’s supposed to have. It has its grand familial Spielbergian flourishes, but Midnight Special ends up being disappointingly ordinary and surprisingly forgettable.

Rating:
6.5/10

In the final installment of our series of Way Too Indiecast Star Wars Specials, Bernard and Dustin are joined by two new companions, WTI’s own Ananda Dillon and Star Wars aficionado Justin Boo, to break down piece-by-piece Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Stakes were high going into this JJ Abrams-helmed mega reboot—did the movie meet the crew’s expectations? Is this the moment Dustin finally embraces the light side and becomes a Star Wars fanboy, or has he lost hope in the force altogether? Will super fans Bernard, Ananda and Justin have their childhood dreams reawakened or extinguished forever? It’s all on the line on this very special, extended, final edition of the series!

Our Heroes:

Bernard “Boo-Boo Fett” Boo – Jedi Academy class clown. Lifelong Star Wars fan, loves all three movies in the original trilogy and hopes to find BB-8 in his stocking this Christmas.

Dustin “D-3PO” Jansick – Padawan. Never watched the original trilogy (may have seen A New Hope, but memory’s foggy) and has virtually zero familiarity with the universe. A rare breed in this day and age.

Ananda “General Ackbar” Dillon – Rebel Leader. Huge Star Wars buff and general pop culture fanatic. Has been awaiting The Force Awakens with bated breath.

Justin “BooBoo-8” Boo – Jedi Master. Mentor to “Boo-Boo Fett.” Lifelong Star Wars obsessive. Seen all of the movies countless times. Has boxes and boxes of Star Wars action figures.

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There are a million ways to parent these days. And at least ten books to choose from, each backing up and “certifying” that this way or that way of raising a child is the perfect way to do it. And whether parenting is instinctual or learnt is a never-ending debate, but most authorities seem to agree it’s certainly a mix of both. The line dividing instincts and learned behavior (and how trustworthy each is) is one of the more fascinating parts of observing parenting—and most assuredly a point of dissent among parenting theory enthusiasts—and director Saverio Costanzo taps into this intriguing area with equal parts sympathy and horror. With Alba Rohrwacher (I am Love, Constanzo’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers) and Adam Driver (in his first feature lead before he takes over the world when Star Wars: Episode VII comes out) propelling the film with mesmerizing and emotional performances, Hungry Hearts is sickeningly distressing and heart-stirring.

Capitalizing on the chemistry between its main characters, Hungry Hearts starts in charming romantic fashion. Driver’s Jude is abroad on a business trip and meets Rohrwacher’s Mina in rather a stressful style. Mina accidentally walks in on Jude, holed up in a restroom sick from food poisoning. She attempts to leave and finds the door has locked itself behind her. Stuck together in a most uncomfortable, and malodorous, situation they have nowhere to go but up and with an amusing meet-cute story to boot. From there, time progresses—they are together in New York City facing the possibility that Mina be transferred out of the country for work. But work-life decisions are waylaid quickly by news that Mina is pregnant. Surprised and scared, the two embrace this new development in their relationship and marry. At their quaint Coney Island wedding Jude’s mother encourages Mina to visit her any time and Mina reveals that her own mother died when she was a baby and she and her father no longer have a relationship. She practically glows with her enthusiasm to form her own new family.

Early in her pregnancy Mina shows skepticism in modern forms of pre-natal care. She rejects her doctor’s wishes that she eat more and try to gain weight for the baby’s sake, preferring to eat a strict vegan diet that doesn’t provide enough nutrients for her child. She rejects her morning sickness, believing it instead to be a sign that she needs to eat more “cleanly.” When she walks by a psychic’s business one evening, she goes in, visibly relieved to hear her child is an “Indigo” child, a New Age concept marking a person as “special” and possibly containing supernatural gifts. Throughout her pregnancy and into child-birth Mina rejects Jude’s advice and the guidance of her doctor, but despite the odds she does give birth to a relatively healthy child, albeit underweight.

Blinded to outside reason or science, Mina is totally devoted to her child and filled with the overwhelming conviction that she’s following true instinct and correctness. Rohrwacher could so easily have given Mina a psychotic edge, discrediting and demonizing her, but her love and devotion are played out with such ferocity it really does look like instinctual mothering. As Mina wastes away, following the same diet as her poor infant, she appears almost to toil for her child’s sake, as though sacrificing for him. The most obvious parallel would be to Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. Mina’s skeletal back and sunken eyes look quite reminiscent of Mia Farrow’s slight form as her child sucked the life from her.

