The Tree of Life

The Movie Gourmet hits the all-you-can-eat buffet

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It was a perfect storm.  Lots of important movies were opening where I live.  The Wife was out-of-town.  And my buddy Kiefer was game to join me.  It was time for the all-you-can-eat buffet of movie-going – five movies in 48 hours!

We started on Friday night by catching Super 8 at San Jose’s Camera 12.  We were both impressed with authenticity of the coming of age story embedded in the sci-fi thriller.  Good start!

Saturday morning, we drove to San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center Cinema for the noon show of Beginners.   Home run!  We both loved this smart and original comedy by Mike Mills.  Christopher Plummer will certainly get an Oscar nod.  I rated it as one of the year’s best.

We jumped in a cab to make the 2:30 show of Le Quattro Volte at the Lumiere.  The cabbie knows most of the San Francisco Giants – and even two of their moms; he keeps a box of baseballs in the front seat for autographs.

We settled in for Le Quattro, the Italian goatherd movie and a critical fave.  An aged goatherd moves his goats up and down a hill, coughing as he goes.  The next day, he does the same, only coughing more. Suddenly, a young goat is born, starts to grow up and gets lost.  Here’s where Kiefer fell asleep.  Then the villagers cut down a tall tree for a festival.  After the festival, it is added to a pile of wood that becomes charcoal.  I get that it is intended to comment on The Circle of Life, but I found it less a tranquil and profound reflection than an eye-glazing bore.  After the screening, other patrons were asking who voted this Best of Europe?

Okay – back to the Embarcadero for an early dinner at San Francisco’s oldest restaurant The Tadich Grill.  Cioppino still awesome!

Now we needed to drive back to San Jose for the 7:15 PM show of The Tree of Life.  We got stuck in San Francisco Giants traffic, and we’d never make it to San Jose in time.  Never fear, some Blackberry surfing in the car revealed a 7:15 show in Palo Alto that we COULD make.

So we got to the Palo Alto Square CineArts in time for The Tree of Life.  This screening was packed.  We were both stunned, and most of the crowd stumbled out mumbling something like “What the hell was THAT?”.  Kiefer and I were laughing – even after we had mentally cut out all of the Sean Penn scenes, we were still trying to figure out whether Tree of Life was worse than the Italian goatherd movie.

Sunday morning, we have breakfast and amble into my 10:30 AM Camera Cinema Club at The Camera 7 in Campbell.  This month’s Club selection was Turkey Bowl, a delightful indie comedy set in a group of friends’ annual touch football game.  It is a mere 62 minutes, but loaded with laughs.  After the screening, we heard writer-director Kyle Smith tell how he financed the film with $25,000 that he earned from a reality TV show, and shot it over ten days in an East LA city park.

So, all-in-all, we had a very rich film experience sampling indies, art films, a mini-blockbuster, foreign cinema, the most accessible movies and the most obtuse.  Doesn’t get any better.

Movies to See Right Now

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Marion Cotillard and Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris

This week, the best choices are the sweet, funny and thoughtful Beginners and Midnight in Paris.  If you have kids, Pixar’s Cars 2 is an excellent choice (adults will especially enjoy the James Bond spoof thread).  So is Super 8, a wonderful coming of age story embedded in a sci fi action thriller.  The Trip delivers some chuckles.

In Beginners, Ewan McGregor plays a guy who tends to the depressive and sabotages his relationships.  His father (Christopher Plummer) has just died after coming out of the closet at age 75.  Can he make things work out with Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds)?

Woody Allen’s sweet and smart Midnight in Paris is his best comedy in twenty-five years. Owen Wilson accompanies fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where she is intrigued by pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, leaving Wilson to explore midnight Paris and time travel back to the Paris of the Lost Generation.

13 Assassins is brilliantly staged and photographed, and is one of the best recent action films; an honorable samurai must assemble and lead a team of thirteen to hack their way through a psychotically sadistic noble’s 200 bodyguards.

In The Trip, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon take a foodie road trip through the north of England and duel with their Michael Caine and Sean Connery impressions.

In Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose insecurities keep her from seeing the good and the possible in her life; it’s funny, but not one of the year’s best.

The Hangover Part 2 is just not original enough, and, consequently, not funny enough.

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life contains a good 90-minute family drama that is completely derailed by an additional hour of mind-numbingly self-important claptrap.

 

For trailers and other choices,see Movies to See Right Now.

 

You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is the British terrorist farce Four Lions.

All new – Movies to See Right Now

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Christopher Lee and Ewan McGregor in Beginners

This week, the best choices are the sweet, funny and thoughtful Beginners and Midnight in Paris.  If you have kids, Pixar’s Cars 2 is an excellent choice (adults will especially enjoy the James Bond spoof thread).  So is Super 8, a wonderful coming of age story embedded in a sci fi action thriller.

In Beginners, Ewan McGregor plays a guy who tends to the depressive and sabotages his relationships.  His father (Christopher Plummer) has just died after coming out of the closet at age 75.  Can he make things work out with Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds)?

