'White Noise' never seems to find its footing

   In adapting Don DeLillo's 1985 novel, White Noise, for the screen, director Noah Baumbach has made a wildly uneven movie that soars and sinks until it arrives at a brilliant end-credit musical number set to LCD Soundsystem's New Body Rhumba. 

      Some of White Noise struck me as abrasively funny, although it's easy to make fun of academic pretension, one of the movie's early preoccupations. Otherwise, Baumbach sends his movie here, there, and everywhere, spewing cleverness but never finding its footing. 

      Looking as if he hasn't made a trip to the gym in months, a pot-bellied Adam Driver plays Jack Gladney, a college professor specializing in Hitler studies, a field he pioneered. 

    Jack's wife Babette (Greta Gerwig)  works with the elderly and is addicted to pills known as Dylar. (What these pills do remains a mystery until near the movie’s end.)

   A fourth marriage for both Jack and Babette, the couple lives in a college town with the kids from their combined households, four in all.

   Don Cheadle turns up as Murray, one of Jack's colleagues, a professor who lectures on pop culture. Murray hopes to do for Elvis what Jack has done for Hitler, turn the King into an academic rage.

   At one point, Jack and Murray give dueling lectures that Jack treats as a clash of egos and which Baumbach deftly stages with each professor trying to out-dramatize the other.

    Baumbach soon introduces a disaster-movie element that’s foreshowed by an early-picture lecture Murray gives on the deeper meaning of car crashes in movies.

     When a truck and a train collide, the little college town that Jack and Babette call home is threatened by an "airborne toxic event." Toxic clouds pollute the air.

     Fearing contamination and heeding an evacuation order, the family piles into a station wagon and flees the advancing cloud. The movie suddenly becomes a cockeyed disaster pic full of roads glutted with traffic, impromptu shelters, and escalating fear.

    Baumbach keeps many of DeLillo's ironic jokes. Jack, for example, bills himself as an expert on Hitler but he doesn't speak German. Supermarkets become meccas of personal fulfillment. Consumerism attains the status of a new religion.

     All of this in the service of obliterating any consciousness of mortality in a culture that can't bear to face the prospect of death, a fear that haunts both Jack and Babette.

     A late picture development brings Jack face-to-face with unpleasant truths, including a confession of infidelity by Babette that leads to ... oh well ... it doesn't exactly matter because it feels as if Baumbach has deposited us in another movie, one in which Jack tries to unravel the mysteries of Dylar.

   Baumbach sets the story in the 1980s, just as DeLillo did. That means White Noise can feel dated. Amusing in spurts and obviously ambitious, White Noise never becomes a self-sufficient romp through a fractured culture.

    Instead, Baumbach's White Noise feels like a collection of the accumulated absurdities that once fired DeLillo’s imagination in a novel that many considered unfilmable. Pehraps they were right. Some things should be left on the page.

Can a divorce really be amicable?

Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver play a divorcing couple in director Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story.

In a divorce, it eventually becomes clear to one or both partners that the person in whom they had placed their trust no longer is the person they believed them to be. Suddenly, the most intimate person in one's life becomes an unfamiliar antagonist.

This isn't true of every divorce, but it's the underlying dynamic that drives Marriage Story, the latest movie from director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Frances Ha, The Meyerowitz Stories. The always insightful Baumbach tells the story of two creative types who love each other, but whose marriage has run out of gas. Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) has decided that her acting chops have sustained the career of her husband (Adam Driver), an acclaimed experimental theater director. Driver's Charlie reaps the rewards and adoration. She's an also-ran.

Eventually, the situation proves intolerable for Nicole -- that and the fact that Charlie has slept with a member of the Manhattan theater company he runs.

To pursue her career, Nicole moves to her hometown, Los Angeles, a city that Charlie loathes. She eventually lands a big role in an important TV show.

For his part, Charlie's career begins to stall and he can't accept the idea that his family, which includes a young son (Azhy Robertson), no longer can call itself New York-based.

Baumbach begins the movie with a nifty bit of trickery. We hear the content of letters in which each of the spouses lists the good points about their mate. The movie then undermines what seems an expression of love and goodwill by telling us that these letters were written at the suggestion of a mediator after the couple agreed to divorce.

The movie is less the story of a marriage than the story of a break-up. What appeared to be a good marriage was fraught with difficulties, the most important being Charlie's self-absorption. Early hopes for an amicable divorce eventually wind up in the hands of lawyers.

Laura Dern portrays Nicole's lawyer, a shark who knows how to find blood in the water and move in for the kill, isn't afraid to soften her hard edges. Ray Liotta turns up as Dern's male counterpart, another lawyer whose strategy involves biting into the nearest jugular. Liotta's character takes over after Charlie tries to do business with a reasonable, realistic lawyer, a terrific Alan Alda in full mensch mode.

