The Review: Tree Of Life

Tree Of Life 8/10

I checked out the movie Tree Of Life with Evie yesterday. I had heard of this movie but never really wanted to see it. I didn't know what it was about except that some had mentioned the fact that the visuals were nice but I did not hear much about the actual story. Evie explained to me that it was not a linear tale which helped because I kept wanting to ask questions about what was happening and what was about to happen.

The movie stars Brad Pitt as a father that is super strict with his sons. You witness the birth of all three of his boys with the idea that one of them is going to die at some point. The mother played by Jessica Chastain is super sweet to her boys while the father, angry that he never followed his true passion in life to be a musician tends to take out the lack of his dream following on the boys, particularly the oldest. There are also scenes involving Sean Penn as one of the children as an adult regretful of how he treated his father after the death of his brother.

Theater Whore: The Martian

The Martian 9/10

This will have some spoilers. “I'm gonna science the shit out of this planet.” And he does! This is not Gravity. Its is not close to that film for a lot of reasons and I was happy for it. The Martian stars Matt Damon as a botanist stranded on Mars after a storm occurs and his crew is forced to leave him behind thinking he is dead. He's not and that sucks because he is stuck on Mars with enough food for a whole crew but not enough to, like, live forever.

The cast of this also includes Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Donald Glover, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, and Chiwetel Ejiofor. They are all really good and even some folks I didn't mention that have smaller parts. A lot of this movie is spent wanting Mark Watney played by Damon to survive. I laughed, I cheered, I screamed “Fuck!” when he did after something went wrong. Watney would spend parts of his days making video logs and complaining about the only music being available being disco which made the movie funnier.

Theater Whore: Zero Dark Thirty

Out of the nine pictures up for best picture at the Academy Awards I have seen seven of them. Why in the hell are there nine movies being nominated?! That’s too much. Tonight I watched Zero Dark Thirty against everything I told myself about the director, Kathryn Bigelow. Not a huge fan of hers and, well, I already know how this movie ends. Yes, I saw Titanic knowing how it ended as well. Shut up. This movie is about the team sent to kill Bin Laden and one woman’s mission to get people to pay attention to her.

There are a lot of actors in this movie but the main one is Jessica Chastain who no matter what anyone says assures everyone that she knows what she is doing and refuses to give up on her searches. The film is almost three hours long and it feels it. Most of the movies up for nomination are at least two hours long but all of them didn’t feel that way. The problem I have with this movie isn’t the length, its that like Amour and Silver Linings Playbook, its not a bad film nor is it good. That’s not to say the acting, cinematography, or story were bad. I just judge movies on whether or not I would see it again or recommend it to someone. I wouldn’t recommend this unless I knew you were a fan of this genre or the people involved in making it.