Constanzo also employs other horror tactics, most obviously the hovering camera—using a fish eye lens high above the characters to simultaneously make Mina look even more waif-like and also act as an evil eye of sorts looking down at the increasingly complicated scenario playing out. It’s a distracting technique, deliberately so, and marks a rather shaky transition within the film from problematic family drama to dread-inducing horror. Each of the film’s transitions, from dating to marriage, from couple to parents, and all the way up to the film’s rather unnerving (and maybe overly dramatic) ending, are rough edged. They feel off, but can’t really be considered pitfalls of the film—as the situation gets more and more complicated, the feelings each progression stirs up are meant to match the progressively frightening story. Similarly the music choices of the film feel intentional, with songs often starting at the tail end of scenes and bleeding into the next in a way that contrasts rather than unites these scenes. It all comes together to feel wrong, but its all supposed to.

While Rohrwacher elicits sympathy and terror as Mina, it’s Driver who truly grounds the film, keeping it from slipping too far into horror territory and giving it the sliver of sanity it needs. Driver perfectly depicts Jude’s manic and fractured needs as they waffle between his love for his child and instinctual desire to keep him alive, and his overwhelming love for his wife and his wish to trust her and try to make their family unit work. It’s how convincingly both Driver and Rohrwacher convey these competing “instincts” that really presents a compelling look at parenting and especially its effects on the relationship of the parents. Though obviously a dramatic and extreme version of parenting, Mina and Jude’s behaviors don’t feel too far off from what many of us know of parenting techniques out there, a spooky thing to consider.

Luckily the film doesn’t feel overtly political on the subject of parenting, instead focusing its energy on the psyches of its protagonists. Alone in a foreign country with no family of her own, Mina crafts a world that feels right for herself, and torn by the competing love of spouse and of child, Jude reacts the way he must. Constanzo has created a harrowing and hard to watch film, but the sincerity of its performances and the tantalizing and rather unexplored content it delves into, make for the sort of film that is impossible to turn away from. Sure to evoke a range of reactions from parents, couples, and singles alike, Hungry Hearts is nuanced psychological terror at its best.

Hungry Hearts is out in New York on June 5 and LA June 12. 

It’s a dreadful feeling to know, deep down, that you’re not where you should be in life. It’s a feeling that can strike at any age, really, but Noah Baumbach‘s generational comedy While We’re Young aligns itself with the middle-aged set with which the Brooklyn-bred director associates. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play a New York couple in their mid-40s who glom onto a young hipster couple in their twenties (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried) as a way of redefining and rejuvenating their relationship and finding their place in the world. It’s a witty, funny, sharply composed film about mid-life restlessness and paranoia that unfortunately takes a sour turn in its third act, which is so hostile and caustic it ends things on an unpleasantly dour note.

Josh (Stiller) and Cornelia (Watts) live in a gray domestic malaise, living in comfort in their cozy New York apartment. Comfort; not contentment. While most couples their age, like their buddies Fletcher and Melina (Adam Horovitz and Maria Dizzia, respectively), repurpose their lives by having a baby, thereby solving any identity crisis they might have (or at least distract themselves from it). Josh and Cornelia are still undecided on whether they want to have kids or not, but a random friendship they strike up with Jamie (Driver) and Darby (Seyfried), a vibrant pair of young lovebirds, sucks them into a world of hipster cool that makes them excited about living life again.

Josh and Cornelia’s silly attempts to acclimate to millennial culture is the main source of humor, and being that Baumbach is a mid-lifer living in New York, he’s clearly got a grip on what’s funny about people in their 40s trying to act like their younger friends. Whether it’s Cornelia practicing moves she learned at a hip-hop dance class or Josh pulling a back muscle while riding bikes with Jamie, the jokes are all hilarious and presented sneakily enough by Baumbach that they don’t appear as broad gags (even though, really, that’s exactly what they are). When Josh starts wearing an ill-fitting fedora to mimic his buddy Jamie, it makes for a running visual gag that echoes Stiller’s quick turn as “Tom Crooze”, Tom Cruise’s loser stunt double, in a sketch they did at the 2000 MTV Movie Awards. Driver looks like a slick Brooklynite wearing a cool hat; Stiller looks like a clown.

