Review of the film The Tree of Life

            Our lives begin long before our births. This idea could be seen as spiritual, but I like to think of it as simply physical—the matter of the cells that make up our beings has been in existence for millennia. That is something that cannot be denied when thought out rationally. We begin in the cells and, therefore, the genes, of our ancestors. The people who become our great grandparents, grandparents and parents, their matter, contains the same stuff that will be that which makes us up as well. 

            The Tree of Life is a film that explores the makings of life on this planet as well as the workings of a small family living in East Texas during the 1950s. It may seem a far reach to relate the story of a few interconnected lives to the beginnings of the world and humanity, but Director Terrence Malick makes an often-moving and beautiful attempt. He starts as far in the past as a life begins—as far back as those interconnected lives deserve in order to frame them truthfully.

            In this small family, Mother and Father behave as drastically far a part in nature as the two poles of the Earth. Mother exudes and behaves with grace and mercy towards her three young sons. Father lives by the strict savagery of nature—he is a disciplinarian and deeply troubled, and his oldest son, Jack, feels the brunt of his anger and frustration. There are memories of love and hurt, beauty and rage that the adult Jack flashes back to as he lives a seemingly empty existence in the present day. He seems to be reaching for something in his past to help him make sense of who he is now. But the pictures are a jumble within his mind that cannot be teased out from the emotions they provoke in him. Jack fights again the battles of his childhood, hears echoes of profound words spoken in his youth, relives moments beyond simple explanation or comprehension. The sun of summer flashes through the leaves of the tree in the front yard and the sprinkler water sparkles between fingers and toes stretched forth.

            Epic and deeply autobiographical, this film searches to tell the simplest and most complex of narratives. The scenes produced by the filmmakers feel so real and also a few degrees heightened above reality. It is a gorgeous and flawed film. Its scope encompasses more than a three-hour movie can relate, but it tries sincerely and with the ambition this story, anyone's story, deserves. 

Review of the film Moneyball

            General Manager Billy Beane can't watch the baseball games he has laid so much time and energy into winning.  Instead, he drives around the city turning on and off the radio to catch bursts of commentary and updates. He can't be there to witness his team's performance; there's too much riding on this, he's put too much of his life into it and risked his family and livelihood. He is the general manager for the Oakland A's in the 2002 baseball season and his team hasn't had a winning record in many years. Beane has overhauled the team and put faith in the art of statistics. It doesn't sound like the makings of a rousing film, but I was genuinely surprised by how invested in Moneyball I became due to the great performances and snappy, witty dialogue and ideas.

            Director Bennett Miller (Capote) adapts the best-selling book with the help of screenwriters Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) and Steven Zaillian (Gangs of New York). I didn't understand all of the game being described and I've never been good with statistics, but there was more than numbers being discussed in this film. At one time, Beane had been a hot prospect in the baseball world. He was young and well-built, handsome and intelligent, with a mighty swing. But his major league career proved a bust, he literally choked at the opportunity, and the memories of potential never fulfilled have stayed with him into his general managing. Beane, played by Brad Pitt, knows firsthand what those scouts and other managers he constantly argues with still haven't gotten: that the Billy Beanes of the world have little place in the modern baseball stadium. It takes more than a good jawline and a strong stance to win in a league where the Yankees annual budget is three times that of the Oakland A's. Beane hires a young, brilliant statistician named Peter Brand, played by Jonah Hill,  with a knack for crunching player numbers and a deep affection for the game. Then Beane goes about the opening of the 2002 season looking for undervalued but statistically successful players that fit into the team's budget instead of big ticket names that would suck the payroll dry.

            After a lot of firing and hiring, the A's are back in playoff position with a 20 game winning streak. It's a great achievement and has roused the Oakland baseball fans out of their languor with a big league record. It seems that Beane's statistically savvy angle on the game rings true. However, one could say that this streak is a statistical anomaly that should be thrown out with the bath water along with all the other baseball superstitions. But there's a true sense of enjoyment to be had in the A's underdog triumph. Even stats fans can love the game when played well.  The statistics explain only so much, and I could see that as I watched the actors who peopled Moneyball with their nuanced portrayals. It's in the eyes and the spaces around the whip smart words. Math can only explain so much.

