World War Z

31 Days of Horror: Day 6

If you are a big fan of Max Brooks' sweeping zombie novel, World War Z, you should prepare yourself before watching World War Z.  The film has absolutely nothing in common with the book, aside from a multi-national scope and the presence of zombies.  If you watch zombie movies for creative and excessive amounts of gore, then you might want to slow your proverbial roll.  These aren't your classic, slow-moving, flesh-falling-off-the-bone zombies and there is no channeling of Tom Savini with these special effects.  So, that is what World War Z is not.  What is it like?

Gerry (Brad Pitt) is just a normal guy, hanging out in a traffic jam with his wife (Mireille Enos) and kids, when the zombie apocalypse happens.  That's not a euphemism for being stuck in traffic with small children.  All of a sudden, the streets are filled with a raging mob that is becoming more and more undead with every passing moment.

You know, your basic zombie movie opening scene

Gerry survives Z-Day through a combination of cleverness and knowing somebody with a helicopter.  I won't spoil the movie and tell you which is a better trait to have.  The reason Gerry is valuable enough to save via airlift is because he is a retired UN investigator and one of his old work chums (Fana Mokoena) needs someone to discover the origin of the outbreak.  

"Oh.  That's all you need?  Great."

And that's the premise.  Gerry does some globetrotting, sees how different areas are handling the end of the world, and works his way towards a cure.  If there is one.

The quality of the acting in World War Z boils down to how much you like Brad Pitt.  That's not a knock on the other actors; Pitt is simply the only one with an emotional arc and more than ten minutes onscreen.  As far as that goes, Pitt is solid.  You can make an argument that he's a little bland here, but this isn't a character piece.  It's a zombie movie, and he serves his purpose by giving the audience something to care about.  Mireille Enos was okay as his worried wife, but her expectations for a husband in the post-apocalypse were a little unreasonable.  If one of them had to work for a living in the real world, why wouldn't one of them have to work to keep them from un-living?  Daniella Kertesz was better as Gerry's unwilling surgical patient, but her part was pretty basic.

It looks like Pitt is going to throw her at someone here, right?

Everyone else in the cast basically amounted to cameos.  James Badge Dale was charismatic as a bad-ass soldier, but his part was super-brief.  Matthew Fox might not have even had a line in the ten seconds I remember of him.  David Morse managed a few lines before Gerry globe trotted elsewhere.  Fana Mokoena had a bit more screen time than the others, but his character was just a boring bureaucrat.

Marc Forster directed World War Z, and he succeeded in one of the most important aspects of this film: the scope.  The movie looks and feels big, as a global zombie epidemic movie should.  Most zombie movies have a small scope --- a mall or a house, or the like --- because the costs associated with a large-scale apocalyptic film are so high.  Forster did a good job upping the ante and making this feel appropriately large.

There are more zombies in this shot than in every Romero movie combined

Forster also did a good job making this movie look good in a variety of ways.  The World Health Organization looked distinctly different from Jerusalem, which was significantly different than New York, etc.  I thought the action looked pretty good, although there were no truly great action pieces.  The special effects, which looked wretched in the trailer, actually worked well in the context of the film.

Surprise!  This didn't look like crap in the movie!

My only real problem with Forster's direction is the huge change of tone and pacing in the film's final third.  There has been a lot of press about that; apparently, the original ending was awful and this ending was the result of extensive rewrites and reshoots.  I actually like this ending, but there is no denying that the difference is jarring.  This was a tough project that was notoriously difficult to bring to the screen, and I think Forster delivered a movie that successfully avoided being a monstrous disappointment.

Speaking of disappointments, let's address how well World War Z fares as a zombie film.  In short, not well.  I don't have a problem with the fact that the zombies here are the fast variety, as opposed to the classic slow creatures from the book.  These zombies like to run.

...and stage dive.  Unsuccessfully.

Here's the thing, though.  These zombies don't feel much like zombies.  For starters, there aren't any outstanding examples of gore in this movie.  The coolest bit of gore came from Brad Pitt chopping off a hand.  That's fairly unusual in a zombie movie (the lack of gore, not the hand-chopping), but I'm sure there is a precedent for it.  Not a good precedent, but a precedent.  These zombies don't act like any movie zombies I have seen, either.  Instead, they were clearly inspired by swarming insects.

Big insects, though.  The kind you need a hatchet for.

