Psycho. #4

In this week's letter, Caspar is forced to comment on films which, for the most part, he really would rather not think about again

Am I stupid for thinking Noah Baumbach is one of the worst directors alive

Stupid, no; perhaps a little extreme, but there’s nothing wrong with that. In Baumbach’s defence — because I think he has become a quite dreadful, plodding, conceited Director with a capital D — I think he at least appreciates cinema as an art form, believes in it, and sets out to do something with every film. The worst directors, for me, are all the hangers-on, the execs, the money-men, the people who dream of getting a Netflix pilot after their first indie makes a name for them at South By. Baumbach is now dreary, patronising and leaden, but in a world where so few actors and directors stand up for independent cinema, he does at least stand for a certain way of making films. 

(Apart from his co-writer credit on Barbie, a truly monstrous product that sold filmmaking artistry and all of Baumbach’s influences down the river for the sake of advertising a blonde doll for a huge multinational! (One fun aspect of the last awards season was watching Baumbach’s inner spirit die a little bit with every further appearance or win at an awards ceremony on the basis of his work on this cash-grab gig. I truly feel that by the time the Oscars came around, you could see the last of his soul rise out of his ears and fly off towards New York, there to haunt somebody reading Saul Bellow by the boating lake in Central Park))