Review of the film Haywire

            So Haywire, the Stephen Soderbergh action flick, is a very good movie. I know that it's not just me saying this:  Rotten Tomatoes gives it an 80% fresh score. That's definitely a positive rating from a poll of hundreds of critics from around the country and world. The esteemed Roger Ebert spends most of his review analyzing why young males in this country respond so positively to stories centering on attractive female heroines kicking ass and pummeling the opposition, mostly male, physically and mentally. Maybe it's a pleasure of some sort for these young males—a hidden masochist fantasy playing out before them—that drives so many of these men to seek out these images and tales.  I have to say that most of these heroine driven ass-kicking stories are fashioned and constructed by men, and it could speak to why they are so well-received by a male audience.

            So why am I, as a female, responding so strongly to the images before me in Haywire—of a razor-intelligent and capable woman outwitting and outfighting numbers of strong and smart men--a tale written by a man and directed by a man seemingly for those male audience members I love to hate? I can't fully explain why I loved this movie. There was the angle that this film took, a bit turned or altered from that of most of the action movies I've been previously disparaging.

            Perhaps it’s the masochist in me. But there is something smarter and less condescending about this film’s depiction of a female action star. Suppose we were watching an action film starring a man; we wouldn’t be putting as much emphasis on his acting performance and line readings. We’d be focused on his ability to bear the weight of the action driving the film.

            Former MMA champion Gina Carano stars in the film Haywire. The story is centered around skilled operative Mallory Kane, now retiring from a highly secretive government security contractor. Unfortunately, that last job she performs before retirement is also a set-up. It has been designed to frame and kill her. Instead of becoming a blacklisted corpse, Kane survives and becomes a fugitive from the law. Someone close has double-crossed her, and Kane's life depends upon finding out who and why.

            The majority of the film is action-based, structured and angled around Gina Carano's particular physical skills and abilities. The sequences left me breathless. Her action talent is unmistakable; her agility and presence of mind are there in her every movement throughout the film. Perhaps she isn't the best line reader or dramatic actress; she is up against a formidable cast of distinguished male actors, but there is no doubt that Carano has a future in film with the best of them. Let's just hope it is well-written and directed action thrillers instead of the kinda sad Underworld films.

Review of the film Louder Than A Bomb

            Disclosure: I was there during the years prior to the filming of this documentary. I remember these kids and I even remember parts of their amazing spoken word poems after years. This movie touched me in a way that people who were not present there would never understand. But I’m sure it does wonders for those individuals as well. You can’t help but be affected by the sincerity, verve and talent.

            The film is called Louder Than A Bomb, named for the explosive annual teen poetry slam that takes place in Chicago. The competition was co-founded by an amazing non-profit organization, Young Chicago Authors, which teaches and promotes creative writing and literature throughout the city and surrounding areas. High school aged youths recite personally written poems to audiences of their peers as well as judges. The judges give them scores, and teams and individuals win, yes, but it’s the poem not the points that stay with you long after the slam is finished.

            Directors Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel document the months, weeks and days leading up to the annual competition by focusing on a few enigmatic and diverse handful of participants in 2008. This angle doesn’t lessen one’s understanding of the beauty of the slam; it serves to deepen that understanding. Nova, Nate, Adam and the Steinmenauts slam team are not rosily lit, tentative, one-dimensional young adults. This is a documentary. Most of the television shows and films that feature teen life are written by those with a heavy nostalgia for that period of their lives. They don’t see with the eyes of those who are living it at this moment. These teens are living it; they are living it and shouting about it to audiences who clap and cheer for the realism of their language and expressions. Part of the wonder of the Louder Than A Bomb slam is the audience, full of other teens who appreciate the cadence of a phrase, the unexpected rhyme of a line, the brave effort to speak exactly what you know exactly how it feels to you.

            I recall snatches and pieces of verse all these years later. I volunteered with Young Chicago Authors for a few years after I moved to Chicago in late 2004. I’ve lived here since that year, and this film is the most distinctly Chicago film that I’ve ever seen. It’s because of the words and faces and love of creativity that spills from the projector onto the screen and beyond. It’s true diversity I see there. And the true acceptance that flows from the young people who fill the audience at the competition, listening and responding to the poems being performed. It’s because those poems take me places I’ve never been with a clarity that I could never get anywhere else. Louder Than A Bomb reflects the best that society has to offer. It’s in the stringing together of thoughts and words and gestures into something that has the power to move and inspire. Listen to the poem.