That's actually a pretty clever idea.  The overall effect was threatening and unsettling.  They didn't feel like zombies, though.  That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but in a movie based on the highest-profile zombie novel ever (maybe?) and has a title that implies zombies...?  These choices don't really make sense.  I wouldn't mind so much if the movie worked around the Z-word --- 28 Days Later got away with a "rage virus," after all --- but the term "zombie" is front and center, even if the zombies in question are pretty uncommon.

Example: this is a buffet for "real" zombies

The most frustrating and rewarding parts of World War Z stem from the same ultimate cause: the script.  Having read the book, I can assure you that the process of creating a screenplay from that source material would be very difficult.  That this film has a coherent story is an accomplishment in and of itself.  However, to get this much of a narrative, a lot of sacrifices had to be made.  When you couple that with budget constraints, you end up with a finished product that bears almost nothing in common with World War Z.  To be perfectly honest, the money spent securing the film rights to the book was a complete waste, as the finished product is unrecognizable from the source material.

And yet...World War Z manages to do zombies on a scale that we haven't seen before (at least, not done well).  This is a flawed movie, no doubt, and a few well-placed and gory zombie kills would have gone a long way toward making this more fun to watch, but it's not bad.  It wasn't the zombie epic I was hoping for, but it brought some new elements to the table that I thought worked out pretty well.  Since the film grossed over half a billion dollars, we will probably (eventually) see a sequel pop up, and that wouldn't be a bad thing.  It should probably add some gore, though.

Moneyball

*** included in Brian's Best and Worst of 2011***

I've always been a big fan of baseball statistics.  You know the old saying, "those who can do, those who can't obsessively memorize meaningless numbers."  I don't know exactly what it is about baseball stats that has always enthralled me.  Sure, there's the feeling of superiority you get when you have trivia answers carved into your mind, but it goes deeper than that.  I've always liked looking at numbers because it helps me discover things that I might have never appreciated otherwise.  For instance, did you know that former pitcher Bret Saberhagen once finished a season with more wins than walks allowed?  That's ridiculous!  It's amazing!  It's unheard of...unless you do a Google search.  Not surprisingly, I have been interested in sabermetrics for a while now and was eager to see Moneyball when I heard that the book was being made into a movie.  As exciting as statistical analysis is to me, I recognize that the subject could very well make for a dreadfully dull movie experience for 99% of all people, alive or dead.  And yet, Moneyball has been widely acclaimed.  How the hell did they pull that off?

In short, the answer to that question is, "By making smart choices."  By balancing the information that baseballs fans enjoy with a universally understandable dramatic story, the filmmakers made a surprisingly appealing sports movie that features surprisingly little focus on the games being played.

Let's look at the fan stuff first.  When the Oakland Athletics ended their season in the 2001 playoffs, general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) knew that his team, which had played so well that year, was going to be pretty terrible in 2002.  The team's three best players were all free agents, and Oakland is a small market team, which meant that the team's best players were definitely going to sign lucrative deals with bigger market teams, like the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees. 

I think I see the cause of Oakland's woe: there's an attendance problem

Beane had three gaping holes to fill in his team, and he did not have the money to sign equally talented players, nor did he have up-and-coming youngsters ready to fill those spots.  There was no way on Earth that Beane would be able to build a competitive team, at least not by using conventional baseball logic.  Enter Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a quiet number cruncher with an economics degree.  Using sabermetrics, Brand saw potential in players that other teams undervalued.  Brand believed that the Athletics could field a competitive team, but they would have to favor players that specialize in some of the less flashy aspects of the game.

Like telephone courtesy

Billy and Peter build a team that can theoretically win, despite loud and frequent criticism from the media, baseball scouts, and even Oakland's own manager, Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman).  By following sabermetrics, Billy and Peter were ignoring the way players had been valued for the last hundred years of baseball.  If they failed, which pretty much everybody expected, Billy and Peter would be job-hunting before the end of August and the whole sabermetrics thing would be dismissed.  However, if they managed to field a winning team made from under-appreciated scraps from around the league, they would change baseball forever.  Of course, to do that, they actually have to win...

Pictured above: optimism

That's the somewhat-interesting-if-you're-a-baseball-fan plot.  For casual fans or baseball ignoramuses, though, there is still a rich story.  This isn't just another story of the unlikely team becoming impossibly successful --- this is the story of a man who has essentially bet his entire livelihood on an untried and ridiculed concept, and how that stress affects his life.  This isn't about the 2002 Oakland Athletics.  This is about Billy Beane's quest to show value in people thought to be disposable by everyone else and prove that the total can be greater than the perceived sum of its parts.

