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The End of the Tour (2015)
James Ponsoldt, Donald Margulies and Jason Segel knock it out of the park
The End of the Tour is a biographical film about the late David Foster Wallace which is directed by James Ponsoldt, written by Donald Margulies and stars Jesse Eisenberg and Jason Segel. Watching this film being born in the early 21st century I had no prior knowledge to the works of David Foster Wallace and now that I have seen the film I believe that I understand more than just his life story but his outlook on himself and his life which I find is quite unique in the biographical movie genre. What makes this film standout from most biographical movies is it screenplay by Donald Margulies as instead of telling Foster's story using events in his life like on a Wikipedia page he chooses the bolder route of slowly telling you about his motivations through conversations between the two leads, these conversations that make up the film (as there isn't a truly clear narrative) are what made the movie as good as it is, as there organic nature makes the audience feel as if they are sitting down next to them making the characters both more realistic and likable. Prior to this film I would have never thought that Jason Segel would have had the acting ability to play a highly intelligent yet broken person like David Foster Wallace and in fact I chose not to watch the film with my sister expecting it to be a road trip comedy with the raunchiness of one of his previous films forgetting Sarah Marshall, but while watching this film I was both amazed and surprised by how well Jason Segel pulled of a character who was so different to anything he had every done before, in fact I would say that the only comedic actors to do a serious performance to that level would be Jonah Hill in Moneyball and Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. Starring next Jason Segel is Jesse Eisenberg playing the rolling stone reporter David Lipsky; he also gives a great performance reminiscent to my favorite performance of his in The Social Network capturing the Ambitions in depth just enough to service the story. But the finest acting element was the fact that both actors had great chemistry making spending time with their characters engaging. On top of the acting and the screenplay the movie also standouts through the directing by James Ponsoldt. Unlike the acting and the screenplay the directing doesn't pop out of the screen and for some viewers that will be seen as a flaw but it actually suits the story as a stylistic approach to this film would have tarnished the realistic themes. The approach of the directing is to make you feel as if you're not inside one of the characters head but more a person sitting down and having a conversation with them and it is pulled off to a tremendous effect with James Ponsoldt using subtle camera angles and few tracking shots. In review I found the movie a breath of fresh air from the over saturated biographical movie genre and is a great film if you're either a fan of David Foster Wallace or just like intellectual character studies. I would recommend watching this film while wide awake as the film has an abundance of important snappy dialogue that is easy to miss.