Review of the film Melancholia

Where will you go when the world ends? Who will you be with? And will you look away? Or will you face the end, open your arms and embrace it?

The film Melancholia begins with long, gorgeous strains of the theme from Wagner's Tristan & Isolde and long, drawn out and beautiful shots of scenes that may have never happened. These scenes lead us to understand that another, larger planet is spinning it's way through the darkness towards Earth. Will the two enormous objects collide? In the reality of Director Lars Von Trier, it seems apparent what the answer is to this question.

There is a wedding party inside a sumptuous mansion, lavish and exorbitant, something beyond what the majority of us will ever experience.  The party seems to go on for hours as Justine (Kirsten Dunst), the bride, attempts to smile and bow to her guests and family. But there is a heaviness to her movements and expressions; they come a step too slowly and are a bit stilted. It becomes evident that, despite the beautiful and sympathetic husband, the sudden grand promotion from her boss, the perfection of the festivities and those attending, Justine is not well. And it all comes from within. Her mind is not well.

There are sensations of feeling that cannot be fully understood by those who have ever experienced them. It's to move as if underwater, attempting to walk through the depths of the ocean, fighting the weightlessness, parting the wall of liquid with your hands and shoving, ripping through. Or perhaps, it is like earthy vines wrapping around your wrists, ankles and waist as you attempt to move forward, their grip and gravity pulling you back and down like the heaviest burdens. The world does exist to those under this spell. But it is so overwhelmingly tiresome living in it. Food holds no comfort, companions do not speak an understandable language, rituals offer no easing of tension. Sleep is the only welcome respite.

 Justine lives for these moments, where unconsciousness and dreams offer something beyond everyday existence. It’s a wonder that, with the patterns of her behavior, that she is as tolerated as she is. Those around her quickly come to their boiling points as she languishes in her depression.

But then that new planet draws nearer, so that its coming can be seen in the daylight sky. And Justine suddenly feels lighter, freer, with the end of life closing in on every one of Earth’s inhabitants. Her dark view of the world is becoming true right above her head. And she is soothed that she was always right.

Melancholia is deeply autobiographical for its director. Von Trier has suffered from sometimes crippling depression and anxiety all his life. The film is beautifully executed and the actors, particularly Dunst, inhabit their characters well. She is utterly convincing as someone weighted with a deeply ill mind. But I wonder what Justine’s story would be if she were not of such privileged stuff. How different would she be if she inhabited a lower rung of society? I see Justine in these elements and I do find her tale believable. However, as I watched this film, I speculated about those other 7 billion stories that Von Trier did not tell in his film. In the end, though, they all came to the same fate, it seems.

Will you realize that the end of the world is what you have been waiting for your whole life?

Review of the film Drive

Moments of violence happen everywhere, all the time, and there seems no explanation for most of them. But there are always actions, decisions leading to those seconds and minutes. We just may never know them; their reasons will remain un-divulged by the universe. Be sure they’re there, though, and that a past always proceeds a present.

Ryan Gosling plays the lead character in the new film Drive, unnamed and quiet—a stunt driver for the movies and a car mechanic. He also moonlights as a getaway driver for criminal heists. He has a mantra that he follows for these night-lit jobs: You go in. I start the clock. You have 5 minutes, and I’m yours during that time. A minute on either side of that 5, and I’m gone. He meets a beautiful and kind neighbor, played by Carey Mulligan, and her young, quick to smile son, and that mantra slips from him in a following moment. This moment, laced heavily with his newfound vulnerability, leads to all that comes afterwards—the weighty actions that bring us through the story.

It will come as a surprise to no one that this movie is extremely violent. Nearly every reviewer who has analyzed the film has discussed this. There’s a slow burn to the violence that pervades the end of the story. And it is so shocking because it has taken so long to appear. Gosling’s Driver has been so quiet and coiled throughout the proceedings, but now he is unleashed, brutal and efficient. He is very good at being the kind of violent that the story shows; he is so good at it that one begins to wonder about how he came to be so effective and severe. What in his past lead him to his skill? It certainly isn’t just the part time occupation of a stunt car driver. There has to be more that happened before this. But it’s never divulged in the film. The plot is laser-focused. There are no extraneous details or subplots here to get lost in. The only thing is this story.

