Review: Now You See Me 2 (2016)

* * 1/2
Director: Jon M. Chu
Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Lizzy Caplan

The world probably didn't need a sequel to the 2013 heist by way of magic film Now You See Me, but it made $117 million at the domestic box office so we get one anyway. Never mind that part of the reason the original made as much as it did was surely that it was something new and different, which could go a ways to explaining why the follow-up is finding considerably less success, dismissed by audiences as just another drop in this summer's ocean of sequels. Whether the sequel is actually more worthy of success than the original is difficult for me to say, because as I was watching this one, which continues the story set up by the first and is always referring back to it, I became increasingly aware of how little I remembered the first one. To me, this movie might as well have been called Now You See Me: Or Do You?, as I suspect that it will have more or less the same lasting impact on me that the first one did.

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.

Review: 30 Minutes or Less (2011)

* 1/2
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Aziz Ansari, Danny McBride, Nick Swardson

There are plenty of movies that leave you wondering how they ever got made, they're so ill-conceived and poorly rendered. Somewhat less common are movies that leave you wondering why they got made, as everyone in it seems so disengaged from and disinterested in the material. I mean, I can speculate as to why each of the principal actors showed up for this - Jesse Eisenberg to reteam with his Zombieland director Ruben Fleisher, Aziz Ansari because it's not like Hollywood makes a ton of roles available to actors of color, Danny McBride because the character he plays is basically the "Danny McBride character" so why not?, and Nick Swardson because the character he plays here is marginally less grotesque than the ones he usually gets to play in Happy Madison productions so this must have been a nice change of pace - but that still doesn't explain why anyone paid to make it happen. Even if 30 Minutes of Less didn't have strong similarities to a real life incident that ended tragically, this would be an oddly joyless comedy, and one that doesn't even seem to know what its actual story is, let alone what tone it ought to be aiming for.

Review: Night Moves (2014)

* * * 1/2
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, Peter Sarsgaard

Director Kelly Reichardt is not a filmmaker who could ever be accused of making plot-driven films. Her films tend to be driven more by character and mood than by plot, and in that sense her latest, Night Moves, might be said to be the closest thing she's made to a "conventional" film. That said, Night Moves is only conventional relative to Reichardt's previous films and not when measured against just about anything else you can find at the multiplex. In other hands, this story of three environmental activists and their plot to blow up a dam would take the form of a thriller, but Reichardt's style, which favors a meditative tone rather than an urgent one, is probably too much of a slow burner to properly qualify as a "thriller." It's a character film built around a centerpiece sequence of incredible tension that will satisfy some and move too sedately for others, but if you're a viewer who has yet to experience Reichardt's work but want to, Night Moves may prove to be the perfect gateway.

Review: Now You See Me (2013)

* * *Director: Louis Leterrier
Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Morgan Freeman, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fischer, Melanie Laurent, Michael Caine

Now You See Me is a good film saddled with a bad film's ending. Right up until its finale, it is an entertaining and engaging caper movie, and then it uses the goodwill engendered by its first two thirds as leverage against the cheap trick it pulls at the end. When a film's twist ending requires the audience to completely disregard everything they've learned about a character, to ignore the way that character behaved even when he or she was alone and had no one (except the audience) to keep up appearances for, it's not clever. It's cheating. A good twist is one which not only makes sense according to the film's internal logic, but which inspires multiple viewings so that you can pick up on all the little hints and bits of foreshadowing leading to the revelation. A bad twist is one which exists solely for the shock value that comes with the first viewing and which, on subsequent viewings, just makes everything leading up to the twist seem dumb. The ending of this film is garbage; the rest of the film is pretty good... so I guess I'm recommending the first 100 minutes and warning against the last 15.

Review: To Rome with Love (2012)

* *
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Alec Baldwin, Penelope Cruz, Roberto Benigni, Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Woody Allen

The problem with the current phase of Woody Allen’s career is that when you sit down to watch his latest, you never know if you’re going to get a Midnight in Paris or a Whatever Works. While To Rome with Love is nowhere near as aggressively terrible as the latter of those, it has a frustratingly half-baked feeling to it that seriously detracts from whatever genuine pleasures the film can be said to contain. Basically: great cast and great scenery, but both utterly wasted.