Woody Allen’s sweet and smart Midnight in Paris is his best comedy in twenty-five years. Owen Wilson accompanies fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where she is intrigued by pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, leaving Wilson to explore midnight Paris and time travel back to the Paris of the Lost Generation.

13 Assassins is brilliantly staged and photographed, and is one of the best recent action films; an honorable samurai must assemble and lead a team of thirteen to hack their way through a psychotically sadistic noble’s 200 bodyguards.

In Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose insecurities keep her from seeing the good and the possible in her life; it’s funny, but not one of the year’s best.

The Hangover Part 2 is just not original enough, and, consequently, not funny enough.

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life contains a good 90-minute family drama that is completely derailed by an additional hour of mind-numbingly self-important claptrap.

For trailers and other choices,see Movies to See Right Now.

I haven’t yet seen the horse whisperer documentary Buck or the comic road tripper The Trip, which open this weekend. You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is the nastily hard-bitten noir Kiss Me Deadly.

Movies on TV this week include the Hitchcock thriller Strangers on a Train and Kiss Me Deadly on TCM.

The Tree of Life: What a bewildering, pompous mess

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Every ten years, Terrence Malick directs a film that critics call a masterpiece (Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World).  Here, he has created a bewildering, pompous mess.

The core of The Tree of Life is fine 90-minute family drama about a boy growing up in 1950s Waco (a superb Hunter McCracken) and the friction with his caring but brutishly domineering father (Brad Pitt).  Unfortunately, there is another 60 minutes in the movie.

That additional 60 minutes is a self-important muddle that tries to lift the story to an exploration of life itself – from creation through afterlife.  There are beautiful shots of clouds and waterfalls, with unintelligible whisperings from cast members.  There are Bible verses, the Big Bang and dinosaurs (yes, dinosaurs).   And, in case you don’t get how seriously the movie takes itself, there is an overbearingly pretentious score.

Plus, there is Sean Penn, silently brooding about his childhood from a skyscraper.  And wandering through a desert in his suit.  And reunited with his dead relatives on a tidal flat.

Malick’s pretense succeeds only in distracting the audience from could have been a good story and a beautifully shot film.  Bottom line:  painfully unwatchable.

 

Movies to See Right Now

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Midnight in Paris

The top picks this week are Incendies, Midnight in Paris and Cave of Forgotten Dreams.  I’m still urging people to see the searing drama Incendies, the year’s best film so far. Upon their mother’s death, a young man and woman learn for the first time of their father and their brother and journey from Quebec to the Middle East to uncover family secrets. As they bumble around Lebanon, we see the mother’s experience in flashbacks. We learn before they do that their lives were created – literally – by the violence of the Lebanese civil war.

Woody Allen’s sweet and smart Midnight in Paris is his best comedy in twenty-five years.  Owen Wilson accompanies fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where she is intrigued by pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, leaving Wilson to explore midnight Paris and time travel back to the Paris of the Lost Generation.

Don’t miss Cave of Forgotten Dreams while it can be seen in 3D; Werner Herzog explores the amazing 30,000 year old Chauvet cave paintings.

13 Assassins is brilliantly staged and photographed, and is one of the best recent action films; an honorable samurai must assemble and lead a team of thirteen to hack their way through a psychotically sadistic noble’s 200 bodyguards.

In Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose insecurities keep her from seeing the good and the possible in her life; it’s funny, but not one of the year’s best. The Hangover Part 2 is just not original enough, and, consequently, not funny enough.

For trailers and other choices, see Movies to See Right Now.

I haven’t yet seen Beginners or The Trip, which open this weekend with very strong buzz. You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is one of the best movies from last year, True Grit.

Movies on TV this week include the brilliant Buster Keaton masterpiece The General on TCM.

Movies to See Right Now

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13 Assassins

The top picks this week are Incendies, Midnight in Paris and Cave of Forgotten Dreams.  I’m still urging people to see the searing drama Incendies, the year’s best film so far. Upon their mother’s death, a young man and woman learn for the first time of their father and their brother and journey from Quebec to the Middle East to uncover family secrets. As they bumble around Lebanon, we see the mother’s experience in flashbacks. We learn before they do that their lives were created – literally – by the violence of the Lebanese civil war.

Woody Allen’s sweet and smart Midnight in Paris is his best comedy in twenty-five years.  Owen Wilson accompanies fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where she is intrigued by pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, leaving Wilson to explore midnight Paris and time travel back to the Paris of the Lost Generation.

Don’t miss Cave of Forgotten Dreams while it can be seen in 3D; Werner Herzog explores the amazing 30,000 year old Chauvet cave paintings.

13 Assassins is brilliantly staged and photographed, and is one of the best recent action films; an honorable samurai must assemble and lead a team of thirteen to hack their way through a psychotically sadistic noble’s 200 bodyguards.

In Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose insecurities keep her from seeing the good and the possible in her life; it’s funny, but not one of the year’s best. Meek’s Cutoff is a disappointing misfire.

For trailers and other choices,see Movies to See Right Now.

I haven’t yet seen The Tree of Life, which opens this weekend. You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is Kaboom.

