Every Noah Baumbach Movie Ranked Worst To Best
"I've begun reminiscing events before they even occur," laments Chris Eigeman's Max in Noah Baumbach's "Kicking and Screaming." The character continues, "I'm reminiscing this right now." If ever a line could sum up the career of the writer-director, perhaps it's this one. Baumbach's characters, always shooting from the hip, are anchored in a perpetual present where they're paralyzed by the uncertainties of the future. Yet, because they cannot return to or recreate the past, they're mostly just stuck with their words and worries.
Baumbach's career has taken many twists and turns and has seen peaks and valleys. He emerged from the home video-market-fueled indie boom of the Sundance era with talky tales like "Kicking and Screaming." He added more unadulterated drama alongside witty wordsmithing in films such as "The Squid and the Whale." Baumbach got a second wind after entering into close collaboration with actress and writer Greta Gerwig on the joyful adult coming-of-age tales "Frances Ha" and "Mistress America." Most recently, he's found a corporate benefactor in Netflix with the streamer willing to bankroll scripts ranging from personal dramas like "Marriage Story" to the daunting Don DeLillo adaptation "White Noise." Oh, and there was the random detour where he made a documentary about movies!
In honor of the writer-director's filmography growing and transforming once more, we size up all of Noah Baumbach's movies from the miserable to the middling to the masterpieces.
12. Margot at the Wedding (2007)
Noah Baumbach's worst film mistakes just how far he can push the bitterness contained within the types of bittersweet films he makes. "Margot at the Wedding" is an acrid, bleak look at miserable characters throwing highly intellectualized barbs at one another like only Baumbach's characters can. As nuptials often do, they douse an already flammable situation between family members with gasoline, as the estranged titular writer ventures out from the city to her sister's wedding on Long Island.
There's nothing inherently wrong with watching a deeply unpleasant film about miserable people fighting. (Who among us doesn't know those types?) But "Margot at the Wedding" just feels acrid and bleak for no other reason than just to wallow in misery. Baumbach's razor-sharp wit is dulled here as the tempo and rhythm of the dialogue feel distinctively disjointed and out of sync. The film aims for something Chekovian but misses the mark.
Many of the issues come down to simple miscasting. Nicole Kidman's Margot is a morose mess, and the actress cannot add any dimensionality to the character because it is just so one-note. Jack Black, as Margot's potential brother-in-law, simply can't rise to the film's dramatic beats while playing against type as an earnest leading man. And while Jennifer Jason Leigh has many talents, Baumbach could not see that his then-wife simply did not have the unadulterated charm and gentility to play the long-suffering sister and foil to Margot.
11. While We're Young (2015)
It's remarkable how quickly "While We're Young" drops off a cliff in terms of quality once Noah Baumbach shows his hand. The movie's premise is fun at the outset: An aging artistic couple, Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts), are settling into their 40s like an ill-fitting glove. At the slightest sign of curiosity from an exciting 20-something couple, Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), they shake off their resignation to a life of diminishing returns and begin experiencing New York like young folks once again. There's humor and heart as Josh and Cornelia throw themselves with reckless abandon into convincing themselves they are not having a midlife crisis ... as Baumbach makes it abundantly clear they very much are.
"While We're Young" takes the posture of exploring generational differences but just wants to dump on millennials' lack of authenticity, especially the charlatans doing a faux bohemianism. Baumbach's curiosity soon reveals its disingenuous bent as Jamie and Darby's true intentions come to light. Unlike the geriatric Gen X rebels, these millennial hipsters are entirely performative and empty in the filmmaker's eyes. Baumbach soon delivers a screed pitched at the frequency of "old man yells at cloud." While he makes it seem like the film wants to hear them for intergenerational dialogue, it quickly becomes clear he just wants to berate a rising threat. It's a film utterly void of grace, empathy, and compassion for anything other than what it can already comprehend.
10. Mr. Jealousy (1997)
Noah Baumbach spins his wheels a bit in "Mr. Jealousy." It's a film that seems both entirely the product of his singular point-of-view and also an artist on autopilot. His sophomore feature does not stray far from his comfort zone of navel-gazing intellectuals, although it is a bit more attached to a conventional forward-moving narrative of romantic and professional drive.
