Secret Lives

‘GREENBERG’ & ‘CITY ISLAND’

Rand Richards Cooper May 31, 2010 - 9:39am

Recently I checked in again with two directors whose films earned praise in the past. Noah Baumbach made a name for himself with The Squid and the Whale, a pithy study in domestic pathology that traced a family’s miseries to the black hole of narcissism and rage inhabited by the father, a failed writer. Baumbach’s new movie, Greenberg, explores similar terrain, charting the travails of a forty-year-old carpenter and ex–rock musician, Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller), who...

The remainder of this article is only available to paid subscribers.

Print subscribers to Commonweal are entitled to free access to all premium online content. Click here to purchase a print subscription, or if you’re already a print subscriber, register now for premium access.

Online-only subscriptions provide access to all premium online articles for just $34/year. Click here to subscribe.

Registered users, please log in below:

Topics: 
Movies

Share

About the Author

Rand Richards Cooper, one of Commonweal's film critics, is the author of two works of fiction, The Last To Go and Big as Life.

Also by this author

Articles