To pull off that sort of "man against the system" story, though, you need an effective lead actor, since the film will inevitably focus on him.  Luckily, Brad Pitt continues his string of interesting roles (which essentially describes his post-Mr. and Mrs. Smith career) in Moneyball.  This role could have been horribly overacted, because so much of it involves self-doubt and depression.  Pitt conveys most of this through nonverbals --- he seems to favor staring --- which is nice, because he almost never raises his voice, which means there are no Pacino-esque moments.  In many ways, Pitt does his best to channel Robert Redford at his smartest and most charming in this role, and he is largely successful.  Pitt has better comic timing than Redford though, and a lot of Pitt's recurring mannerisms --- like incessantly eating on-screen --- shine through enough to make this more than simply an homage to Redford.

He can't close his mouth.  It's filled with sunflower seeds.

I seriously loved Pitt's performance.  It's underplayed, but extremely effective.  I also genuinely enjoyed his interactions with Kerris Dorsey, who played his daughter.  Speaking of Dorsey, I was surprised to find that I liked her.  Most of the time, the child actors who play characters visiting their "weekend parent" tend to annoy me.  Dorsey was pretty likable, despite some unfortunate bangs, and surprised with her musical talents, too.

A lot of attention was given to Jonah Hill's first dramatic role, and he's definitely solid in it.  He's likable as a fish out of water, but I don't understand the degree of recognition he got for this role.  Does he deserve credit for his work here?  Absolutely, if only for the wheeling and dealing phone scene.  I disagree with his Golden Globe and Oscar nominations, though; he was good, but there were better choices available.  Philip Seymour Hoffman didn't add a whole lot to this movie; he certainly wasn't bad, but the role was a lot simpler than he typically plays.  Robin Wright doesn't have much screen time, but she doesn't add much anyway, which is about par for the rest of the cast.  This movie lives and dies on Brad Pitt's performance.

He pinkie swears it'll be good, though

Moneyball is only the second full-length feature film from Bennett Miller (the other is Capote, which might explain Hoffman's presence), but he has an excellent grasp of the drama in this tale.  As I have already mentioned more than once, Moneyball could have --- maybe even should have --- been an awful viewing experience for most people.  It takes the slowest American spectator sport and gets rid of the action, focusing on politics and number-crunching instead.  And he managed (along with an Aaron Sorkin screenplay co-credit) to make this film feel like a personal journey of a man trying to prove his worth.  I also loved how he used Pitt in this movie; he was unafraid of silence on the screen, and that made for some surprisingly touching moments.

The best thing about Moneyball is that the events portrayed here happened recently enough for many audience members to recall the ending.  I knew how the A's season ended in 2002, and yet I never felt a sense of dramatic letdown.  That's because the drama is in Beane, and not entirely based on the fate of his team.  This is just a smartly-written, well-acted, and well-directed picture.

And if you were wondering what the song Billy Beane's daughter was singing was, here's the original version:

Brian's Best and Worst of 2011

It is, once again, almost time for the Oscars!  While I am not the biggest fan of the Academy Awards, I do like having some sort of quality barometer in Hollywood, even one that is skewed, political, and often rewards career achievements instead of current ones.  Since so many high-profile films come out at the end of the year, looking to cash in on Christmas vacationers and still make year-end best-of lists, I never get a chance to watch the most critically acclaimed films before the year's end.  But...if Hollywood can wait until the end of February to rate the last year of cinema, so can I, right?  I know, I know...what a jerk I am, stealing Hollywood's thunder!

I don't like doing Top Ten lists, though.  That's too cut-and-dry, and it completely ignores all the truly awful stuff I run across every year.  I like to break the year down into several best and worst categories, and "best" and "worst" are probably more accurately defined as "most favorite" and "most hated" by me.

So exactly what films did I watch in time to consider for this list?