Review: Adventureland (2009)

* * *
Director: Greg Mottola
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds

Greg Mottola's Adventureland is, in many ways, your typical teen comedy/drama, except that its characters aren't teenagers but are instead in that strange, extended adolescence period of your early 20s where you're technically an adult but you haven't yet become financially independent and your responsibilities are still extremely limited. It isn't necessarily an instant classic of its genre, but I suspect that it's the kind of film you can pick up over and again as the years pass and still enjoy.

Review: The Social Network (2010)

* * * 1/2
Director: David Fincher
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake

I have to admit, for a while there I wasn't too keen on the idea of seeing The Social Network. When the trailer was released, my first thought was, "Great, two hours of rich white guys acting like assholes." It was only in the last couple of weeks, which saw the release of review after review, each seemingly more rapturous than the last, that I actually started to look forward to this one. Luckily, it lives up to the hype.

The Social Network recalls a time long ago, a simpler age when if your friends, family, or that person you remember vaguely from high school wanted to know what you were thinking or what you did over the weekend, they had to, like, call you or something. How did we ever live like that? The film begins with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) getting dumped, getting drunk, and then getting revenge by simultaneously blogging about his now ex-girlfriend and creating Facemash, a site which ranks the attractiveness of the women at Harvard. His late night stunt gets him both bad attention, in the form of a disciplinary hearing (he had to hack into various databases to get the photos for Facemash), and good attention in the form of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer) and Divya Narendra (Max Minghella), who want to bring Zuckerberg aboard their plans for a social network to help Harvard students connect to each other.

Zuckerberg signs up for the project (originally called HarvardConnection then renamed ConnectU) but quickly abandons it to start a social networking site of his own, teaming up with his friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), who doesn't know much about computer programing but has the cash to provide the project with the necessary start up money. Things are going well until The Facebook catches the attention of Napster co-founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), who helps launch the site into the stratosphere but causes an irreparable rift between Zuckerberg and Saverin that eventually leads to one of two lawsuits against Zuckerberg (the other being launched by the Wilkevoss twins and Narendra).

Much of the film is told in flashbacks with the present day scenes taking place in the two mediations. The screenplay, by Aaron Sorkin, unfolds at a fast clip (the first scene is about as close to perfect as it gets) and is very engaging and surprisingly funny. The only thing about the screenplay that didn't really work for me was the scene which introductes Parker. The scene felt kind of clunky (and is so glaring because the rest of the film is so smooth) and while Timberlake does really well in his role, he's not quite a good enough actor to make that scene work.

Throughout the film, the characters are extremely well drawn. Zuckerberg is depicted here as a man utterly lacking in social skills, who has no idea how to forge or maintain connections to other human beings. There's a sharpness to the character and while the film never tries to soften the edges, he's not exactly the "villain" of the story either (though he's certainly no innocent). If there is a villain to this story it's Parker, who waltzes in, seduces Zuckerberg with visions of glory, orchestrates Saverin's ouster, and then proves to be something of a PR liability. There is a scene where Zuckerberg and Parker are in a club and Parker is framed and lit in such a sinister way that the character may as well have been renamed Mephistopheles. It's a brilliant bit of work from director David Fincher (and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth), just one of several little touches that helps make The Social Network such a strong film.

The film is also immeasurably strengthened by its performances. Hammer plays the Winklevoss twins as a pair of golden boys so accustomed to having everything work out for them that they are offended to their very core that not only have their plans been disrupted but that they have to go to such great lengths in their attempt to restore order to their lives (at one point Cameron refuses to sue Zuckerberg, insisting that he and Tyler are "gentlemen of Harvard" and, as such, they can fall back on the social rules of their class to resolve the situation in their favour). Garfield's Saverin - played with wounded intensity - is easier to feel sorry for, perhaps because the story unfolds in such a way that he's like the faithful first wife dumped at the cusp of success in favour of the trophy wife epitomized by Timberlake's Parker. At the center of it all, of course, is Eisenberg who never hits a false note in his portrayal of Zuckerberg. He's been giving solid performances for years now and hopefully he won't go unrecognized for this performance come Oscar time.