What’s also funny is Baumbach’s spot-on portrayal of hipster culture. Jamie and Darby love to run through abandoned tunnels at night, make artisanal ice cream, throw summer block parties, and listen to Lionel Richie on vinyl. Their phony adoption of vintage things and forced eschewing of all technology hints at the major conflict on the horizon. Jamie is an aspiring documentary filmmaker, which is how he connects with Josh, who’s a more experienced (struggling) documentarian himself. When we discover the real reason Jamie befriended ol’ “Joshie”, his true nature is revealed and the movie becomes something of a curmudgeon, presenting the young characters as entitled pests.

In the film’s easygoing first two-thirds, Stiller seems to be struggling to fight off the manic, fidgety mode of acting he’s so comfortable in. When the Jamie revelation comes, however, Stiller reverts back to the panicked, fidgety actor we’re all so familiar with, and it’s for the worst. Josh’s arc is an interesting one, in which he learns to let go of his competitive, jealous nature and be at ease with himself, but Stiller is so agitating on-screen that it’s a little too easy to stop caring about him. Driver’s character isn’t likable either, so all we’re left with are the two female counterparts, both of whom aren’t afforded nearly enough time. By the end of While We’re Young, there’s an overriding feeling of apathy for the characters. It’s a shame, because in the first half of the movie we learn to like them, but after the shit hits the fan, our affection for them never returns.

Driver’s lanky physique and dopey charm is perfect for the role of Jamie. There are some nice, subtle details to the character Baumbach throws in, like how Jamie sometimes ends some sentences with “see?”, like someone from a vintage gangster movie. Watts and Seyfried are terrific, but unfortunately fade into the background as the plot becomes progressively more fixated on Stiller. Charles Grodin is pitch-perfect as Cornelia’s gruff, revered documentarian father, whose success is a point of envy and rage for Josh, ever the insulated starving artist.

Surprisingly, the breakout star of the film is Horovitz, whose measured, even-keeled performance is the polar opposite of the wild-man Ad-Rock persona he flaunted for so many years in the Beastie Boys. (Stiller, on the other hand, loses his composure as the film goes on.) He’s shockingly good, and the prospect of him working with Baumbach again (or with anyone for that matter) excites me. While We’re Young is a mostly breezy movie that’s mostly very enjoyable and would have been great save for the uneven drama that emerges near the end making the film more of a downer than it needed to be.

Noah Baumbach loves making movies. Somehow, he’s got two coming out in 2015: Mistress America, his latest collaboration with Frances Ha‘s Greta Gerwig, is tentatively set to come out later this year, and While We’re Young, a cross-generational comedy starring Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts, is out tomorrow in limited release, with an expansion to follow.

Stiller and Naomi play a married, middle-aged couple living in New York whose lives are rattled to the core when they meet a younger, more spontaneous, hipper couple (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried) who inspire them to ditch their bland home-body life and reinvigorate their long-dormant adventurous side. The presence of the hip twenty-somethings eventually drives a wedge between them, leading to jealousy, restlessness, and self-loathing.

In a media roundtable interview, we spoke to Baumbach about being so prolific, the film’s generational theme, Adam Horovitz’s acting career, his relationship with Dreamworks Animation, writing the lead role for Stiller, his writing process, portraying hipsters, and much more.

Was the plan always to make While We’re Young and Mistress America back-to-back?
Yeah. It goes back even further. The initial plan was to make While We’re Young first, but it didn’t happen for various reasons. Then we made Frances Ha, and Ben was making Walter Mitty, which was a much longer commitment. Greta [Gerwig] and I were working on Mistress America and had this other movie we wanted to do, and we felt like, we’re not going to have enough time to finish it, but why don’t we just do it as far as we can do it. I knew we had enough time to shoot it and start cutting it, but I wasn’t going to be able to [finish it.] I actually cut it fairly well, but I wasn’t finished, so I made While We’re Young and then went back and finished Mistress America.

Several of your films have this generational conflict going on.
I wasn’t really that conscious of the notion of being young or old as much as I was characters that were interesting to me and stories that I was interested in telling. I was thinking about couples from different generations and how they interact, but I wasn’t thinking of it in terms of my other work. That doesn’t mean it’s not there.