Abduction.  The Artist.  Battle: Los Angeles.  Black Death.  Blitz.  Captain America: The First Avenger.  The Code.  Conan the Barbarian.  Contagion.  Cowboys & Aliens.  The Descendants.  Drive.  Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.  Faces in the Crowd.  Fast Five.  Fright Flick.  Fright Night.  Green Lantern.  Hanna.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.  The Help.  Hobo With a Shotgun.  Horrible Bosses.  Hugo.  I Saw the Devil.  The Ides of March.  Insidious.  Ironclad.  Kill the Irishman.  Killer Elite.  Limitless.  The Mechanic.  Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.  Midnight in Paris.  Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol.  Moneyball.  Ong Bak 3.  Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.  Red State.  The Resident.  Rise of the Planet of the Apes.  Season of the Witch.  Shark Night 3D.  Source Code.  Sucker Punch.  Super 8.  Take Me Home Tonight.  13 Assassins.  Thor.  Transformers: Dark of the Moon.  The Tree of Life.  Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.  War Horse.  The Ward.  Warrior.  X-Men: First Class.

I wasn't able to review all of these in time for the Oscars, but I did watch them.  There are some noteworthy absences from that list, though.  Here are some of the movies I wanted to see, but failed to in time:

The Adjustment Bureau, A Dangerous Method, 50/50, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Guard, Hesher, Shame, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,  and most of the stupid comedies of the year.

Let's start of with some of the more overlooked moments in film this year, shall we?

Best Bit Character
You know those roles that are very amusing, but aren't substantial enough to actually be called "supporting"?  I love those!  They are sadly undervalued in modern cinema, but not by me.  While I was amused by the Blue F'n Lights in Super 8, I have to give credit to Adrien Brody for his Salvador Dali impression in Midnight in Paris.

And for flicking off Owen Wilson

I normally dislike Brody, but his oddly-enunciated, rhinoceros-obsessed few minutes onscreen amused the hell out of me.  As an added bonus, from what little I know about Dali at the time, the impression seemed pretty accurate.

Best Supporting Actress
This is typically a tough category for me.  I don't watch many "chick flicks," and the films I choose to watch usually don't have well-developed female characters.  This year, though, I found a handful of actresses impressive.  Elle Fanning (Super 8) and Saiorse Ronan (Hanna) were both surprisingly mature, and Octavia Spencer was the prototypical sassy black woman in The Help, which is naturally pretty awesome to watch.  However, my favorite supporting performance this year was definitely Shailene Woodley in The Descendants.

Note: embed flattering photo here

I think she did the best job with the most complex character, at least from the movies I caught.  Granted, that character was a bitchy, rebellious teenager (not exactly avant garde), but I thought she handled the role perfectly.

Worst Supporting Actress
I'm going to go with Marianne Faithfull in Faces in the Crowd.  What makes her any worse than, say, anyone in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, or Melissa Leo's horribly over-the-top performance in Red State?  Well, like the prison food mentioned in The Blues Brothers, they're all pretty bad.  Faithfull just had the least believable character --- a deaf therapist that gives no indication that she is deaf whatsoever --- out of the group.  Plus, she provides some of the worst exposition I saw on film this year.

Best Supporting Actor
There were, as always, a lot of supporting actor roles that stuck out to me this year.  Colin Farrell (Fright Night) and Michael Fassbender (X-Men: First Class) were pretty bad-ass in some potentially silly roles.  Tom Hardy (Warrior) and Paul Giamatti (The Ides of March) gave surprisingly powerful dramatic performances.  Andy Serkis (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) once again gave a spectacular motion-capture performance.  My favorite supporting performance by far, though, definitely belonged to Albert Brooks in Drive.  He was just so deliciously merciless --- he is definitely my favorite villain of the year.

Not the tools of the trade you might expect from Brooks

Worst Supporting Actor
As tempted as I am to crown Tom Felton for being terrible in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, this is a prize that was won with teamwork.  My winner for Worst Supporting Actor is the supporting cast of Transformers: Dark of the Moon.  I don't care if you want to focus on Ken Jeong's idiotic character or John Turturro's embarrassing cash-in role, John Malkovich's bewildering presence, or if you just hate Kevin Dunn's "why hasn't he been stepped on already?" turn as Mr. Witwicky --- this movie sucked, and there were simply too many awful performances to not win this award.

A well-placed Autobot foot could have made this so much better

On a related note, Patrick Dempsey is a crappy evil villain, especially when you compare him to giant killer robots.

Best Actress
There wasn't much competition for this, given the films I watched.  Even without any other real contenders, Viola Davis was excellent in The Help.

As manipulative as the film is (and I would qualify it as "very"), Davis did a great job balancing contradicting emotional extremes.  The only reason The Help is up for a Best Picture Academy Award this year is thanks to its excellent acting, and Davis was the film's anchor.