Review: The Squid and the Whale (2005)

* * * 1/2
Director: Noah Baumbach
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Owen Kline, Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney

If for no other reason, Noah Baumbach should be commended for his refusal to sugarcoat things. He is totally and completely willing to let his characters be assholes and the honesty of his work, the relentless way in which he exposes the pretensions of his characters, almost serves to make them endearing. The Squid and the Whale is about a family dealing with the pain of divorce and is unforgiving and forgiving in equal measure.

The parents are Bernard and Joan, played by Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney – already the movie is great. They have two sons, 16-year-old Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and 12-year-old Frank (Owen Kline). Walt strongly identifies with his father and parrots his many opinions. He’s defensive of the fact that Bernard, a novelist, hasn’t been published in quite some time, and dismissive of Joan’s attempt to start her own career as a writer. When Bernard and Joan announce their divorce, Walt places the blame squarely on his mother, whom he believes has ended the marriage because Bernard isn’t wealthy or successful enough. If Walt had the benefit of a different perspective, he would see that it has more to do with the fact that Bernard is almost inconceivably selfish and conceited. When Bernard reveals that Joan had numerous affairs during their marriage, it gives Walt the excuse he needs to make his father’s house his sole residence. Frank, meanwhile, will continue to shuffle between his parents’ houses, at Joan’s house one day and Bernard’s the next.

Walt begins dating a girl in his class who is impressed by his seeming ability for deep thought. He echoes his father’s thoughts on “The Metamorphosis” and she surprises him by reading it so that they can discuss it, hoping perhaps to impress him with her own intellect. It is painfully apparent during the course of their conversation that despite his knowledge of the work’s importance, he has in fact never read it. All he can contribute to the conversation is that the ending is “ambiguous” and that the work itself is “Kafka-esque.” She points out that it would have to be, seeing as it was written by Kafka, and then lets it slide. They make out for a while and then he tells her that she has too many freckles. Walt is lucky because a girl a decade older would tell him to fuck off, but at 16 most girls are too insecure and inexperienced to know better. Eisenberg is perfect as Walt, particularly in those moments when someone calls him out on his behavior. He always looks so shocked that people are able to see through his façade that instead of hating him for his unearned arrogance, you instead feel sorry for him because he’s making his life so much harder than it has to be.

While Walt is coming to the slow realization that neither he nor his father is so great that everyone should bow down before them, Frank is experiencing his own growing pains. While it is apparent that Bernard enjoys Walt’s company (probably because Walt makes for such an eager audience), Bernard’s relationship with Frank is a lot less solid. Frank sees through a lot of Bernard’s posturing and prefers the company of his mother and her new boyfriend, Ivan (William Baldwin), a fellow so dim and happy and eager to please that he’s reminiscent of a golden retriever. Bernard can’t understand what Joan could possibly see in Ivan because he can’t comprehend that a woman would want to be with a man who’s nice to her if she could be with an intellectual who could lecture her on any subject and crush her spirit beneath the weight of his own genius.

None of the characters gets off easy, though Bernard bears the brunt of the film’s criticism. The film presents him as a man who sets himself apart on the strength of his intellect and then desperately grasps at others as they start to turn away from him. He’s a very sad man and Daniels plays him brilliantly from beginning to end. Linney is similarly brilliant (can we start a petition to have her declared a national treasure already?) and though the film is more sympathetic to Joan, she’s not immune from criticism. Neither of these people are particularly fair to their children, to whom they reveal brutal truths whether they’re ready to hear them or not, and they often put their own wants/needs ahead of those of their children. Part of what makes the film so strong is that it doesn’t try to shy away from that or excuse it, it just lets it be. It isn't always pretty, but the film has a stronger ring of truth than most films.