You’ve got one of my childhood heroes in the movie, Adam Horovitz. He’s great in the film. From being around him do you get a sense that he might want to keep acting?
Yeah, I think so. I hope he’ll do it for me again. I love working with Adam. There was no question in my mind that he was going to be great. You could just tell.

In the credits you thank Dreamworks Animation.
I worked on Madagascar 3. They’ve been great partners in a way, and I really like working with them. I felt like I wanted to acknowledge their support for me even though they weren’t involved in this movie.

Were you thinking of Ben as your lead while you were writing the script?
I don’t always write with someone in mind, but I started writing this after Greenberg came out, and we had a really great time on that. There was a connection and we became friends. I did this one with him in mind, and it was clear to me early on that I wanted to write a comedy of a type, something that connected me to movies from my adolescence, when studios would make comedies for adults that could be mainstream and have broad humor, but could also be character oriented. I felt like using Ben’s comic iconography in my terrain.

One of the first things I asked Richard Linklater when I met him was if his actors improvised in his films, and he said, “No. Nothing.” It’s astonishing to me, because the dialogue sounds so natural, as if it had to be improvised, and yet it’s not at all. From what I understand you work the same way, with your actors not improvising at all on set.
To quote Richard Linklater, “No.” [laughs]

Does writing dialogue come naturally to you?
Dialogue for me is something that comes quickly. That doesn’t mean the scenes come quickly. Often I kind of write my way and have conversations [in my head] to find the characters and the scenes early on. In a way, I’m improvising with myself. I can write dialogue for quite some time, but it’s like, where in it is the scene? Sometimes you’re lopping off the top and bottom and it’s in the middle, and other times it’s like, I found it over here, and now I can start the scene. It really depends. In some ways, that’s the motor for me.

I admire the fact that your portrayal of hipsters is so balanced, making them very likable and not too douche-y.
Part of it is that we meet the [hipster couple] through Naomi and Ben. We’re kind of learning them through the eyes of another couple. Because Ben’s character is stuck in many ways and looking for answers, he puts so much of it on Adam Driver’s character. I felt like, from Adam Driver’s character’s perspective, no human being should have to bear the responsibility of saving somebody else’s life. As it turns out, he doesn’t hold up under that weight, nor should he. Some people have looked at it the other way. “You’re saying the hipsters are destroying [everything.]” But I don’t see it that way at all. There are also arguments about technology and truth in art, which are subsets of the major story that I’m telling, which is of a marriage. Sometimes you have to come apart to come back together, which is a traditional comedy structure. Shakespearean even. In that I could then wrestle with all these arguments about things in the moment and generational fights without needing to take sides. I wouldn’t know what side to take anyway.

Charles Grodin is sort of a picky actor and doesn’t work as much as a lot of us would like him to. How did you get him involved?
One of my casting directors, Doug Aibel, was at a benefit or something and saw Grodin there. He intimated that he was open to working, and we happened to be casting. We were thinking about this character, and Doug told me [about Grodin] immediately, and I said, “Let’s make this happen.” I met with him, had a long meeting, and he did it.

A small detail I noticed was that Adam Driver’s character sometimes ends sentences with “see.”
In crafting the way he talked, I felt like that was a sort of old-timey way of saying things. It might be something he kind of took to. It’s kind of like a Damon Runyan thing, like he’d be into old New York. The way he says “beautiful” is like in the ’60s when people would say, “It’s just beautiful! It’s just beautiful!” It’s like a compilation of old stuff.

You’ve mentioned that you were trying to get The Squid and the Whale into the Criterion Collection. Has there been any progress on that?
Yes. It’s more like dealing with a rights thing right now, but yeah. Everybody wants it to happen.

The soundtrack is really eclectic. Why Vivaldi?
Vivaldi supplied a timeless aspect to the movie, which balanced it out because it is so eclectic. I felt like the overarching score would almost take you into another era entirely, or all eras, really. Vivaldi for me also brings back older movies that I liked. Kramer vs Kramer is one that used Vivaldi very well, obviously to different effect. I thought it was working really well for the movie, but it also was bringing me back in touch with movies from my childhood that had real meaning for me. I saw this movie as my version of those films. I love the energy, and there’s something very New York-y about it.