Baumbach works hard to turn Marriage Story into an equal opportunity movie for each side. He evidently doesn't have a taste for the kind of drama that rips us apart, and he introduces comic elements that stem from Nicole's mother (Julie Hagerty) and her sister (Merritt Wever).

An attempt at farce in which Wever's character serves Charlie with divorce papers is overwrought to the point of annoyance. And there are two instances of characters doing musical numbers that easily could have been cut from a movie that doesn't quite know when to end. But I guess you could say the same about Charlie and Nicole's marriage.

A major helping of Greta Gerwig

Mistress America , a movie of intermittent amusements.

In Mistress America, Greta Gerwig draws on all her power to play a scattered, funny and wildly ambitious New Yorker. As a young woman seeking a place for herself in a trend-crazed world, Gerwig's Brooke creates a tornadic whirl around everything she does.

Spend five minutes with Brooke, and she'll ramble on about possible TV shows she wants to produce (a reality show called Mistress America being one of them), new apps she plans to invent and scads of other imagined endeavors that she hopes will secure her niche in a fluid economy.

Here's the thing, though: We get Brooke early, and there's not much left for us to learn about her in this Noah Baumbach-directed comedy. Baumbach, you'll recall, previously worked with Gerwig on Frances Ha.

Although she's the movie's dominant force, Gerwig's Brooke is not its main character. That job falls to Lola Kirke's Tracy, a college freshman who aspires to be a writer. Because Tracy's mother (Kathryn Erbe) is engaged to Brooke's father, she encourages Tracy to call her soon-to-be step sister.

Driven by an inability to connect with her peers, Tracy contacts Brooke. Instantly, she's drawn into the vortex her future step-sister creates: parties punctuated by a blur of activities and a frenzied stream of ideas.

When Brooke's wealthy boyfriend decides not to fund the restaurant Brooke wants to open, she's forced to ask former boyfriend Dylan (Michael Chernus) to help her with money. That's no slam-dunk because Mamie-Claire (Heather Lind), Dylan's shrill wife, hates Brooke.

Joining Brooke on her trip to Dylan's upscale Connecticut home are one of Tracy's student friends (a droopy Matthew Shear) and his improbably jealous girlfriend (Jasmine Cephas Jones).

All of these characters and a stray from Mamie-Claire's book group gather for a scene in which Baumbach makes a major misstep: He tries his hand at farce.

Stocked with crisscrossing dialogue and rat-a-tat delivery, the movie's big farcical scene never achieves the level of urbanity and wit required to make it fly. Baumbach's attempt at screwball comedy mostly falls flat.

Good for a few chuckles and savvy about the way certain people are able quickly to create a seductive sense of intimacy, Mistress America winds up feeling like awfully thin gruel, a comedy that struck me as more interested in letting us know it's smart than in making us laugh.

Generations mix in 'While We're Young'

A semi-sharp comedy of manners from director Noah Baumbach.

There's a point during Noah Baumbach's While We're Young when one of the characters, a frustrated documentary filmmaker, refers to himself as an old man. Even as a comparative statement, it's a stretch. Played by Ben Stiller, the "aging" documentarian is in his mid-40s.

For those of us for whom the mid-40s long ago have slipped into (or perhaps out of) memory, Stiller's statement may prompt involuntary snickers.

But then Baumbach, 45 himself, isn't necessarily interested in actual aging. Among other things, his movie is about losing touch with the promise of youth. What happens when one realizes that the salad days are over and even the most exotic dressing can't put the crisp back into life's lettuce?

It's a potentially rich subject for a director who has been making films since 1995's Kicking and Screaming and whose filmography includes The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, Greenberg, and Frances Ha, as well as the upcoming Mistress America.

With age 50 in sight, does Baumbach worry about reaching his full potential?

While We're Young can be seen as a zeitgeist comedy set in New York City, a place where success and failure tend to exist in dramatic counterpoint.

When things aren't going well, New York is an easy place to feel small and failed. That makes it an ideal spot for a character played by Stiller, a self-conscious sad sack who's flirting with defeat.

I had a conflicted response to While We're Young. I didn't care much about the concerns of its principal characters, a middle-aged couple (Stiller and Naomi Watts) and a couple still in their 20s (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried).

At the same time, I found some of Baumbach's observations about these characters to be amusing and, on occasion, pointed.

Baumbach spends a good deal of time playing with generational styles and tastes, sometimes flip-flopping them between his middle-aged and the still youthful characters. The older characters, for example, are Google obsessed; the younger ones don't Google because they take pride in not knowing things. Why bother?

Stiller's Josh hasn't come close to fulfilling his potential. He's been working on his second documentary for 10 years, and can't get beyond a six-hour, sleep-inducing rough cut.

