The Tree of Life review

Throughout the history of film, many directors have been utterly fascinated by time as a concept. The passage of it, how it affects people, if it's possible to alter it. The great filmmaker Terrence Malick is certainly interested in time, but to leave it at that would be doing him an enormous disservice. Malick is interested in time, but he looks at it differently. Time is a force of nature for Malick. No different than the vast and rolling storm clouds he photographed in Days of Heaven. No different than the expansive plains of the Southwest in Badlands. Time is an unstoppable entity that is intertwined with anything and everything. One does not outrun it any more than they would outrun a mountain. It is simply always present and moving. Malick's film, The Tree of Life, looks at time as a constant fluid, moving back and forth, flowing together like paint mixed with water. In the movie, the audience follows the creation of the universe, from beginning to end, juxtaposed with the evolution of a small family of five in the 1950's American Midwest. Malick descends on childhood, watching them grow and change. Marital disputes and stick ball in the streets set against the backdrop of the literal infinite. Another filmmaker with different intentions might see this small family life vs. big universe story as an opportunity to show how insignificant and small we as a human race are. To show that little problems do not matter at all and it is all going to end eventually. Malick just isn't that cynical. It is quite possible that small familial difficulties don't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but that doesn't make them any less emotional and heartbreaking as a supernova or formation of a galaxy. Malick shoots these grand solar system movements with the same awe-filled eye as he shoots a small child looking up at sunlight coming through the trees. The small child is Jack O'Brien (Hunter McCracken), an average and sometimes troubled boy growing up mid-twentieth century. His father (Brad Pitt) is a rough man who treats his children with discipline and occasional anger. The actions of Mr. O'Brien seem cruel and abusive by today's standards, but they were less so at the time. And Mr. O'Brien does love his children and wife. He wants nothing but the best for them. His methods are tough and painful, but in his mind this is what will make them strong for the gritty "real" world that lies ahead in their path of life. In the end he accepts the error of his ways. "I wanted to be loved because I was great; A big man. I'm nothing. Look at the glory around us; trees, birds. I lived in shame. I dishonored it all, and didn't notice the glory. I'm a foolish man." He knows he did bad things. But he changed. Nature, as a whole, did not change. It is still as glorious as it has ever been, unblinking and constant. As Jack grows up to be a man, he works as a disgruntled architect in New York. The wind swept fields and everlasting summer nights of his youth have been replaced by looming skyscrapers and fixtures of metal and glass. Jack is unhappy. "Everyone is greedy. It's getting worse." he says. It seems something big is on the horizon, something grander than before. In what seems to be dreams Jack treks through desert terrain and surreal landscapes, filled with women in white dresses and door frames, leading to where? Jack is looking for answers. Is there a God? Why was his brother killed so young? Is he important? Malick does not know the answers to these questions, although he is interested in the answers. The film is better for it. It is not a movie of staunch facts and mathematical answers, but of hopeful questions and wide eyed amazement. The Tree of Life is a film of ambition matched only by Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yet, it is a remarkably different film. Malick resembles Kubrick in his visual eye for epic events and philosophical intrigue in the unknown and the beginning of time. Where they differ, is in the way the two portray these grand sweeps of time. Malick is warmer. He has more faith in humanity, despite their multitudes of flaws. He is also looking at the whole of time in a different way. Where Kubrick saw it as a beginning-to-end type manner, eventually coalescing with a trippy divergence into another reality, Malick sees the history of time as a series of rivers, flowing into each other with a constant fluidity. It makes for a glorious and incredible viewing experience. The film itself really is not for everyone. In the most rigid sense of the word, it does not have a plot. It looks at life in an impressionistic manner, showing a series of moments and feelings. In the way Malick has portrayed it, I felt it to be remarkably powerful. However, if one is looking for the usual plot formula, they shouldn't be looking here. Yet, I would say it does have a plot with a beginning, middle, and end. It is the story of everything. Not just life itself, and even more than the universe. Time. It is the story of time.      

