POSITIVES:
1) The four central performances - Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Ray Liotta and Laura Dern - are all really amazing. Dern was the only one that won the Oscar but all four of them would have been very worthy 2) Noah Baumbach does a really great job with the writing and the direction. There are lots of long dialogue scenes with very infrequent cuts and a lesser filmmaker would've made this become boring but Baumbach keeps it so engaging throughout the entire runtime 3) The film is so emotional and really feels like it earns the emotional reaction that it makes you have. I had tears in my eyes by the end and I felt like the film had earned that reaction from me by being so great and so real throughout
NEGATIVES:
1) This may sound harsh, but I did find the child actor playing Henry to be pretty poor. Henry comes across as very whiny and annoying and it kinda irritated me whenever he was prominent in a scene 2) I don't think the film needs to be as long as it is. A tighter runtime of under two hours would've prevented any hint of drag, which the film did occasionally have.
1) The four central performances - Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Ray Liotta and Laura Dern - are all really amazing. Dern was the only one that won the Oscar but all four of them would have been very worthy 2) Noah Baumbach does a really great job with the writing and the direction. There are lots of long dialogue scenes with very infrequent cuts and a lesser filmmaker would've made this become boring but Baumbach keeps it so engaging throughout the entire runtime 3) The film is so emotional and really feels like it earns the emotional reaction that it makes you have. I had tears in my eyes by the end and I felt like the film had earned that reaction from me by being so great and so real throughout
NEGATIVES:
1) This may sound harsh, but I did find the child actor playing Henry to be pretty poor. Henry comes across as very whiny and annoying and it kinda irritated me whenever he was prominent in a scene 2) I don't think the film needs to be as long as it is. A tighter runtime of under two hours would've prevented any hint of drag, which the film did occasionally have.