Worst Actress
This was a tight race.  As deserving as Tiffany and Debbie Gibson were in Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, Lily Collins was even worse in Abduction.  And as terrible as Collins and her eyebrows were, they cannot compare to the hatred I have in my heart for Emily Browning in Sucker Punch.  The whole movie was handled poorly, but Browning was on screen the most, and alternated between a pouty face and a vacant stare. 

Go to Brian's movie jail.  Do not collect go, do not collect $200

I honestly don't know if anyone could have salvaged the train wreck that was Sucker Punch, but it takes a unique talent to confuse and anger me while playing a rape victim.

Best Actor
I went through most of 2011's films without witnessing an excellent lead acting performance, but that has changed over the last month.  I thought Min-Sik Choi was positively chilling in I Saw the Devil.  I loved Ryan Gosling's extremely peculiar work in Drive.  I loved George Clooney's subtle and complex work in The Descendants.  The performance that I enjoyed the most this year, though, was Brad Pitt in Moneyball.

This is a film that could have easily been deadly dull (to non-statistical nuts like me), but Pitt carried it with consistently good timing and a whole lot of staring and looking worried.  Was it a better performance than Clooney's or Jean Dujardin in The Artist?  Maybe not.  But I responded more to his character than anyone other this year.  Besides, my beloved Cubs will be atrocious in 2012, so I need to enjoy baseball any way I can.

Worst Actor
This race boils down to who I hated more this year: Shia LaBeouf in Trannies 3 or Taylor Lautner in Abduction.  Man, this is a tough one!  Shia was insufferable as an entitled dick in T3, but Lautner was offensively bad.  I think Lautner barely squeaks this one out, but only because he can be out-acted by shadow puppets.

This is his "reading" face

Best Director
I'm going to go with the only director that truly impressed me with his style and competence this year: Nicolas Winding Refn, for Drive.  The only other director that even came close for ballsiness and frame composition was Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist), but Refn embraced noir, awkwardness, and extreme violence and made it all work in a taut thriller.

Worst Director
Part of me wants to go with John Singleton for doing absolutely nothing right in Abduction.  Another part of me wants to slap David R. Ellis for not changing his style for Shark Night 3D, despite its PG-13 rating.  But those are just two very small parts of me; 98% of me hates Zack Snyder for Sucker Punch.  My dislike for his recent work is almost Biblical; I wish I could salt the proverbial earth of Snyder's career.  As gorgeous as his films look, Sucker Punch was a confused, soulless rape fantasy, poorly disguised as some sort of extended "girl power" metaphor.  How do you screw up having dragons, steam-powered soldiers, and gundams?  Watch Sucker Punch.  No, wait...don't.

Biggest Disappointment
Runner-up goes to John Carpenter's return to directing, The Ward.  Too bad it was terrible.  I was prepared for that, though, because Carpenter has had his share of misses over the last thirty or forty years.  I was most disappointed by Green Lantern.  It had a lot of promise --- and the space scenes were actually pretty cool --- but the story was horribawful.  I didn't need this to be good to have fun with it, but I would have appreciated less boredom and fewer stupid humans.

Biggest Surprise
I had a few mild surprises this year.  Marcus Nispel made a decent flick for a change (Conan the Barbarian).  Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a clearly unnecessary film, wasn't terrible.  I didn't vomit bile when watching Matthew Lillard in The Descendants.  I would be a liar, though, if I said there was any bigger surprise than the extended Discovery Channel acid trip during The Tree of Life.

Love it or hate it, you cannot honestly tell me that you expected that movie to make that choice at that time.  I'm pretty sure I spent most of this sequence with a confused look and my mouth half open.

Bottom 5 Movies
I could pick on the made-to-suck horror movies I watched this year (Fright Flick and Mega Python vs. Gatoroid), but I didn't expect them to be anything close to good.  These five are bad and have earned my ire.
5. The Ward - Have you ever wanted to watch a really bad version of Identity?  Have you ever wanted to watch a movie like that while feeling sorry for the director?  Well, do I have a movie for you!  You want to know how bad this movie is?  Here's the best scene in the entire film:

4. Transformers: Dark of the Moon - Here's what it takes to make an awesome Transformers movie: have giant robots fight each other.  It doesn't have to be smart.  It doesn't have to do anything except look cool and have a simple plot.  Somehow, that message never reached Michael Bay.  There were too many humans, too many "jokes," and too many interchangeable robots in this clusterfuck of a blockbuster.  And the Witwicky family still refused to die!  The only reason I can imagine anyone liking Trannies 3 is for putting Rosie Huntington-Whitely in high definition.  Well guess what, teenagers?  She's an underwear model.  You don't have to watch this movie to ogle her, there's a great big internet just waiting for you!