            The director, Nicholas Winding Refn (Bronson, Valhalla Rising), has crafted a film that seems deeply felt but also deeply illusive. We feel for these characters, however little we know about them through the pieces the story gives us. It's in the glances, the tone of a single word, the lean of a spine. How does one glean such emotion from so little? I’ve done more with less, believe me. This movie pulls viewers into it like simply opening a passenger side door and slipping inside. It’s just that good.

Review of the film Another Earth

In the film Another Earth scientists discover a new planet in the sky identical to our own right down to the people inhabiting it. Instead of perplexing over the science behind such a surprising anomaly—tides, gravitational forces, physics—the population is thrown into questioning what this means to each of them individually and as a whole. There is the possibility that those duplicates inhabiting Earth Two have made better choices than us, or perhaps, different mistakes. There is the possibility that they are as curious about us as we are about them, that they have some of the same questions.

On the same night of the sudden appearance of Earth Two in space orbiting our sun, Rhoda, a gifted teenager, is celebrating her admittance to MIT. But the planet's distracting presence in the night sky leads to a deadly car crash with Rhoda at the wheel of one of the vehicles involved. She survives, but her life is thrown off its course by the tragedy. Some years later, Rhoda lives an existence of dangerously self-absorbed guilt and regret. She is yoked with these feelings and spends more and more time gazing at the looming specter of Earth Two, visible even in daylight now, wondering about fate and mistakes.

Depressed to the point of self-harm, unable to find forgiveness from herself, she approaches the only other survivor of the car crash. John is a former music professor and composer whose existence is also in disarray ever since that tragic night. Under false pretenses, Rhoda insinuates herself into his life, and they begin a strange and timid romance greatly hindered by loss and the weight and size of Rhoda's secret.

By this time, space travel to Earth Two has become a reality, and there is a contest for a free seat aboard one of the first flights. Individuals must write a 500-word essay describing why he or she is the most qualified candidate to visit the mirror planet. Rhoda sends a submission and wins the spot. You can begin to guess where this development leads.

Director Mike Cahill worked on nature documentaries for the National Geographic Society before making this film his first fictional foray. There is a raw feeling to the proceedings that seems sincerely organic and truthful. This is despite the often overly precocious score or the overtly significant slow-motion tracking shots. Cahill melds the threads of story about loss and regret and those of the science fiction well. This feels like something that could happen, if only because the questions raised seem so organic, as if ones that each of us would ask upon the sudden appearance of a mirror planet in the sky. An occurrence beyond comprehension. Something that could only lead to the deepest soul-searching for each of us.

Review of the film Cowboys & Aliens

 

The synopsis of the film Cowboys & Aliens is in the title. There isn't much more to say. Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford star in this Jon Favreau (Iron Man) directed summer action extravaganza as cowboys in the Old West who encounter and are terrorized by said aliens. These demonic creatures from outer space are out for them and the cast of townspeople inhabiting this world with them. The two starring growlers must band together in order to save the population from certain destruction, and what comes after that offers few surprises.  That is not to say that I was not somewhat entertained; there are enough characters, talking and movement to bolster a viewer along. Plus, I'm a horse girl. And men in chaps do not bother me in the least, especially Daniel Craig.

But again, don't go into this film expecting anything more than advertised. This is a mash-up of genres, sure, but it serves to add nothing to either one. It's too bad, because  the cast could do more with even less. If there were a consistent market for movie Westerns, then Walter Goggins, Keith Carradine and Adam Beach would be appearing in many. Sam Rockwell, a character actor unafraid of chewing some scenery, certainly isn't given much to work with. And I'm sure that Director Favreau could add more flavor to the alien genre as he did with the superhero genre in Iron Man. I guarantee that after the summer is over, this film will be little more than a fuzzy blip on our summer movie memories.

Review of the film Down To The Bone

Snakes are interesting creatures gifted with bone structures most alien compared to that of the human skeletal system. Their skulls consist of complete and solid brain cases but are hinged loosely to the bones of the jaw, allowing for the ingesting of prey larger than the reptiles doing the ingesting. The vertebral column of snakes are composed of 200 to 400 vertebrae and allow them to bend and undulate, unimpeded by their lack of limbs. Most snakes, when killing their victims, use a combination of sharp bite and constriction to subdue before swallowing their prey whole.