Watts' Cornelia frets about being childless. She works as a producer for her father (Charles Grodin), an acclaimed documentarian who's at a stage where he's receiving lifetime achievement awards. He's the worst possible father-in-law for Josh, a constant reminder of what Josh hasn't accomplished.

Driver's Jamie and Seyfried's Darby latch onto Josh at a film class he's teaching. Gradually, the tables turn, and Josh and Cornelia begin clinging to this younger, free-spirited duo.

Jamie's so unconcerned about being hip, he's actually hip. And unlike Josh, he's far too young to fear making fatal mistakes.

For her part, Darby dabbles with entrepreneurial craft projects: She makes ice cream.

Watching Josh and Cornelia try to turn back the clock can be amusing -- in a painful sort of way. They attempt to keep pace with the younger couple, most ludicrously at an Ayahuasca get-together where everyone ingests a psychedelic brew before barfing out inner demons.

Baumbach sticks fairly close to the surface as he allows these characters to reveal their inner preposterousness, Cornelia's laugh-out-loud foray into hip-hop dancing, for example.

It's not entirely surprising to learn that Jamie may not be living in the moment as much as he pretends to be, a development that dominates the movie's third act.

The story pretty much derails when it gets caught up in ethical issues involving a documentary Jamie is making (yes, he's a filmmaker, too).

While We're Young proves entertaining enough, but its many small observations don't add up to anything bigger.

By the end, I found myself wondering whether the plights of these self-absorbed characters could have been reduced to one perceptively amusing New Yorker cartoon. Put another way, I had a few good chuckles, and quickly turned the page.

A look at Frances, who lives in limbo

After a preview screening of the quietly instructive and often amusing new movie Frances Ha, I was chatting with someone who told me that he was about to attend the college graduation of a nephew, and that the young man had absolutely no idea about what to do with with the rest of his life.

That's hardly a revelation. A sagging economy has taken much of the luster off the American dream, and many young people seem to spend their 20s marking time, hoping that something -- anything -- will come along and catapult them into adulthood.

Frances Ha is the story of one such (you'll pardon the term) Millennial. The 27-year-old Frances (Greta Gerwig) has been living in a post-college limbo for as much as six or seven years, and her dream is on the verge of foundering. An aspiring dancer, Frances seems a little short on talent, and she's about to lose her position with a small dance company.

Frances' social life doesn't provide much relief, either. Her most enduring relationship is with her roommate Sophie (Mickey Sumner). The two have been close friends since college. In an early scene, Frances turns down an offer to live with her boyfriend because she's happy in the Brooklyn apartment she and Sophie share.

The catch: Sophie -- who works for a publishing company -- seems to have had her fill of impromptu living. She's planning to move into a Manhattan apartment. Not long after her departure, Sophie meets a man, and decides to have a serious relationship. She tells Frances that she's moving to Japan, where her new beau has been offered a major career opportunity.

Absent her roommate and confidant, Frances is in a place that can seem a little scary: She's officially and undeniably at loose ends.

Directed by Noah Baumbach (Greeenberg and The Squid and the Whale), Frances Ha would have been impossible without Gerwig, who gives Frances a galumphing walk and a large ration of naive charm. In Gerwig's hands, Frances becomes an amusing and even touching study of awkwardness, the unease that stems from not fitting into much of anything -- maybe even her own body.

After losing her roommate, Frances devotes substantial amounts of time to securing new quarters. She moves in with two men (Adam Driver and Michael Zegen), who charge her close to $1,000 a month for the privilege of sharing their space.

The movie also takes Frances to California, where she visits her parents, played by Gerwig's real parents (Christine and Gordon Gerwig).

Baumbach, who chose to shoot in refreshing black-and-white, makes room for a lonely Parisian interlude and a trip back to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., scene of Frances' college days.

Here's how I understand Frances. She was one of those kids who was raised by encouraging, middle-class parents who most likely supported her dream of being a professional dancer, but who never bothered to wonder whether Frances had sufficient talent for such a demanding and capricious path. She attended a good college, made friends and then moved to New York City, where she and Sophie became co-conspirators in all things.

I don't know if Baumbach hoped that Francis Ha would serve as a generational portrait or whether he simply wanted to introduce us to a character who grows on us, as Gerwig allows her comic abilities to blossom.

Even without giving it any larger meanings, Frances Ha has its rewards, most of them involving Gerwig's performance. At one point, Frances says that she's not yet a real person, her way of telling us that she's unable to make the transition into a settled adulthood. She's aware enough to know that her life isn't turning out as she might have imagined.

It's doubtful that Frances would see herself a representative of her generation, but I'm betting that she has plenty of company among those who currently are stuck in shapeless, ill-defined lives, unsure that they'll ever be able to move on.

Baumbach's movie doesn't entirely transform Frances' life, but it suggests that one way or another, she'll adapt. Gerwig may not be what you'd call a conventional screen presence, but she makes us believe that Sophie won't be defeated.