The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, September 16, 2015 — 5A

‘America’ paints
millenial portrait

Strongest work yet
from Baumbach

and Gerwig

By VANESSA WONG

Daily Arts Writer

As students and future success-

ful people, we all see college as a
time to be unique, but most often
we emulate peo-
ple we admire
to develop our
own identities.
In
“Mistress

America,”
the

hilariously well-
scripted second
collaboration
between Noah
Baumbach
(“Kicking and Screaming”) and
Greta Gerwig (“Frances Ha”), a
lonely college freshman finds her
role model in an older sister figure.

Though initially reluctant to

involve herself in her mother’s
impending marriage, Tracy (Lola
Kirke, “Gone Girl”) meets her
soon-to-be
stepsister,
Brooke

(Greta Gerwig). Whereas Tracy is
the archetype of precocious-but-
naïve-Faulkner-name-dropping
English major, Brooke, 10 years
older, trailblazes the path to the
yuppie paradise that lies in Tra-
cy’s future. Brooke crackles with
hyperactivity energy, hurling out
neatly-packaged Twitticisms and
drunken life anecdotes with dead-
pan timing that would make Lore-

lai Gilmore bow at her feet. She’s
essentially the Manic Pixie Dream
Girl grown up. In between teach-
ing Soul Cycle sessions and sing-
ing on stage with a band, Brooke
dreams up plans for a restaurant-
slash-market-slash
community

center that also moonlights as a
yoga center on Tuesdays, and if
that doesn’t work out, she has this
amazing TV show idea, and oh,
there’s this really rich guy from
high school who is totally still in
love with her, ya know?

Tracy doesn’t actually know,

but she eagerly jumps into
Brooke’s life with infatuated
admiration. She finds Brooke so
compelling that she writes a story
about her and takes every chance
she can get to stay overnight at
Brooke’s fancy apartment and
tag along to concerts and busi-
ness meetings galore. Eventu-
ally, Tracy helps Brooke turn her
restaurant idea into reality, and
in true Brooke-fashion, it’s an
eccentric adventure.

The characters are parodies

and real people all at the same
time,
masterfully
assembled.

They’re not forced out of their
stereotypes unnaturally, à la
High School Musical’s “Stick
to the Status Quo” (“I bake!”),
which lacks subtlety and, to some
extent, realism. Though Tracy
idolizes Brooke’s charisma and
supports her almost uncondition-
ally, she recognizes that Brooke
can’t go through her whole adult
life bearing this youthful ban-
ner. Even the supposed enemy

in the film, Brooke’s high school
nemesis whose life is the picture
perfect image of “boring” white
picket fence type success, adds
a much-needed dose of real-
ity to Brooke’s erratic antics.
Refreshingly,
neither
Brooke

nor Tracy eradicates her flaws
over the course of the film, but
rather learn to recognize them
and accept them regardless. The
film doesn’t tie everything up in a
bow; the characters end as works
in progress. It feels almost sweet-
er this way, that they receive a
happy resolution but don’t have
to be perfect or end a life chapter
to do it.

In the final scene, which cou-

ples heartwarming sisterly love
with Tracy’s overwrought prose
for one last joke, I didn’t feel the
buoyant warm and fuzzies I’ve
come to associate with Baum-
bach/Gerwig
collaborations.

There is actually quite a bit of
character depth, but the script is
so self-aware (and aware that it’s
self-aware) that the satire often
overwhelms emotion.

Still, the script is witty

enough to hold its ground.
Before “Mistress America” hit
the scene, “Frances Ha” was
arguably Baumbach and Ger-
wig’s best work to date, both as
individuals and collaborators.
But now, the duo takes all the
razor-sharp wit that they’ve
previously been known for and
amps it up for a delightful romp
through a developing sisterly
relationship.

SONY PICTURES

“Oooo being midly wealthy is so niceeee.”

A-

Mistress
America

Sony Pictures

State Theater

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

“What the fuck grandma?!?!”
‘The Visit’ not as bad
as one might expect

By BENJAMIN ROSENSTOCK

Daily Arts Writer

Many horror movies, like

“Paranormal
Activity”
and

this year’s “The Gift,” follow
the same for-
mula.
The

protagonists
first
encoun-

ter
some-

thing slightly
unusual
and

brush it off.
With
each

passing
day,

stranger
things begin to happen, and
it becomes impossible to dis-
miss the series of events. By the
last act, the film has built up a
steady growth of subtle threats
until a climax of violence and
general insanity.

“The Visit,” the newest hor-

ror movie written and directed
by M. Night Shyamalan (“The
Sixth Sense”), sticks to this
common
schematic,
bearing

resemblance to “Paranormal
Activity” both with its found
footage style and its method
of
juxtaposing
eerie
night-

time shots and bright morning
scenes. In “Paranormal Activ-
ity,” morning scenes allowed
the viewer to breathe a sigh of
relief after the high tension of
the night. In “The Visit,” unfor-
tunately, each morning signals
another tedious wait until the
next burst of plot movement.
While the thrills of “Paranor-
mal Activity” were enough to
inspire dread for the next night,
the thrills of “The Visit” spark
little suspense.

The film follows young ama-

teur filmmaker Becca (Olivia
DeJonge, “Hiding”) and her
obnoxious little brother Tyler
(Ed Oxenbould, “Alexander and
the Terrible, Horrible, No Good,
Very Bad Day”) as they spend a
week with their grandparents.
Becca and Tyler’s mother, Paula
(Kathryn
Hahn,
“Transpar-

ent”), had a falling out with her
parents after a fight years ago.

Becca, filming the visit docu-
mentary-style, hopes to find an
“elixir” — some sign of forgive-
ness that will lead Paula to rec-
oncile with her parents.