3. Season of the Witch - I don't know what the worst thing about this movie is.  It could be the fact that Nic Cage actually underacted, given how ridiculous the story is.

Stunning, I know

Maybe it is the hilarious parallels it invites to classic films.  Both are good reasons, but I think the biggest one is the complete lack of witches in this movie.  Not even zombie monks could save this.

2. Abduction - I've already touched upon how inept this movie is, but this is truly one of the worst movies I have seen that was widely released.  The hair clogging your shower has more talent than Taylor Lautner.

1. Sucker Punch - Despite looking like it should be made of the dreams of horny teenage boys, this was drab, dull, and rapey.  Maybe that's your cup of tea.  If it is, I assume you are already in prison for committing violent acts against humanity and good taste in general.

More like a donkey punch

Top 10 Movies
10. Hugo -I have a soft spot in my heart for characters that are struggling to find their place in the world, and I believe in the magic of cinema, so Hugo was right up my alley.  Scorsese's direction, while fun to look at (even in 3D), pandered a bit too much toward young children for my tastes, but it was still touching and adorable.

9. Hobo With a Shotgun - Rarely does a movie meet my every expectation.  Hobo... delivered on the promise of its title and added Robocop-quality acting and Troma levels of violence.  Sadly, it was snubbed by the academy this year.  I wonder why?

8. The Artist - Jean Dujardin is charming and is a gifted physical actor.  Who needs to hear him speak?  Along with that talent, director Michel Hazanavicius made an extremely clever film with superb cinematography and (not terribly subtle) symbolism.  It was cute, it was different, but it didn't strike any particular emotional chords within me.

7. Midnight In Paris - I didn't expect to enjoy this one, but I was pleasantly surprised.  Instead of wallowing in nostalgia, like so many acclaimed films this year (Super 8, The Artist, Hugo), Woody Allen made a film that realized the folly in Golden Age thinking.  I imagine that your appreciation for the film only deepens with your own knowledge of the art and literature scene in 1920s Paris, but even if you are clueless, the supporting cast is extremely enjoyable.  And every word out of Corey Stoll's mouth is pure gold.

Have you ever shot a charging lion?

6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 - Eight movies in ten years, and all of them were good.  I'm going to miss the Harry Potter series, but this last chapter paid off the setups of the past few films nicely.  It could have been more visually imaginative, and there were a literal ton of characters in the film to pay attention to, but this was a quality send-off to an excellent series.  Plus, it didn't have, like, six endings, like Lord of the Rings.

5. X-Men: First Class - Given the debacles that were X-Men 3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, I didn't have high hopes for this one.  Thankfully, Matthew Vaughn saved my favorite comic franchise from movie production hell.  The real credit goes to Michael Fassbender's awesome performance as Magneto.  We need more of that, and soon.

Michael Fassbender face IS...Magneto's Crotch

4. The Descendants - A possibly gut-wrenching concept gets a whole lot easier to handle and more interesting through Alexander Payne's treatment and George Clooney's excellent performance.  It's about as uplifting a film as you're going to see from a movie about death and infidelity.

3. Moneyball - This movie simply should not have been fun or interesting to watch at all.  On paper, it sounds as entertaining as balancing your checkbook, but I was drawn into Moneyball.  I enjoyed Brad Pitt's Robert Redford impression and actually liked Jonah Hill for once (I disagree with his nominations, though).  What I liked most about this movie was its sense of timing, which I suppose means that I liked its editing.  Whatever.  This is a sports movie that can appeal to the non-sports fan because the heroes don't play sports.  That's brilliant!

2. I Saw the Devil - It's hard to find a genuinely disturbing horror movie, so I like the acknowledge them when I find 'em.  Taking the typical premise (bad guy kills my people, I must take the law into my own hands!) to a logical but somewhat surprising end, Jee-Woon Kim crafted a brutal and unnerving film.  I like it when heroes are not heroic, and this movie delivered.

Pretty.  Disturbing.

