60

Enjoyed myself in spite of my better judgment. I don't necessarily blame the DeLillo heads for getting all worked up over this. Having just finished the novel myself (which is *great*), I don't have the same level of long-term preciousness over the text, but some (OK, a lot) of this movie is awkward and flat-out untranslatable. Noah Baumbach clearly cares about the source material and yet fondness and appreciation often just isn't enough to push an adaptation to the finish line. With all that is excised and re-configured, you'd think that White Noise would be dead in the water, but Baumbach does do something right in translating the consistently variable tone into genre-modes of eco-thriller and paranoiac noir. There's a lot of sturdy blockbuster craft here that is exciting to see from a filmmaker who is usually lost in a sea of art galleries and New York apartments. The central 'toxic airborne event' sequence is DeLillo's language paced to the rhythm of Jurassic Park and Close Encounters. Still shocked that this ended up being made in the first place.