The emotional crux of the

film rests on Becca and Tyler’s
attempts to help their mother,
all the while agonizing over
the father who left them years
ago. In the middle of the film,
the horror element is dropped
almost entirely in favor of a
sequence
where
Becca
and

Tyler conduct talking head
interviews with each other.
Tyler, after spending most of
the movie cracking wise jokes
and rapping terribly, bashfully
admits he feels responsible for
their father’s abandonment. In
Becca’s interview, Tyler calls
her out for an insecurity she
has never mentioned. It’s a pair
of scenes that carries a surpris-
ing amount of emotional heft,
and in a sea of talentless child
actors, DeJonge and Oxenbould
create a sibling relationship
that feels authentic.

Unfortunately,
the
osten-

sible primary plot of the movie,
involving
Becca’s
quest
for

the “elixir,” is more of a glo-
rified subplot in service of a
fairly by-the-numbers horror
story. In between cheap jump
scares, there aren’t many gen-
uine thrills to go around. For
most of the movie, Shyamalan
makes the interesting choice to
ground most of the grandpar-
ents’ creepy moments in prob-
lems many elderly people run
into instead of demonic malevo-
lence. Nana (Deanna Dunagan,
“August: Osage County”) stum-
bles around the house in the

middle of the night in confusion,
showing symptoms of demen-
tia. Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie,
“Lincoln”) has a stash of soiled
diapers hidden away as a result
of his incontinence. There is
an element of creepiness to the
sight of Nana projectile vomit-
ing in the middle of the night
and the shot of Pop Pop stick-
ing a gun into his own mouth,
but it rarely feels dangerous. If
the problem is simply that these
people are getting old and con-
fused, what physical threat do
they actually pose?

Luckily, there’s a Shyama-

lan twist waiting to kick off the
third act that shows the true
danger of the scenario, and once
it’s revealed, the film finally
kicks it into high gear, descend-
ing into all-out lunacy. Finally,
the elements of dark humor
that the beginning of the movie
hinted at come out in full force.
In one inspired scene, Becca
and Tyler sit and nervously play
a game of Yahtzee with their
grandparents, and there’s no
pretending that it’s just a normal
family game night. It’s a marvel-
ous scene, both hilarious and
tense, and every scene thereaf-
ter combines those conflicting
tones brilliantly.

There’s a time and place for

atmosphere and slow build-
ups, but “The Visit” shows that,
like action, horror can often be
at its most fun when the story
stops stalling and the filmmak-
ers start having fun. The film
ends on a solid note, but it’s dif-
ficult not to wish less time was
spent on “old people problems”
and more on the true horror
beneath the surface.

B-

The Visit

Universal
Pictures

Rave and Quality 16

A classic

Shyamalan

twist.

MUSIC NOTEBOOK
Five songs I should
have heard before

By RACHEL KERR

Daily Arts Writer

I’d like to think I’m pretty


“with it” when it comes to music;
I frequently check blogs, skim
through Reddit, scour the Inter-
net for leaks, etc. But, sometimes
stuff slips through the cracks
and doesn’t reveal itself until my
friend is giving me shit because,
how have you not heard about
this band/artist/song? Once the
embarrassment
subsides
and

the how the fuck did I miss this?
moment passes, you probably have
some pretty good tracks to catch
up on, like I did with these.

“Baby”– Ariel Pink’s Haunt-

ed Graffiti

Ariel Pink’s dreamy 2012 cover

of Joe and Donnie Emerson’s
“Baby” popped up on a friend’s
Spotify playlist earlier this sum-
mer, and I’ve since described it as
the “perfect song.” It’s warm but
cloudy, mysterious but satisfying,
contemporary but nostalgic. And
Pink’s sultry vocals take the track
to new heights, hit-single wise and
new-depths, heart wise.

“Codeine Crazy”– Future
Sorry, but I had to throw this

one on here because I have half
ironically, half un-ironically been
calling “Codeine Crazy” the best
song of 2015, even though it tech-
nically dropped almost a year ago
on Future’s 2014 mixtape, Mon-
ster. What works about the track
is it’s versatility — it can be both a
banger and a ballad. Never before
have I heard the phrase “I just took

a bitch to eat at Chipotle” sound so
sentimental.

“Gardenhead / Leave Me

Alone”– Neutral Milk Hotel
Most Neutral Milk Hotel fans,

when prompted, will rave about
their 1998 album In the Aeroplane
Over The Sea. It’s deeply loved by
indie fans and indie critics alike;
Pitchfork gave it a perfect 10/10 –
not to say Pitchfork is the ultimate
authority, but hey, it still means
something. Fans of the group are
much less familiar with On Avery
Island, the album that preceded
their magnum opus. However, this
track hinted at the gold Neutral
Milk Hotel would soon strike, at
the potential they were about to
unlock.

“In Dreams”– tomemisu

I found this gem hidden at the

end of an episode of the web series
“High Maintenance” (thank God

I always watch the credits) and I
haven’t been the same since. When
almost every verse begins with
“when I look around my heart …
” it’s impossible not to get senti-
mental. Its bedroom-y feel is only
accentuated by the low-quality
recording, in which you even hear
a chime from the artists cell phone
if you listen close enough. Talk
about intimate.

“Beach Community”– Joyce

Manor

I don’t know what I was doing

in 2011, but I know what I should
have been doing in 2011: listen-
ing to more Joyce Manor. I heard
their self-titled LP in high school
but never really gave it more than
a listen or two. Maybe I’m angstier
than I was at 16, but this shit really
resonates with me now. The post-
punk ballad is loud and angry and
that’s just how I like it.

EPIC RECORDS

#FutureHive.

The thrills of

‘The Visit’ spark
little suspense.

FILM REVIEW
FILM REVIEW