The outstanding film Winter's Bone by Director Debra Granik chilled me with its stark realism and the dignity and intelligence of the female lead. The movie garnered great attention for the director and it's then unknown star, Jennifer Lawrence. Before this, Director Granik had quietly but definitively broken onto the scene with another powerful and realistic depiction of a troubled but strong woman confronted with the worst life has to offer. The film is called Down To The Bone based on her award-winning short Snake's Feed and left me quite astounded with its gravity.

Vera Farmiga plays Irene, a grocery cashier, wife and mother of two in upstate New York who goes to great pains to believe her cocaine addiction does not lead her life. She skims along the surface of her life, sometimes wildly happy with coke in her system, and other times desperately crying because her dealer will not accept her son's birthday check from his grandmother in exchange for a fix. This last episode snaps her into entering drug rehab. There she meets a male nurse named Bob who seems to understand her desire to live her life drug free and may also feel something for her. But when she returns to the real world again after only a week of being clean it is obvious that this will be a battle Irene was not expecting.

Every day, every moment, is dictated by addiction and it's hunger within Irene. She may have gone a week without using, but she will forever be an addict. This is a film where you see the inner workings of a person; her life is happening right before us. There are no flashy time lapses by Director Granik, and we are not sparred the discomforts of Irene's journey by smart camera angles or wild storytelling. She takes up a romance with the rehab nurse Bob. The fevered nature of their relationship challenges both their sobrieties, and, with the coming of winter, there is a downbeat playing out of events that seems as close to reality as anything currently on celluloid.

The film does not end tidily as these things never truly do. Irene reminds us that it is difficult to ever forget that which troubles us--that our minds find every reason not to forget. And, in fact, their natures are not to let go until we are swallowed whole. 

Review of the film Monsters

In the low-budget, independent film Monsters, it is quickly explained that in the near future a space probe is sent to Europa, a moon of Jupiter. Upon returning, it crash-lands in Mexico with some sort of alien life-form aboard that escapes into the open and begins infecting the jungles. The results of this infection are giant alien monsters that roam through the forests, responding aggressively only when first attacked and propagating throughout the countryside. This infected area is quickly quarantined, and the United States builds a massive wall to block the monsters from invading the country and begins assaulting them with missiles and explosives from aircraft above.

Andrew is a photojournalist working in the Central American area bordering this infected zone. He chronicles the effects of the monsters and the collateral damage from the battle against them. His wealthy boss orders him to escort his daughter, Samantha, through the infected zone back to the United States where her fiancé is waiting for her return. They fail to board a boat sailing across the Gulf to the coast of the U.S. and are forced to navigate through the very dangerous and wild terrain with hired guns to protect them.

It seems like a standard alien monster movie from the setup, but the creators seem to be attempting something a bit different. Viewers rarely see the giant creatures, but their threat and that of the wild landscape are always present in the tension of a scene, looming about in cast shadows and the lines in the characters' visages.  We do see the aftermath of the carnage wrecked by the war against the alien infection. A young girl's body lies on the dirt road that the small group uses nears a pickup truck that has been destroyed by a missile or a monster; it is difficult to say which one. Andrew has the opportunity to snap several photos of the scene. Journals back in the States would pay a high price for shots of a poor child killed in this conflict. But he hesitates, gazing at the worn shoe that hangs off her toes. Eventually the group moves on, and the creatures' moans are audible all around them as they call to one another, communing across the distance.

Traveling closer to the U.S. border, we see the huge wall that has been built to keep the monsters and infection out. It is an awesome sight, rendered even more impressive by how low the film’s budget was. In the story, however, this wall may not be as effective as it looks and the authorities had hoped. The final scenes take place just across that border as Andrew and Samantha attempt to find someone to point them in the direction of help. This new landscape appears as devastated and abandoned as that they have just come through. The alien monsters are nearby, and as night descends on them, they witness the creatures and begin, perhaps, to understand what their true desires on our planet are. Monsters is an interesting film, certainly not perfect and, at times, quite silly. But the visuals, tone, and ideas are worth the time.