Baumbach finds his avatar in Eric Stoltz's aspiring writer, Lester Grimm, a figure forever oscillating between self-aggrandizement and self-loathing. When Lester realizes his new girlfriend, Ramona (Annabella Sciorra), previously dated another novelist, the accomplished Dashiell Frank (Chris Eigeman), he's plunged into a self-defeating spiral of psychotic behaviors. It starts with following Dashiell to his group therapy sessions and continues with pretending to be a friend of his and trying to do reconnaissance work to learn if there might still be any lingering feelings for Ramona. All the while, he's trying to spin the whole experience into art of his own.
"Mr. Jealousy" does raise some interesting questions about the nature of hero worship and artistic rivalry. When you admire someone so much and envy their success, do you want to become them ... or replace them altogether? Baumbach's urbane script raises some provocative questions, yet it's so quick to hit the next smugly self-satisfied zinger that we don't have time to really mull over them. Still, it's fun enough to watch as a baseline for the Baumbach house style.
9. Greenberg (2010)
"Greenberg" serves as something as a hinge point in Baumbach's filmography. The film still feels very much in the vein of his acidic mid-aughts work, as the misanthropic Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller), is a more reliable source of fatalistic pronouncements than a Woody Allen character. He counters the cliché that youth is wasted on the young by taking it a step further, declaring "life is wasted on people." The film follows this nervous New Yorker as he attempts to just do nothing at his brother's house in Los Angeles, except maybe building a doghouse at most.
But there's something else bubbling up under the surface of the film. In "Greenberg," you can feel Baumbach falling in love with Greta Gerwig before our eyes, and the layers of ice built up around his heart begin to melt in the glow of her radiant smile. Baumbach developed the story with then-wife Jennifer Jason Leigh, who also appears in the film as one of Roger's ex-flames. Yet, it's clear that the filmmaker experiences the pangs of true affection for Gerwig, who plays a family assistant for whom Roger develops feelings.
"Greenberg" works slightly better if you can factor in this meta element. The film itself is just alright but not without its moments of mirth and moroseness. However, Baumbach is at war with himself, and it shows. Caught between his default cynicism and his burgeoning optimism, the film falls somewhere in a mushy and unembraceable middle.
8. De Palma (2016)
When it comes to influences that formed the quick-witted films of Noah Baumbach, the first director to come to mind almost certainly is not New Hollywood provocateur Brian DePalma. While the two directors share a passion for the cinematic arts and a real acuity for assessing the state of the industry, their work has little in common. So it's a bit of a headscratcher why, for his first documentary, Baumbach wanted to spend his time on such a deep dive into an artist whose work seems to have so little bearing on his own.
"DePalma" is an engaging look at how one of the shining stars of American cinema in the '70s cut a unique path through Hollywood. He navigated the studio system with a sense of purpose, embracing and needling the corporate order in equal measure. Baumbach and co-director Jake Paltrow let DePalma tell his own story, and he proves to be a captivating storyteller. The director conjures details about the production of classics like "Carrie," "Scarface," and "Mission: Impossible" like the films wrapped yesterday. DePalma gets candid about the films that fell short in the critical or public eye, explaining his vision while accepting where the execution went wrong.
Perhaps one day, Baumbach will take a big left turn and show us what got him interested in playing in this sandbox, but for now, it just makes little sense within the director's wider filmography.
7. White Noise (2022)
Before "White Noise," Noah Baumbach had never directed an adapted screenplay. And he certainly gave himself a steep learning curve. Don DeLillo's novel has long held a reputation as an unfilmable text with its dense prose and discursive plotting. The film manages to retain the spirit of the book while also shifting onto terrain that's more familiar and fitting for Baumbach.
The film operates with a strong base of satire as it depicts the milieu of Hitler Studies professor Jack Gladney (Adam Driver) as he begins to learn the appeal of accumulating power and mystique in his own right. Along with his exercise instructor wife, Babette (Greta Gerwig), the Gladneys maintain a slightly sneering posture toward those around them. Putting their own lives on such a pedestal becomes their defense mechanism to avoid facing their overwhelming fear of death. Yet, a confrontation with those insecurities becomes unavoidable when a mysterious black plume known as "The Airborne Toxic Event" engulfs their town and uproots their tranquil '80s-era consumerist existence.
