Ingrid Goes West Review. The world of social media and celebrity culture is, of course, ripe and ready for satirical exploration, and writer/director Matt Spicer’s Ingrid Goes West plunges headlong into it with darkly humorous if uneven results. Aubrey Plaza gives one of her now trademark performances - - caustic, solicitous and unbalanced - - as Ingrid Thorburn, whom mental illness and an unfortunate confrontation at a wedding has sent into a downward spiral that ends with her spending time away from the world for a while. When she emerges, however, she’s got a bit of an inheritance and a supposedly fresh start ahead of her. But she’s also got a phone, and it isn’t long before she begins obsessing about Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), a social “influencer” whose job is to promote products on Instagram and whose seemingly idyllic life in Los Angeles becomes front and center of Ingrid’s daily social media diet. And it isn’t long before Ingrid pulls up stakes and decides to head to L. A. It isn’t long, however, before cracks begin to appear in the fantasy life she’s managed to will into being - - especially with the arrival of Taylor’s ne’er- do- well brother Nicky (Billy Magnussen).
Movie Reviews, previews, trailers and photos for past, present and upcoming movies. Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen star in Ingrid Goes West, a darkly funny take on celebrity culture.
And that’s not good at all for Ingrid. Spicer makes his directorial debut here, and while he exudes confidence and clarity in that role, his biggest problem is one of tone. But that may also be a result of his script and its biggest flaw: Ingrid is positioned early on as a woman who struggles with mental issues, which the movie trivializes at first in pursuit of its larger objectives. When those issues surface again later in the film, driving it in a darker direction, it clashes with the humorous nature of the movie’s earlier portions and never quite recovers, especially in the unsatisfying (and somewhat predictable) ending. The filmmaker may settle for only skirting the edge of a much darker kind of humor, but luckily he’s bailed out by his cast.
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Plaza proves why she is one of our most watchable comic actresses right now, exuding a mix of anger, sarcasm and playfulness that makes Ingrid empathetic even when part of you wants to tear your eyes away. Olsen is also note- perfect as Taylor, whose own carefully constructed fa. Jackson and Russell also give nuanced, grounded performances, with the former and his Batman obsession providing some gentle relief from the more insane goings- on and the latter in particular exuding disgust at the culture around him but resigned to sticking it out. Ingrid Goes West is dead- on in its portrayal of how the madness of social media can easily consume our lives and relationships, and also how people create idealized versions of themselves for public consumption.
Directed by Matt Spicer. With Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Wyatt Russell. An unhinged social media stalker moves to LA and insinuates herself. More wearying than frightening, Rings is a total non-starter. It director may take on Dracula prequel. Next Bond to be "Taken" esque? Kylo Ren isn't Vader "yet" in Last Jedi. New look at pre-Punisher in Netflix show. When we first meet Ingrid (Aubrey Plaza), she is in the process of crashing a wedding and spraying Mace in the bride's face as retaliation for not being invited. Read IGN's expert reviews of the latest movies.
Had it gone all the way with those ideas instead of teetering on the edge of becoming a horror movie, it might work better (a recent Black Mirror episode starring Bryce Dallas Howard featured some of the same concerns). There’s still fun to be had here at the expense of our current culture, but the great film about what these so- called tools are doing to us has yet to be made. Buy Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015) Movie Online. Ingrid Goes West is in theaters on Friday, August 1. Read and download the full Den of Geek Special Edition magazine here!
Ingrid Goes West Movie Review (2. There's a popular website devoted entirely to the .
Everyone knows these feeds are fake, or at least . Every so often, one of these celebs . Watch Free Movies Online Equals (2016). Schadenfreude is ugly but inevitable. The film is very smart, most of all because it resists the urge to devolve into a sentimental redemption narrative. This is a daring comedy with a very sharp bite.
Advertisement. When we first meet Ingrid (Aubrey Plaza), she is in the process of crashing a wedding and spraying Mace in the bride's face as retaliation for not being invited. A little bit later we learn that the two women weren't even friends. Ingrid was just obsessed with this woman's Instagram feed, and felt they had a personal connection. A short time in a psych ward follows. Upon Ingrid's release, she falls back into the old pattern. Life is not worth living without an object of desire. A woman's magazine profiles an Instagram celeb named .
Taylor's Instagram feed (which you can check out here) is a hypnotic onslaught of sunlight, happiness, laughter. Ingrid, using the money she inherited from her recently deceased mother, moves to California to seek out her new best friend.
Ingrid sets herself up in Taylor's neighborhood, renting an apartment from an aspiring screenwriter and Batman obsessive named Dan (O'Shea Jackson Jr.). He looks at this awkward girl - who pays her rent in cash, who has a dark cloud over her head - with humor, curiosity, and a healthy dose of skepticism. Maybe it takes an obsessive to recognize a kindred spirit obsessive. Finally, she kidnaps Taylor's famous dog so that she can then . Taylor and her husband Ezra (of course that's his name) are so grateful they invite Ingrid to stay for dinner. Ezra, complete with manbun, is played by Wyatt Russell.
Almost immediately, you can sense that all is not so perfect in the world of Taylor Sloane (Olsen and Russell are terrific), but Ingrid is blind to the signs. While you may know where all of this is going, . Much of the laughter comes from a queasy recognition of online behavior, stuff we all do. Personality becomes completely performative.) The film calls to mind ? How do you develop a personality out of a void? If the whole world is a mirror, then how do you develop a self in the first place? One thinks of Alain Delon as Tom Ripley in .
That's not narcissism, not exactly. It's a dangerous merging, an attempt at emotional co- option. She is a compulsive co- opter. She doesn't yearn for meaning.
All that exists for her are her needs. You watch in horror as she makes one embarrassing choice after another. Plaza's understanding of the character's inner abyss is extraordinary, as is her understanding that the character couldn't stop even if she wanted to. Ingrid is an empty and damaged woman, grasping desperately for the totally inane and phony surfaces filling up Taylor's Instagram feed. Other actors might plead for our sympathy, or try to .
Plaza doesn't. She lets the blankness stay put, lets it fill up with echoes and reflections. Plaza's real gift is in making Ingrid both hilarious and tragic. She doesn't pull her punches. It's part performance, part social commentary.
O'Shea Jackson, Jr., (who played his father Ice Cube, beautifully, in . Ingrid is sometimes like a petulant child, angry that her friend won't play the make- believe games she wants to play. Jackson brings an improvisational energy to his scenes, a sense that he is always thinking more than he is saying. Ingrid takes advantage of him. He lets some of it slide, he calls her on some of it. Ingrid is too caught up in her fantasy to perceive that there's some old- fashioned romantic chemistry with this guy. The film lampoons stuff that didn't even exist 1.
If everything is public, then where is the Self? Is turning yourself into a ? If you don't take a picture of it and - crucially - share it with the world, did it really happen?