Movies on TV this week include the vicious drama Sweet Smell of Success and the campy mutant rabbit horror flick Night of the Lepus on TCM.

Movies: best bets for June

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On June 10, we’ll get a chance to see The Tree of Life.  Every ten years Terrence Malick directs a film that critics call a masterpiece: Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World.   At Cannes, audiences found The Tree of Life at once visually stunning, confusing, brilliant, trippy, profound and self-important.  Brad Pitt plays a 1950s Waco dad who is both caring and brutishly domineering.  Sean Penn plays his grown up Baby Boomer son reflecting on his childhood (without much dialogue).  From the music in the trailer, you can tell that this movie takes itself very seriously.

Also releasing June 10 is Beginners.  Ewan McGregor’s dad (Christopher Plummer) has just died, shortly after coming out of the closet.  As if this weren’t enough to deal with, McGregor is a depressive anyway. But then he meets Melanie Laurent (and they meet cute).  Directed by Mike Mills (Thumbsucker).

On the same weekend, we’ll also have The Trip,  a reportedly very funny movie in which Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon take a foodie road trip through the north of England.   Along the way, they snidely battle each other with their impressions of Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Woody Allen, Al Pacino and the like.

The next weekend, June 17, we have Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times.   This contender for the year’s best documentary is a peek inside modern journalism at a troubling time.

You can see the trailers at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

Here’s the trailer for Beginners.

What we learned from Cannes 2011

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It’s not news that the French love Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris) or that Terrence Malick can make a beautiful, profound and confusing film (The Tree of Life).  And we’ll get to see Midnight in Paris for ourselves this weekend and The Tree of Life in a couple of weeks.  But I’m especially looking forward to four more films screened at the festival:  The Artist, Drive, The Kid with a Bike and Polisse.

The film that captured the most fans at Cannes is The Artist, a mostly silent film about a silent film star at the advent of talking pictures.  By all accounts, it’s a visually and emotionally satisfying film.   The French actor Jean Dujardin won Cannes’ best actor award; John Goodman, James Cromwell and Penelope Ann Miller also appear.  The Artist will be released in the US by The Weinstein Company.

Drive is an action movie starring Ryan Gosling as a stunt driver by day, criminal getaway driver by night.  It’s getting attention for the emotionally vacant character played by Gosling and the stylishness of the car chases and violence. Drive will be released in the US in September by FilmDistrict.

The Kid with a Bike is the latest from the Belgian Bardennes brothers, two of my favorite film makers (The Son, Rosetta).  a 12-year-old boy wants to find the father who dumped him at a children’s home, but meets a woman who becomes his de fact foster mom.  The Kid with the Bike will be released in the US by Sundance Selects.

Polisse is a reputedly riveting French police procedural about the child protective services unit.  It stars an ensemble cast led by Karin Viard (Paris, Potiche, Time Out).  Polisse will be released in the US by IFC Films.

Here’s the trailer for The Artist.

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And more upcoming movies

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I’ve updated the Movies I’m Looking Forward To page to add trailers and descriptions.  This month we’ll see the singer/songwriter documentary Troubadours (first aired March 2 on PBS), the tragic Cannes hit Of Gods and Men (Des Hommes et des Dieu)( releasing widely March 4) and Abbas Kiarostami’s The Certified Copy (Copie Conforme) with the luminous Juliette Binoche (releasing widely March 18).

Here’s the trailer for Carancho, which will release widely on April 8. Well, they have ambulance chasers in Argentina, too, and that seamy world is the setting for this sexy and violent noir thriller.  Stars Ricardo Darin of The Secrets of Their Eyes and Nine Queens.  Won Un Certain Regard at Cannes.

The Movies I’m Looking Forward To page also features Hanna, Potiche, Jane Eyre, Restless, The Tree of Life, Tabloid, Cold Weather, Boxing Gym and American Grindhouse.

Once again, some promising new movies in the theaters

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We’re nearing the end of that period in January and February where the theaters are filled with 1) Oscar nominees lingering from the Holidays and 2) the very worst Hollywood inventory.   Some intriguing new films are now ready to be released.  I’ve updated the Movies I’m Looking Forward To page to add trailers and descriptions.

This weekend brings us Cedar Rapids and Kaboom.  Cedar Rapids is an “aim low” comedy about a lame guy (Ed Helm) whose life is so boring that an insurance agent conference in Cedar Rapids is a revelatory experience.   It’s got John C. Reilly as the Wild and Crazy Insurance Agent and is directed by Miguel Arteta, director of the underrated The Good Girl and Youth in Revolt.  Kaboom: A trippy sex comedy from director Greg Araki, creator of the brilliant and searing Mysterious Skin.

Here’s the trailer for next weekend’s Nora’s Will, a Mexican dramedy in which a man’s mother dies and he uncovers some jarring family secrets.

The Movies I’m Looking Forward To page also features Troubadours, Certified Copy, Of Gods and Men, Carancho, Hanna, Jane Eyre, Restless, The Tree of Life, Tabloid, Cold Weather, Boxing Gym and American Grindhouse.