Inherent Vice review

It's only after the smoke clears and the euphoria wears off that we can look around at it all and ask "What just happened?" Cinema, pure and not-so-simple. That, my friend, is what has just happened. With Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson has deconstructed the gumshoe detective film genre and created one of the best novel adaptations of the past ten years. When I first saw the trailer for the movie, it looked quite a lot like a return to the hyper-energetic fast moving Anderson of the 90's. The man behind Boogie Nights and Magnolia. That couldn't be further from the truth. Inherent Vice is Anderson at his most constrained and wistful. He completely abandons elaborate and exuberant camera moves for slow dollying in on characters and very relaxed tracking shots, perfectly fitting the film's tone. This is the kind of movie I'd imagine an elderly man sitting on his front stoop in a rocking chair telling as he watches his fragile life slip from his fingers. It plays as a fondly looked back upon memory, with a hint of regret. It is very fitting Neil Young's song "Journey Through the Past" accompanies the soundtrack. The film takes place on the verge of change. An era of hippies and long-haired relaxation specialists being pushed to the fringes of society. The violent advent of Charles Manson certainly hasn't helped anything. Larry "Doc" Sportello (played by Joaquin Phoenix) is a good-natured P.I. holding on to the past with the help of plenty of marijuana and late night pizza. He's just a guy who wants to stay cool and do the right thing. Like a bowling ball dropped through a window, Doc is plunged headfirst into a complicated case involving a supposed dead saxophone player, a mysterious organization that might be a boat called the Golden Fang, and many other loose strands that require a very clear head to keep in place. The plot isn't as hard to follow as some may have said, but it doesn't matter. The convoluted case isn't what's important in this movie. Like it's spiritual predecessor The Big Lebowski, Inherent Vice is a movie about characters, tone, and setting. The many complications of the plot are also due to Anderson lampooning the noir genre, which is notorious for its numerous complicated plot strands. Just look at some famous examples like The Maltese Falcon or North By Northwest. They are all over the place, and that is part of their genius! Anderson understands this perfectly, and uses all of it to his advantage. The novel Inherent Vice is a personal favorite of mine and its writer, the famed Thomas Pynchon, is also a writer I admire very much. PT Anderson is also a fan of Pynchon. His film here is not just hero worship. He is taking his knowledge and love of film and applying it to his love of the work of Thomas Pynchon to create a perfect Pynchonion vibe filtered through the pot haze of early 1970's California. It's nothing short of beautiful. One thing Anderson added in that was not in the novel is voice over narration from one of the secondary characters, Sortilege (Joanna Newsom). In adding this, Anderson was able to capture Pynchon's wonderful use of language and apply his own personal literary touch. All of it works to near perfection. This was shot on 35mm, and it looks stunning on the big screen. There has been a shift toward shooting on digital recently, and this film is proof that film is a medium that still has its place. The whole thing looks gorgeous, mainly because of the celluloid it was shot on. It certainly helped that Robert Elswit, a long-time cinematographer for Anderson, was working here. He is one of the best (the best?) cinematographer working in Hollywood today and deserves some recognition for his work here. Holding it all together are the wonderful ensemble of actors working here. Joaquin Phoenix, channeling his inner Dude, does some great work (as expected) here. He truly embodies his character and never hits a wrong note. Josh Brolin plays a macho cop and opposite side to Phoenix's detective. Brolin has always been good. But this here may be his best work. He is funny, yet subtle, and delivers some of the movie's best lines. Joanna Newsom is great, Katherine Waterson is great, Benicio del Toro is great, Reese Witherspoon is great. Really, everyone is great. Overall, it's a masterpiece. A pot-fueled, funny, wistful, journey through post-60's California. While it might not be There Will Be Blood, Inherent Vice is more or less the best new film I've seen in 2014.

The Master or The Young Man and the Sea: A Deconstruction of Paul Thomas Anderson's Exquisite Masterwork