I read in an interview that you loved Naomi Watts in Mulholland Dr. and that you thought her performance was very funny. I agree.
I saw humor in it. That audition [scene] she does…you can’t do that if you don’t know what’s funny. It’s funny because it’s not funny. I’d wanted to work with Naomi for a while, and there were times when I thought of her, but I didn’t have a part for her. She’s just somebody I’ve had on a wish list of actors I’ve wanted to work with. This just seemed like an ideal thing for her. Again, thinking of Kramer vs Kramer, I thought Ben and her together almost evoked Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep. We even sort of dressed them similarly. I was thinking of that symmetry. She’s just lovely. I always think of the hip-hop [dance class] scene. I felt like Naomi Watts going into that class feels much more intimidating because you feel her anxiety about what’s going to happen. Thus, it’s that much funnier when she actually jumps in and commits. It was like a way to have a comic set piece without announcing, “Here comes the funny dance scene.”

A new Noah Baumbach release is indie film’s version of a tentpole summer blockbuster. The writer-director behind The Squid and the Whale and Frances Ha is returning in a few weeks with his newest film, While We’re Young, and the second trailer for the film has been released.

While We’re Young stars Baumbach vet Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts as a middle-aged couple whose relationship is tested after they meet a spontaneous couple played by Amanda Seyfried and Adam Driver. The film premiered at TIFF 2014, where we saw it and called it a “very funny film thanks to a wonderful cast.”

While we’re anticipating the film’s release on March 27th, check out the trailer below!

While We’re Young Trailer

“There has been an awakening – have you felt it?” Thus begins the all-new teaser for J.J. Abrams‘ Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

It’s a short teaser, that debuted in a select few theaters today and iTunes, but true fans will take whatever morsels Abrams gives us. Not much plot was revealed, and the teaser focuses on the tension around the force apparently waking up. The teaser focuses on the tech goodies, a new droid on a rolling ball, stormtroopers preparing for battle, a lightsaber that looks like a sword with a hilt.

We do get a slight glimpse at newcomers John Boyega and Daisy Riddle. They join Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Max von Sydow, and original cast members Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, and Peter Mayhew.

What fans will undoubtedly be amped most about is some awesome action by the Millenium Falcon. This is the seventh film in the franchise and will take place 30 years after Return of the Jedi.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens will hit theaters December of 2015. One more year guys, one more year.

Leave a comment, tell us your thoughts.

This year’s Venice Film Festival Coppa Volpi award winner for Best Actor (Adam Driver) and Best Actress (Alba Rohrwacher) Hungry Hearts will be released domestically by IFC Films, after the company acquired the film’s North American distribution rights. Hungry Hearts received several accolades at Venice before stops at the Toronto International Film Festival (where WTI saw the film), the Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, London Film Festival and more.

The film stars Driver and Rohrwacher as Jude and Mina, an American man and Italian woman who meet awkwardly in New York City. Soon, the couple have a child together, and differences between the two make circumstances even more strained. Hungry Hearts is written and directed by Saverio Costanzo, who received a Special Mention in the Venice Film Festival’s Pasinetti Award.

While the film has no confirmed release date yet, it’s likely due to be part of a big 2015 for Adam Driver, who aside from returning to Girls will appear in Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special, inspire fear in Star Wars: Episode VII, steal scenes in Noah Baumbach’s comedy While We’re Young and travel to 17th century Japan with Martin Scorsese’s upcoming Jesuit priests film Silence.

In 1977, 27 year-old Robyn Davidson embarked on what would become a 9 month, 1,700 mile journey across the Australian deserts. She traveled from the town of Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean, with 4 camels and a dog as her only companions. Her trip was first profiled in National Geographic before a book about her experiences was published in 1980. Now, 34 years later, Tracks has finally made it to the big screen.

Director John Curran opens two years before Davidson’s (Mia Wasikowska) trek, showing her arriving in Alice Springs and working with farmers in order to learn how to train camels. Davidson’s work only gets her so far, until a visit by National Geographic photographer Rick Smolan (Adam Driver) persuades her to let the magazine sponsor her voyage. After receiving the sponsorship money, with the condition that Smolan periodically rendezvous with Davidson for photos, she sets off.

