Review of IGBY GOES DOWN

[Chris Knipp]

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Early-release still from Damsels in Distress

DAMSELS IN DISTRESS.
Little since Gary Winnick's Tadpole and Burr Steers's Igby Goes Down, both from 2002, has anything quite come close to equaling the wit of Whit Stilolman, whose Metropolitan, Barcelona, and Last Days of Disco (1990, 1994, 1995) were some of the brightest American movies of the Nineties. Now finally after a thirteen-year absence from the big screen Stillman has a new feature to be released this year. It is called Damsels in Distress. It features Greta Gerwig and Adam Brody. A Whit Stillman website gives further information about the movie, which is to be released by Sony Classics.

KICKING AND SCREAMING.
Note: I just caught up on Noah Baumbach's quite Stillman-esque debut feature, Kicking and Screaming (1995), whose gifted cast includes Parker Posey, Elliot Gould, Stillman mouthpiece Chris Eigeman and other charmers I didn't know about such as Josh Hamilton (in the lead role as Bonner, Eliot Gould's son) and Olivia d'Abo. Eric Stolz appears as the cool unambitious bartender, and this was about the same time he played the drug dealer in Pulp Fiction. I've just come across Jonathan Rosenbaum's essay on Kicking and Screaming (a movie he had warmly if briefly endorsed in the Chicago Reader on its release) for the Criterion Collection reissue. If you have Netflix you can Instant Play this film off their website.