1. Drive -By far, this was the most peculiar and enjoyable film I saw all year.  It was weird, it was painfully awkward, it was violent, and it was oddly touching.  Better than all that, it was suspenseful.  As awkward and unrecognizable as the Driver was as a human, there is a simple sweetness underneath that amazing scorpion jacket.  Of course, his character is also a psycho waiting to erupt, but that's the price you pay for being so damn cool.

The Tree of Life

"Nants ingonyama bagithi baba.  Sithi uhhmm ingonyama:"  this is what was running through my mind five minutes after finishing The Tree of Life --- the opening lines to The Lion King's "Circle of Life" (yes, I had to look up the spelling).  Is that subliminal connection a good thing, or was my mind just trying in vain to make sense out of a notoriously difficult film?  Honestly, I don't know the significance of the song to this movie; I just found it amusing that that is where my mind wandered to as I pondered The Tree of Life.

This is not one of those movies that is going to reel you in by its narrative.  Essentially, the adult Jack (Sean Penn) is, in modern times, pondering his place in the world and the nature of man.  His mind flashes back to his childhood, raised by a strict and often angry father (Brad Pitt) and a saintly mother (Jessica Chastain), along with his two younger brothers.  The young Jack (Hunter McCracken) is very much like his father, while his brothers are very much like their mother.  And then this happens:

That, naturally, is followed by this:

...which, of course, leads to dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs and pretension, together at last

And then we resume Jack's stroll down memory lane.  No, you didn't miss anything.  Jack then winds up in a ridiculously remote location with doubtlessly metaphorical significance, we see some dead people, and now the movie is over.

Jack, busy ignoring that 127 Hours guy

If absolutely nothing else, The Tree of Life is designed to elicit a response from its viewers.  Confusion, hatred, love, whatever --- you're not left indifferent.  I saw it in the theater this weekend, and I was the only one of my group that did not absolutely loathe the film.  I could be wrong, but I believe my wife would have peed on Terrence Malick that night, given the chance.  The audience groaned whenever a fade to black became a fade-in, and this is one of the few movies I have seen in a long while where the audience --- filled with people paying to see a Best Picture nominee marathon, mind you --- wound up talking amongst themselves and giggling inappropriately.  I'm sure some people in that theater were absolutely blown away by Terrence Malick's most recent effort, but it was certainly not designed for the masses. 

The acting in The Tree of Life is universally solid, even when you're not sure what the hell is going on.  Brad Pitt handled a complex role as a do-it-yourself man that never did "it" good enough to be successful and happy; he is seen as an angry force of nature by Jack, but Pitt still makes this character sympathetic.  

Example: he doesn't eat this baby

Of course, to do this, Pitt sports the annoying under-bite he sometimes likes to use when playing Southern characters.  Jessica Chastain was also good as Jack's mother, but I didn't feel that her role was as compelling as Pitt's.  The only flaw she seemed to have was an inability to handle her husband's impotent rage, or at least protect her children from it; since the husband wasn't actually evil or physically abusive, though, that flaw isn't the defining point of her character.  Instead, she is the example of Heavenly Grace in this film.  There's nothing wrong with that, it just isn't too interesting from a character development standpoint.  Hunter McCracken did an impressive job as the troubled Young Jack.  He internalized a lot of struggles, and the way he lashed out at his parents felt true.  He's not a pretty kid, though.  Sean Penn just walked around looking mopey.  His character didn't have much time onscreen, but Penn still delivered a surprisingly bland performance.  I also liked Tye Sheridan as the sensitive, artsy brother, more because he was expressive than for any other real reason.


The acting was never going to be what made or broke The Tree of Life, though.  That depended entirely on writer/director Terrence Malick.  This is only the fifth film directed by Malick, although he has been directing since 1973, and it is based on a screenplay he began writing in the late 1970s.  Needless to say, Malick has put a lot of thought into this film.  Unfortunately for many viewers, none of those thoughts involved making this film easily comprehensible.  There is no denying that the cinematography in this film is absolutely stunning.  Even when you aren't sure what you are looking at, the images are impressive.

Above: nucleotides, maybe?

I also appreciated the complex acting Malick got from his cast in a film without a lot of revealing dialogue.  This is definitely a film that relies on the actions of the characters over their lines, and the performances were all good (with the exception of Penn), subtle and complex.