When the film's big inciting incident arrives, "White Noise" shifts along with it. Baumbach, flush with cash from Netflix's spendthrift coffers, proves adept at tapping into a Spielbergian sense of adventure as the Gladneys fight for survival. The film does not feel quite as comfortable making that final switch to a more existential yet absurdist drama, but perhaps a postmodern novel adaptation should feel somewhat disjointed. It's a curious swerve for Baumbach that mostly works out in his favor.
6. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)
If ever there was a Baumbach work that cried out for rediscovery, it would be 2017's "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)." The film was among the earliest projects Netflix greenlit, but largely, they buried it on their service. That's a pity given that this is seemingly the kind of messy, marvelous family saga that only a streamer will make nowadays.
The patriarch of the Meyerowitz clan, Dustin Hoffman's Harold, lives with lackadaisical regard for basically anything except his art and ego. While most in Harold's orbit just write this behavior off as who he is, Baumbach's story captures a moment in time when his kids can no longer let their resentments quietly simmer. The rivalry between unemployed Danny Meyerowitz (Adam Sandler) and his buttoned-up financier brother, Matthew (Ben Stiller), becomes impossible to ignore as their father's illness and antics bring out their stilted inner children. All the while, their sturdy and stolid sister, Jean (Elizabeth Marvel), finds that she cannot remain silent on the sidelines as the family's tempest rages, portending a major shift in the Meyerowitz's dynamics.
With a novelist's eye for detail and a playwright's ear for dialogue, Baumbach charts their journey into disarray. The film can be brutally lacerating as its sophisticated characters try to bend reality and their relatives to their will. However, "The Meyerowitz Stories" finds unconventional catharsis by picking at the scabs that develop, recognizing that healing often awaits on the other side of pain.
5. Kicking and Screaming (1995)
Noah Baumbach's first feature does what the best debuts do: announce a new voice with a lot to say and a unique point of view. His "Kicking and Screaming" heralded the vanguard of the rising Generation X with their talky, solipsistic sagas of self-involvement. It's the perfect embodiment of an overeducated cohort insulated from tragedy and hardship, with no place to look but inward.
Baumbach's quick-witted comedy follows a group of recent college graduates figuring out how to walk on their own two feet after stepping off the academic treadmill. There's a lot of circular conversation, which is the point of the exercise. A gang of guys dull themselves to the reality of life after school by moving in together in their university town and engaging in the same scholastic shenanigans and intellectual debates as before.
Though they might think they have avoided becoming like Eric Stoltz's Chet, who becomes a punchline for his inability to leave college behind after a decade, they remain in the same state of arrested development — and Baumbach gets in many a laugh at how pathetic their pretentious preening sounds. Even at 96 minutes, however, "Kicking and Screaming" does end up belaboring the self-aware mockery quite a bit. Yet, there are more than enough classic quotes to make each minute memorable such as Josh Hamilton's Grover, insisting "Oh, I've been to Prague" only to immediately have to clarify "Well, I haven't been to Prague been to Prague."
4. The Squid and the Whale (2005)
Noah Baumbach gets deeply personal with "The Squid and the Whale," a tale of his parents' divorce in 1980s Brooklyn. The film feels as raw as an open wound still festering. Battle lines form quickly as Baumbach's avatar, the precocious and slightly pretentious Walt Berkman (Jesse Eisenberg), sides with their professorial father Bernard (Jeff Daniels). His younger brother, Frank (Owen Kline), meanwhile, gravitates towards their more sensitive mother, Joan (Laura Linney). Joint custody gets complicated quickly when their parents introduce new partners into the mix, aggravating an already sensitive situation and leading everyone to lash out from pain and hurt.
Baumbach captures divorce from the only perspective he knew at the time: that of the children, who experience a shock so seismic it could register on the Richter scale. He factors in this limited perspective, knowing what he does not — and cannot — know, only experiencing divorce as collateral damage. He makes this myopia work for him in "The Squid and the Whale," as the entire film becomes about that very pettiness. Every member of the Berkman clan cannot understand the other members of the family as people in their own right, instead reducing them to supporting characters in a story in which they are the protagonists. This leads to many a pithy exchange of dialogue that leads to laughs and lacerations in equal measure. Baumbach knows that no one can hurt you like family because they know you and they are you.
