Greenberg

Greenberg (2010) is Noah Baumbach's prickly character study, and you can watch online on iFILM. Ben Stiller plays Roger Greenberg, a forty-year-old carpenter fresh out of a psychiatric hospital who flies from New York to Los Angeles to house-sit for his more successful brother. His plan is to do absolutely nothing.

A former almost-musician, Roger fires off cranky complaint letters to airlines and pet stores, picks fights with old bandmates, and refuses to drive. The one person who sees something in him is Florence (Greta Gerwig), his brother's assistant, a drifting soul as adrift as he is. What grows between two people who keep sabotaging themselves is awkward, tentative and real.

Baumbach builds a portrait of a man trapped inside his own resentments, and Gerwig essentially announced herself here as the face of American mumblecore moving uptown. James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem wrote the score. Be warned: the humor is barbed and Roger is hard to like, which is exactly the point. Stream Greenberg (2010) online on iFILM.