Having said all that, what the hell happened in this movie?  It jumps from a disjointed, nonlinear narrative about some kids growing up in the 1950s to an extended break (anywhere from 15-3000 minutes --- I didn't think to time it) with no acting, voice-over, or anything --- just shot after shot of outtakes from a planetarium laser show.  The images were gorgeous, but they didn't have any direct connection to the story.  And then dinosaurs happen, and I could hear audience members mentally checking out.

...aaaaand I'm done

I have no doubt that this sequence will become as famous/infamous as 2001's space baby.  So, if Kubrick pissed you off with that ending, you probably don't want to see a movie where that sort of sequence shows up in the middle without any explicit explanation.  

But let's ignore the cinematographic masturbation for a moment and focus on the rest of the film.  It's still incredibly obtuse.  There are many back-lit shots that the camera lingers on, but do not hold any explicit connection to the story at large.  And I hope you like trees, because The Tree of Life makes sure you notice them by holding still life shots for a loooong time, like Malick was waiting for the Ents to awaken or something.

Voice-over: "TREES, BITCHES!"

And I hope you like philosophical questions being whispered as voice-over, because that is something else this movie has in spades.  If I watch this again, I will have a hard time not calling out "Ricola" whenever Chastain or McCracken whispers sweet existential nothings in my ears.  There is also the confusing focus of the flashback scenes, where important things seem to happen (a neighbor's house burns down, somebody has a seizure, a brother dies at age 19, etc.), but are never really addressed again.  

If you hate The Tree of Life, I completely understand.  Personally, I can only take so much existential crap before my body starts rejecting it, and I can believe that this film has more than most people would like to handle.  However, I didn't quite hit my limit.  I thought this was a fantastically shot movie with interesting performances and a refreshing amount of directorial intent.  I didn't like it much, but I appreciate it for what it is.  It's hard to find a movie that so so obviously odd, that is striving so hard to tell a particular point of view instead of just going after emotions with broad strokes; The Tree of Life will probably end up like The Velvet Underground and Nico --- not many people will like it, but those that do will make their own films, or at least look for more challenging cinema than what Hollywood has to offer.  And that's a good thing for film as an art form and as a continuously evolving commercial product.  What kept me from liking the movie (believe it or not) was not the "history of life" interlude, but the core story.  I never connected to Jack; I found him repulsive as a child and completely uninteresting as an adult.  The issues he's dealing with are fairly universal, but I never felt emotionally invested in this philosophical lecture or in the characters involved.

Is Jack being shown affection or love?  I don't really care

Maybe I'm a little strange.  Well, I'm definitely strange, but it strikes me as odd that this, an obviously personal film that Malick put an impressive amount of time and thought into, would leave me almost indifferent.  Oh well.  Since it failed to entice me emotionally or philosophically and because the whole thing was pretty damn pretentious, I'm giving The Tree of Life

I will recommend this movie to anyone who is a big fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Fountain.  Just don't make me watch it with you.


Now, if you have already seen the movie and are trying to figure out what it was about, here's my take:

Brian's story analysis of The Tree of Life

The movie boils down to the premise introduced by Jessica Chastain's character at the very beginning, the struggle between Grace and Nature; Grace (embodied by mommy) is kind and loving and wants everything and everybody to be nice and recognize the glory all around us, while Nature is competitive and very much based in the daily struggle of man.  Or you can think of it as Big Picture vs. Little Picture, whatever works for you.

You can also dumb the message down to "don't sweat the small stuff"

Adult Jack, for whatever reason, starts to reflect on his life.  He has always been more like his father (Nature) than his mother (Grace), and he's contemplating the value of what he has achieved as a successful businessman.  He wants to go back to that innocent time as a child when he felt in touch with Grace.  The flashbacks are shown in seemingly random snippets because that's how the mind reflects; when you remember something, it's usually a jumble of images, not a coherent and chronological retelling.  That also explains why seemingly important moments are glossed over; they did not directly impact Jack's memory at that time, so he just remembers being told to go inside when the neighbor had a seizure.  The yearning to go back to innocence also makes Jack question the place of man in the world, which leads to the whole Discovery channel acid trip.  Ultimately, Jack arrives at the moment when his father, Nature personified, went through the same life crisis and reevaluated his life.  The ending with all the friends and family, past and present, is Jack accepting his place in the world, with Grace.  It's the circle of life.

Nants ingonyama bagithi baba!  Sithi uhhmm ingonyama!