Tracks naturally brings to mind other films about long, isolated journeys in nature like Into the Wild, Walkabout, Kon-Tiki and, to a much lesser extent, Life of Pi. Davidson establishes herself as a solitary person from the get-go, starting with a title card containing one of her quotes — “Some nomads are at home everywhere. Others are at home nowhere, and I was one of those.” — and reiterated throughout with her bristling at anyone’s suggestion of tagging along with her for a few days. Her reaction to Smolan’s arrival at different points on her trip is usually an annoyed one until the isolation gets to her. She starts sleeping with Smolan, but not out of romance (much to Smolan’s disappointment). She merely needs some sort of connection with another human being.

Of course, isolation is one of the film’s major themes, but Curran explores it in a way that’s neither refreshing nor interesting. Tracks limits itself with a simple, unsentimental take at Davidson’s story. The usual beats from a road trip film are all here: Davidson meets unique strangers along the way, bonds with someone she wouldn’t expect (this time an Aboriginal elder played by Roly Mintuma), faces tragedy along the way, and ultimately overcomes her childhood issues.

In this case, Davidson still hasn’t gotten over her mother’s suicide from when she was a child. Curran employs flashbacks to slowly reveal more details about her past. A method that is not only overly familiar, but reductive to Davidson’s story and a flaw on Curran and screenwriter Marion Nelson’s part. The film briefly touches on other inspirations for the 1,700 mile trip including gender, class, and race issues going on at the time, but they all unfairly take a back seat to Davidson’s grief over her mother’s death by the end. For a film dedicating most of its time to one character, it feels awfully limited in its portrayal.

But for a piece of conventional filmmaking, Tracks is well-made. Curran and cinematographer Mandy Walker film the Outback deserts with a serene, beautiful quality while showing its potential for danger. Wasikowska, looking eerily familiar to her real-life counterpart, is convincing in her role despite the narrow screenplay. The assured performances and great cinematography help to carry things along and there isn’t often a dull moment across its 2 hour length. Unfortunately those factors can’t elevate Tracks to something more than an ordinary take on an extraordinary tale.

Two years ago Noah Baumbach charmed Toronto audiences with Frances Ha, although fans of the whimsical free-form narrative in his last film might be disappointed with the concise structure and fastened script found in his latest film While We’re Young. Forty-something married couple Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) begin to notice the signs of growing older–close friends are having babies, arthritis settles in, and bed time is always at 11 o’clock sharp. Though it’s when they meet a spontaneous mid-20s couple Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried) that they really start to question their own lives.

There’s a huge age gap between the couples which accounts for how differently they act and think from each other. Though ironically, it’s the older couple that has the CD collection and prefers digital films while the younger one enjoys antiquated technology like vinyl records and VHS tapes. Spending time with the impromptu hipster couple makes Josh and Cornelia feel young again, envying the way they show unconditional love towards each other. But they soon realize it’s easy to take for granted what already you have and that everyone has their own problems.

Unlike Frances Ha which pleased critics and the arthouse crowd, While We’re Young tightens things up on all levels, making it appeal to a wider audience. While the comedy is more conventional, it’s nonetheless a very funny film thanks to a wonderful cast led by Stiller and Driver. Baumbach continues to show he has a knack for creating relatable characters, this time in the form of relationship routines and the act of growing old. Despite a formulated script and an awkward rant on Fair Use policies, While We’re Young remains a very watchable film that many people will find enjoyable.

The opening scene of Saverio Costanzo’s first English language film Hungry Hearts defines the meaning of situational irony. It begins with Mina (Alba Rohrwacher) discovering she has walked into the wrong bathroom at the restaurant she’s dining at, after nearly entering a stall occupied by a man, Jude (Adam Driver). As she frantically tries to leave the door gets jammed, locking them both in the claustrophobic bathroom together. To make matters worse, Jude has the stomach flu, making the smell nearly unbearable for them both. A call to the restaurant is their only way out of this hilariously awkward single take scene. In the face of a painfully awkward moment, the two seem oddly attracted to each other. While this opening scene has a charming vibe to it, Hungry Hearts quickly shifts into a romance but ultimately settles for something much darker, skirting the line between intense thriller and straight-up horror.

The film jumps ahead to show that they’re now a couple and, after a positive pregnancy test, they eventually decide to get married. Everything is peachy until the baby arrives. Which is when the tone shifts and laughs get replaced with shouting disagreements on how to properly raise their child. Mina doesn’t trust doctors and insists on keeping their newborn as “pure” as possible, meaning vegan diet only and no unnatural medicines like antibiotics. Jude realizes his son isn’t growing like he should so he sneaks his child to a doctor who tells him the baby suffers from malnourishment. This is when the film should get real interesting, but it turns into an exasperating watch instead.

