SUBMARINE

Written and Directed by Richard Ayoade

Starring Craig Roberts, Sally Hawkins and Paddy Considine

Oliver Tate: I live in a large house with my parents. It has breathtaking scenery. I’m not sure I believe in scenery.

The adolescent mind can sure be a dramatic one and that intensity is played up to hilarious heights in Richard Ayoade’s narrative feature film debut, SUBMARINE. The mind that we are given unadulterated access to belongs to one Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts), a 15-year old only boy obsessed with but two things - a girl in his class (naturally) and preventing the dissolution of his parents’ marriage. It his belief that these fascinations and the way he deals with them would make a great film and despite this blatant narcissism, he is actually spot on about that.

Oliver is an unassuming chap. When he speaks, he can barely form a proper sentence without tripping over nearly every word. He watches the people around him while hiding behind corners, all the while fearful that if he doesn’t intervene, they won’t get it right. That said, he rarely speaks up because he does not yet know his own voice, or more specifically, he has not yet learned how to make that voice heard by others. In his own head however, his world is the center of all worlds, typical of most teenagers and sadly, fairly typical of most adults I know as well. And while his problems are hardly unique, it is the way in which Oliver tells his own story that gives them all the importance required to make them seem monumental. 20-year-old, Roberts, is brilliant as Oliver, making him the most memorable angsty  adolescent on film since Jason Schwartzman’s Max Fischer in Wes Anderson’s RUSHMORE.

The actual man behind Oliver’s movie in his mind is Ayoade and the choices he makes in SUBMARINE are inspired and incredibly clever. By constantly drawing attention to the filmmaking process - calling out his shots before they happen, pointing out conventional approaches to storytelling and then carrying out those exact same approaches - Ayoade demonstrates a fine understanding of film language and great ability to make memorable moments. Once you dive in to SUBMARINE, you will not want to surface again.

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GREENBERG

Written and Directed by Noah Baumbach
Starring Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans and Jennifer Jason Leigh

Florence: Hurt people hurt people.

Noah Baumbach, the Oscar-nominated writer and director of THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, has a knack for creating characters that are troubled and difficult to be around. His fascination with giving a voice to those no one wants to hear, shows his immense sympathy as a writer and director, but it also means that his characters are not easy to endure for two hours straight. In his latest film, GREENBERG, he gives us another gem of a man – complicated, broken and the kind you would desperately avoid if you could.

Ben Stiller is this man, one Roger Greenberg. Fresh from his time in a mental hospital for a nervous breakdown, Greenberg has left the comforts of New York City to do nothing for a while at his brother’s place in Los Angeles. While in the city, he meets up with buddies and ex-girlfriends from his rock star youth days but not because he wants to. He does so because it is a lot easier than forming any new relationships in his life. The supporting cast - Rhys Ifans and Jennifer Jason Leigh representing the old and Greta Gerwig charmingly representing the new - struggle too but the way they handle themselves only further shows how little dealing Greenerg is actually doing. Still that naïve, failed rocker, he has not progressed past his glory days and he is quickly realizing that they weren’t so glorious to begin with.

Stiller doesn’t have to try very hard to be unlikable but he still does the depth of Greenberg’s sorrow justice all the same. Successfully capturing a character that is so narcissistic and oblivious not an easy feat. The more successful you are though, the more you run the risk of alienating everyone watching. You want to like Greenberg; you can tell the people around him want to like him; but until he actually considers liking himself, there isn’t a lot to like about him. Fortunately for him, at least Baumbach still has his back, and fortunately for us, Baumbach still has ours too.

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