<\/p>\n
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.<\/a><\/p>\n Noah Baumbach loves to find sympathy in unsympathetic subjects\u2014the awkward title character of Greenberg<\/em>, the caustic writer played by Nicole Kidman in Margot at the Wedding<\/em>, the bitter divorced couple of Marriage Story<\/em><\/a>. But he\u2019s usually done it by mixing in plenty of bitter with just a touch of sweet. For his new movie, Jay Kelly<\/em>, that formula is reversed in service of another character who might struggle to earn the viewer\u2019s pity: a bored, aging movie star worried that he\u2019s lived life the wrong way. It\u2019s hard to know why anyone should feel a pang of understanding for Jay Kelly (played by George Clooney), but Baumbach relishes the challenge.<\/p>\n Jay Kelly <\/em>is Baumbach\u2019s fourth movie in a row that will be released to Netflix, with a short theatrical release. In his collaboration with the streaming studio, his scope has widened far beyond the small-scale indie dramedies that began his career\u2014acerbic triumphs such as Kicking and Screaming<\/em>, The Squid and the Whale<\/em>, and Mr. Jealousy<\/em>. His last work was a fascinating, flawed, staggeringly ambitious adaptation of Don DeLillo\u2019s White Noise<\/em><\/a>; with Jay Kelly<\/em>, he\u2019s charting a gentler, more familiar path, in terms of plot and setting.<\/p>\n Another director might have had a hard time getting audiences to care about the prosaic concerns of this beloved millionaire, but Baumbach, in casting Clooney, chose a star who himself has seemed a little lost at sea<\/a>. After spending years mostly directing his own projects, usually to middling reviews, Clooney has recently turned in a couple of performances that felt like pale facsimiles of former glories, in the rom-com Ticket to Paradise <\/em>and the action-thriller Wolfs<\/em>. Both whiffs only further reminded me what a top-tier star Clooney used <\/em>to be, and these staid recent efforts help meta-textually burnish Jay Kelly<\/em>\u2019s initial setup. The film is about an actor, still well known and ostensibly successful, who feels dissatisfied with his creative choices and disconnected from the people around him. When an old mentor dies, at the funeral Jay runs into Timothy (Billy Crudup), a friend from his early days as an actor. Their reminiscing quickly turns sour, sending Jay into an emotional tailspin, and he impulsively flies to Italy rather than make his next movie.<\/p>\n