Hungry Hearts starts and ends with a bang, but the lack of substance in between doesn’t match up to these hefty bookends. Both Rohrwacher and Driver recently received acting awards at the Venice Film Festival for their outstanding performances, but they aren’t enough to save the film from feeling like a missed opportunity.

Check out the first poster and photos for Michael Dowse‘s (Goon) newest film, What If, starring Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan.

The film centers around med school dropout Wallace (Radcliffe), who strikes a close relationship with quirky animator Chantry (Kazan). As their relationship blooms, they wonder if being best friends means they could also be soul mates, even if she is already a part of a long-term relationship. The film co-stars young up-and-comers Adam Driver and Rafe Spall.

From the look of the poster and photos, this looks like the first time we will see Radcliffe in a contemporary, real-world film. His Harry Potter co-star Emma Watson has successfully made this transition, so it is intriguing to see Radcliffe go through it.

What If is set to open in August, released by CBS Films.

The latest creation from masterminds Joel and Ethan Coen is about a folk musician named Llewyn Davis; a couch surfing cat-lover with a full beard who rarely is without his guitar, and is more concerned with being an artist than being a traditional careerist. Nowadays Davis would likely be considered a hipster, but the film is set back during in the early days of folk music. The most effective moments of Inside Llewyn Davis are when Davis is behind the mic with his guitar, unfortunately that happens less than you would expect. And while there is some great deadpan humor sporadically placed throughout, the overall tone of the film is a bit darker, focusing on his struggles to make it in life.

Inside Llewyn Davis opens with a two and a half minute solo of Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) strumming his guitar and belting out a downer folk song comprised of catchy hooks that you will not soon forget. At first it hard to tell if the hazy picture is due to the smoky interior of a small New York City pub circa 1961, but as soon as he steps outside the soft focus look remains observable. If you could not tell from the lyrics of his songs, Davis is a down on his luck musician who lives on other people’s couches without a penny to his name. Also, he may or may not have gotten a fellow folk singer (Carey Mulligan) pregnant.

When the subject of the story is someone who drifts from couch to couch with a career that is practically nonexistent, the film is going to have a natural aimless wander to it. This is fine at the beginning because Inside Llewyn Davis is frontloaded, containing its best scenes within the first hour of its runtime. Watching him trying to take care of a run-away cat is easily the highlight of the film; followed by a silly recording session with some of his friends (Justin Timberlake and Adam Driver) about being sent into outer space by President Kennedy. Unfortunately, the film spends too much time on autopilot after the midway point that it begins to grow tiresome and very unfocused.

The Coen brothers are known to create remarkably unique characters, just take a look at most of the characters in The Big Lebowski or Fargo. But all of the characters we are introduced to in Inside Llewyn Davis are abandoned before they can make a lasting impression. A prime example of this is when John Goodman leaves the picture as quickly as he appears—not even making it through an entire road trip. To top it off, the character we do spend the most time with, Llewyn Davis, happens to be the least interesting character of the film, despite it being easy to sympathize with his situation.

Inside Llewyn Davis is about as close as you get to be a musical without being one—a shame because the musical breaks are one of the strongest components of the film. Watching our protagonist wander through his journey becomes less interesting with each passing act of the film. There are some great moments in Inside Llewyn Davis, just not as many as you come to expect from a Coen brothers production.

Inside Llewyn Davis trailer

Noah Baumbach, the director of Greenberg and The Squid and the Whale, shows a more comedic side in Frances Ha. Co-writing with star Greta Gerwig, the film plays out like a beneficial compromise between the two collaborators. Baumbach keeps his focus on characters who seemingly flail through life, while Gerwig injects a playfulness and light sense of humour that keeps things from wallowing in despair. The film feels like a new, and welcome, direction in Baumbach’s career, as Frances Ha is one of his finest works to date.

Frances (Greta Gerwig) is a 27 year old barely getting by in New York City. She struggles to be a professional dancer, working as an understudy and dance tutor for children. The only constant in her life is her best friend and roommate Sophie (Mickey Sumner), but that soon changes when Sophie moves out for an apartment in Tribeca. She moves into a new place with two roommates (Adam Driver & Michael Zegen) who use their rich relatives to fund their lifestyles.