Freddie Quell is a bird of the vast, grey, and infinite sky. He drifts through life like dust motes in a shaft of afternoon light. Women, jobs, alcohol, and people in general try to pin him down. To label him, diagnose him, explain him. Put him in the cold dank prison cell we all call a purpose. Many think they have the answers to Freddie, they know what's wrong with him. Whether it be doctors, therapists, or Philip Seymour Hoffman's charismatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd. Many try, but they all fail. Quell is a character like that of some elusive and far away indecipherable message. One can try and understand him, to grasp him and fit him into a peg in society, but they will fail. When Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master was released in 2012, a common criticism was that Joaquin Phoenix's character Freddie Quell did not change, evolve, or develop. He started out a confused and mumbling drunk and then stayed that way throughout the entire movie. What critics failed to realize was that Quell wasn't supposed to change. To have him develop would be completely disregarding everything the film has worked to establish. In fact, in launching this very complaint at the movie critics themselves are falling prey to the exact mistake almost every character in the film made: they tried to put Freddie under an umbrella. This is an impossible feat. He is a man so broken by the war, by life. Left with nothing to do but float drunkenly through the bottomless abyss of this here world we are all prisoner to. Freddie is the unchanging sea. Try as we might, we simply cannot chart his waters. No Captain Cook could ever penetrate through the exterior of him. Philip Seymour Hoffman's last monologue sums it all up perfectly: "Free winds and no tyranny for you, Freddie, sailor of the seas. You pay no rent, free to go where you please. Then go, go to that landless latitude and good luck. If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you'd be the first in the history of the world." Freddie is a seaman, a directionless drifter who is bound by no chains, subjugated by no master. The film opens with a beautiful shot that repeats throughout the film. The flowing vibrant blue ocean. It is breathtaking simple. It is Freddie Quell himself. At another point in the beginning of the movie, Freddie lies down next to a woman he has crafted out of sand on the beach. In what I believe is the very last shot of the film, he once again lies down next to this mysterious sand mistress in an almost identical shot. He has not changed. Held down by no bride, he chooses to lie with the alluring beauty of the sea. I've often hear people complain about this movie in that it is too confusing and has little to say. Hogwash, says I. Anderson awes us and entrances us with his visuals and complex story about cults and religion. Yet, at heart The Master is truly about one man and his quest for ultimate freedom. A man so detached and broken off from the regularity of society he can only drift among the eternal waves of the Pacific. The film takes a look at the effects of war on a single man, but doesn't do it in the same formulaic way we have all seen before.  In many ways, Freddie's inherent wanderlust has made him a better person than most of the characters in the film. He, at least, is outright with his flaws of drunkenness and laziness. He does not hide behind any veneer, nor does he make himself slave to his intricacies and downsides. Everyone else in the film chains themselves to their persona's and auras of perfection they think they have. Amy Adams character looks down on Freddie as a boozer and possible criminal, but is too cold and uppity to see her own problems. Hoffman's Lancaster Dodd is so trapped in his hubris and power trip he simple cannot realize that he shouldn't try to change Freddie, but that it's really himself that needs changing. The Master in this film is not Dodd, but Quell. A man who in having no master, has become the master himself. Master of living life the way he sees fit. Like an eagle flapping its wings, Freddie glides along the winds of pure freedom and easy living. He is a man out of place in time, for there is no real time for Freddie. He lives outside the boundaries of linear time. His time is an ocean, and he is commander of the ship sailing on its waves. The Master is a beautiful, somewhat misunderstood, masterpiece from the Kubrick of today. An austere and wondrous tone poem that looks at humanity for what we are. "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." I believe F.Scott Fitzgerald unintentionally sums up the film best.

Persona review

Persona is an illusion. A nightmare, an acid trip, a Kafkaesque beach vacation. Persona is a movie. 

I don't think a movie has ever really emotionally effected me quite like this one. After the credits rolled and the film was done, I continued to think about Ingmar Bergman's Persona. I sifted the scenes through my mind, thought about the movie in depth. I found myself shaking. My stomach churned. I was honestly shaken by this movie. It reached into the confines of my psyche and asked me questions about what made me, me. I'm not entirely sure what to make of a film like this. Moments after the movie had finished, I stared at the screen and thought to myself "What the hell did I just witness?". I'm still sort of asking myself that, but in a less condescending manner. Persona is about a nurse (Bibi Andersson) who is tasked with looking after an actress (Liv Ullmann) who, by her own free will, has decided to stop talking. It's about much more than that though. In some ways it's about the human condition and what makes us snap, in other ways it's about films and movies. The film is incredibly aware that it's a movie. At certain points the screen starts rip up as if the film in the projector had caught fire. At another point in the film it cuts to a camera crew and even the director himself, filming the very movie we are watching. I suppose it's the first 'meta' film in that way. I haven't seen anything by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman until now, but if Persona is any judgement of his other work than I'm sure the guy's a genius. Any director that can truly cut to the core of a person through a film is bound to be more than talented. Watching Persona reminded me of another movie I watched this year, Under the Skin. Throughout watching Under the Skin my mind went through a whirlwind of emotions. At first I was confused, and then I kind of liked it, and then I hated it, then I was confused again, and finally I was left in utter shock when it ended, still not entirely sure what my final opinion was on the film. After much thought, I came to absolutely love Under the Skin and have seen it twice now. That's basically how I feel about Persona. A film so strange, off-putting, and hypnotic that I had no idea what to make of it at first but now want nothing more than to see it again. I suppose you could call it a difficult film, and I imagine many people wouldn't like it very much. An understandable opinion, but I do urge you to give it a try with an open mind. It is a truly awesome movie. Some classics, while still good, seem to lose their power with time. Persona is not one of these movies. It is as powerful and scary and interesting as I imagine it was back when it was released in 1966. Practically everything about it is impeccable. The two lead actresses, Ullmann and Andersson, are fantastic. Every scene they're in radiates with dominance and talent. They're in pretty much every scene in the film and really have to devote themselves. They do not disappoint. Bergman, as I mentioned before, does a masterful job really reaching out and disturbing the calm in the audience. He creates such awesome and wonderful tension here that I don't think I've seen in any other films. He can make you sit on edge with nothing more than a closeup. And he holds his shots extremely long, which is very admirable. I often hear people dismiss black and white films, and even more so, foreign films as being pretentious or boring. I do not think Persona is either of these things. It's a classic. What more can I say. A film that's confounding and weird yet so captivating and intriguing. The film is about two different people, a nurse and an actress, who begin to meld personas. What an incredibly strange idea for a movie! But it works very well. And in doing so, creates an experience comparable with nothing else. Persona is a twisted and cool little film I feel will stay with me a long time. I will return to it, and hopefully I'll get even more out of it then. As of now, all I will say is that it is a great movie. I wasn't sure of this immediately after watching it, but am sure of it now. Persona is simply, a masterpiece. 

