Review: The End of the Tour (2015)

* * * 1/2
Director: James Ponsoldt
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Jason Segal

The End of the Tour is a movie that's pretty much all talk and no action, a film of ideas and the discussion of experience not unlike My Dinner with Andre, except that there's more movement between locations. It's a deeply engaging, often fascinating picture which confirms director James Ponsoldt (Smashed, The Spectacular Now) as one of the best contemporary tellers of the character-driven drama, particularly in terms of his laser focus on the subtleties of a relationship between two people. It's the kind of film that throws a lot of academic ideas out about art and artists, but it's never dry or pedantic; it's smart and sometimes funny and often, knowing what we know about David Foster Wallace's death, bittersweet. Above all, it's a really good movie and a great character study.

The Five-Year Engagement (2012)

* *
Director: Nicholas Stoller
Starring: Jason Segel, Emily Blunt

It's always disappointing when a film that has all the individual elements of a hit just can't find a way to make them work together in harmony. The Five-Year Engagement boasts two talented actors as its leads, several other talented actors in supporting roles, and a screenplay that has real flashes of intelligence and takes its characters seriously as people while still being able to poke fun at them. So what went wrong? Ultimately a nearly perfect first half gives way to a second half that drags under the weight of its plot contrivances and brings the whole thing down.