3. Frances Ha (2013)
For all the Gen X griping one might associate with Noah Baumbach's work, it seems quite likely that his longest-lasting impact on cinema could be a celebration and commiseration of millennial malaise. Baumbach's "Frances Ha," the first of many projects made in explicit, behind-the-camera collaboration with star Greta Gerwig, is the definitive coming-of-age tale for a generation defined by their prolonged adolescence. The misadventures of Frances Halladay, a 27-year-old choreographer barely scraping by in New York, provide a timeless look at the painful process of feeling torn between youthfulness and adulthood.
With Gerwig's influence as co-writer, there's more than just self-defeating flagellation by the film's overconfident 20-somethings. "Frances Ha" looks at its protagonist's struggles to find her place in the world as not just a phase to be enjoyed and not just endured. The character's triumph lies not in achieving her dreams in dance but rather in learning that her strivings to continue her artistic pursuits are something for which she's willing to endure pain and uncertainty.
Baumbach's filmmaking enhances the journey toward self-actualization by framing Frances' travails as something from a French New Wave comedy, further placing her as a figure out of time and place. Gerwig, too, nails the tricky task of creating a character who is endearing rather than excruciating in her meandering. "Frances Ha" bottles up the essence of being in the thick of one's late 20s by capturing the good and the bad in its swirling elixir of intoxicating possibilities and infuriating problems.
2. Marriage Story (2019)
Divorce gets the sensitive, soulful treatment it deserves in "Marriage Story." Baumbach begins at the tail-end of the marriage between Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), framing all their acrimony through a couples' therapy exercise in which the spouses must list what they love about one another. Any sense of liberation the couple feels from ending the partnership always comes back to the intimate tragedy of a beautiful bond broken and lost. In Baumbach's unease, he grapples with the contradictions inherent in the institution of marriage. Can two ever really become one?
"Marriage Story" captures all the hidden economic and psychological costs of litigation and the custody battle over their son Henry in scintillating, specific detail. While the judicial process attempts to remove emotion from the proceedings, no untangling of a personal union can take humanity entirely out of the picture. Charlie and Nicole get messy with their baggage outside of court, especially in the film's centerpiece scene, which has been reduced to a meme, yet is ultimately a multilayered exploration of their morass of feelings. The film is remarkably even-handed to both parties as they discover not a bottomless pit of hate but a startlingly renewable source of affection. The real tragedy of "Marriage Story" is not that Charlie and Nicole shouldn't have been but rather that they could have been. The love is there in their relationship, but the timing was not, as Baumbach teases out in subtly evocative visual motifs.
1. Mistress America (2015)
Admittedly, giving "Mistress America" the top ranking is some advocacy journalism. Noah Baumbach's reteaming with Greta Gerwig following the breakout success of their collaboration "Frances Ha" did not receive nearly the same critical mass or audience adoration. Yet, the film shines brightly because it builds on those successes without resting on its laurels.
The duo's follow-up stands as a testament to their unique perspectives on youth, with Gerwig just beginning to exit it and Baumbach standing from a distance far enough away to approach it critically. They stand both within and without the experiences they depict, as eager college freshman Tracy (Lola Kirke) sees her best days on the horizon. At the same time, the delightfully delusional Brooke (Gerwig) must face the music. Perhaps her most carefree days are behind her. "Mistress America" does not trumpet the differences between the two characters, who get to know one another in New York ahead of their parents' impending nuptials, instead letting their perspectives and experiences reveal themselves through various failures and fumbles.
This a more mature and ambitious work than "Frances Ha." The emerging differences between Tracy and Brooke come to a head in the most complex scene Baumbach has ever executed. A vortex of resentment quickly spirals out of control, enveloping countless characters into what becomes an uproarious cinematic translation of classic theatrical farce. It's wild, wince-worthy, warm, and witty. In other words, it's the whole Noah Baumbach experience wrapped up in a single sequence.