The rest of the film follows Frances as she tries to sort her life out despite a series of roadblocks and poor decisions along the way. Gerwig, who’s already shown herself to be a terrific actress, unsurprisingly gives one of the year’s best performances. Gerwig makes Frances a sympathetic character, even when she makes bone-headed decisions like rushing to Paris for a weekend or drunkenly embarrassing herself in front of friends. There are moments, like when Frances says goodbye to her parents (played by Gerwig’s own mother and father) after a Christmas vacation, that make it impossible not to root for her to succeed by the end. Sumner also does a great job as Sophie, who expresses the strained nature of her friendship to Frances almost entirely through body language.

It’s in these moments where Baumbach painfully shows how stagnant Frances’ life is, even as she tries to avoid what seems like the inevitable. Scenes like a dinner party, where Frances uses every opportunity to tell the more successful guests how badly she’s doing, are horrifying to watch unfold. The feeling of abandonment coming from everyone around you seemingly moving on to better things in their life is perfectly captured. Seeing Frances go back to work at her alma mater is a perfectly suitable and heartbreaking image that sums up those emotions.

Unfortunately, as the redemptive last act kicks in, the conclusion gets too rushed. Earlier on, when someone suggests Frances get an office job to help her get by while she figures things out, she replies with, “You say it like it’s easy.” Once she actually does take that advice, it only takes a brief montage before everything appears to be working out. It feels like a betrayal of everything that came before it, and when the film cuts to a party that everyone from the film attends, the effect is jarring. It’s an unusually neat way to wrap things up considering how much more nuanced things were up to that point.

The final scene, where the title is explained in a great shot I won’t spoil, wraps things up nicely enough that it’s easy to not mind the rushed ending. It’s hard to really dislike Frances Ha as Gerwig’s performance, the breezy pace, and quick-witted script work like gangbusters for the most part. Baumbach and Gerwig seem like a great team, and hopefully Frances Ha signifies the beginning of more collaborations in the future.

A lot of sitcoms start with the same premise as Jonathan Lisecki’s Gayby, biological alarm clocks go off and suddenly everyone is infected with baby fever. This lightweight indie comedy takes that exact plot a couple steps further while treading (but never crossing) the thin line of an exaggerated story. Circumstances that arise in the film are actually happening more and more in today’s society of alternative parenting. Except briefly in one scene, the film wisely stays away preaching a political agenda. Gayby is not without its fault though, most of which show up in the film’s final act, which in the end alters the trajectory of where the film could have landed.

Within the first five minutes the tent poles of the story are up, Jenn (Jenn Harris) and Matt (Matthew Wilkas) are thirty-something friends who are desperately single. They made a pact in college if they did not have a baby by the time they were in their thirties that they would have one together. This sounds fairly straightforward until two curveballs are thrown. The first one being that she is straight and he is gay. But the real kicker though is that she wants to make the baby “the old fashioned way”.

As with any couple trying to conceive a baby (or in this case a gayby), problems arise. Even though the two engage in intercourse at the most opportune times according to Jenn’s ovulating schedule, he fails to impregnate her. Looking to point the finger at anything but herself; Jenn blames her apartment’s energy to be off because of the sterile paint job.

The bedroom scenes are without a doubt the funniest scenes in the film. At the same time, it handles the awkward procedure with relative ease. The dynamic between the two leads make the whole situation feel more plausible than it may seem on paper. Because the comedic timing and chemistry thrive when the two share the screen, they succeed in carrying the production even at the weakest points.

Gayby takes cues from the HBO’s hit show, Girls, by showcasing the complications of being a single girl (and a gay guy) in New York City. Just like Lean Dunham does in the show, Jenn Harris is a wise-cracking woman who always seems to find the wrong guys. Moreover, the film even borrows two of the shows stars, Adam Driver and Alex Karpovsky. One major difference between these two is that the film replaces hipster culture for gay culture, but the results are equally as hilarious.

Because the first two acts of Gayby were sensational, it makes the third act that much more disappointing when all of the built up steam runs out. Up until the dreadful ending, the film was a breath of fresh air to the indie gay-comedy genre with its playful yet witty humor. What makes the film so great is whether you are; straight or gay, male or female, parent or not, you can find most of the film pleasing. It is too bad that the film itself was not premature in its own delivery because that ending should not have arrived at all.