Crimestick, don't bother with before the Devil Knows You're Dead. I love Sidney Lumet but I thought it was unwatchable. I did like Margot at the Wedding, though, but not as much as the Squid and the Whale.
A big problem I had with
Margot is that it just felt like too much of a retread of what
Squid was. Hell, Margot and her husband were both writers, just like Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels. Also, there was the whole masturbation-as-sign-of-emotional-turmoil aspect that the youngest son in
Squid already personified to a tee. It just seemed to me that, as a writer, Baumbach just doesn't have that big a toolkit at his disposal. He's smart, but not smart enough; I mean, could there have been a situation more embarrassingly on-the-nose as the whole tree-climbing incident?
I should point out that I love
The Squid and the Whale, however. I'm glad you liked the film, Jason, and maybe I'll get something more out of it should I ever see it again.