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Snowpiercer review

According to the movies, the future is going to be pretty damn bleak and depressing.
Totalitarian governments, nuclear fallout, global wars....Our inevitable fate comes in many forms. For certain sociological reasons, movies are much more negative nowadays. Focused on The End. So many films detailing the apocalypse are released. Whether it's The Hunger Games or World War Z, our world seems to be in constant turmoil. Another 'end of world' film has to do something drastically different. It has to be well-done, but also intriguing, smart, exciting, and new. Bong Joon-Ho's Snowpiercer is all those things and so much more. It's an action movie for the ages. The plot of Snowpiercer is cool enough as it is. In the near-ish future of 2031, the entire world has frozen over and most of humanity is extinct. The few remaining survivors have packed onto a giant train that perpetually circles the Earth. This isn't your ordinary train. The train is divided up into classes, or castes if you will. The back of it, the tail, is where the poorest of the poor stay. It is dirty and depressing. The people are hungry and sad. And angry. A revolt is brewing in the air. Then there's the front of the train. Golden, fat, and rich. Instead of starving, these passengers feast on steak dinners and wear decadent colorful clothing. The front of the train is where all control lies. Where the seemingly evil and omnipotent ruler Wilford (Ed Harris) lies. Curtis (Captain America himself, Chris Evans) is a tense and angry man living in the back of the train. He and his friend Edgar (Jamie Bell) are planning a revolt. They have almost the entirety of the back of the train in on it. They're just waiting for the right time. The film starts off with a slow burn, but once the revolt starts, things begin to go bang. Snowpiercer is ridiculously exciting. The thing is, the film only takes place on a train. A big train, sure, but it's still a train all the same. It's impressive how much director Bong Joon-Ho is able to do with the confined space. It reminds me a bit of a foreign action film that came out a few years ago called The Raid. The Raid kept excitement and tension while only taking place in a single building. That's good cinema. Snowpiercer keeps excitement and tension except it takes place on a train. Except Snowpiercer not only is cool and exciting, it has a lot to say. It's more than an action movie. That's great cinema. The film works perfectly well on just an entertainment level. It's got plenty of battles, showdowns, and ticking time bombs for the adrenaline junkie inside you. But it also has things to say about our society and a solid human story. Snowpiercer not only entertained me, it made me feel cinematically nourished. When watching the movie, it soon becomes evident that the train they're on is a microcosm for our society. Films that do things like that can often feel heavy-handed and annoying, Snowpiercer isn't that at all. I feel weird calling a movie like this an epic, but in many ways it is. It's ambitious and magisterial. Epics traditionally take place on a grand scale, like a desert or a large alien planet (think Lawrence of Arabia or Dune). Bong Joon-Ho's direction make the train feel larger than it is. He makes it feel like its own world, because it is in a way. The train is the entire world for the people on board. It's only fitting that it feels that way. The acting here is very solid. Chris Evans is great as the lead hero. He doesn't go too much out of his range, but he holds his own quite well proving he is our next great action star. Tilda Swinton gives what's probably the best performance in the film. She plays a government worker with false teeth and the accent of a English schoolteacher. She's evil, and I wanted her to die the entire time, but she's also very funny and entertaining to watch. None of the rest of the cast really stood out for me. John Hurt plays a kindly and wise old man (a character I felt he'd played before) and Ed Harris didn't do anything I hadn't seen him do. But overall, Snowpiercer is awesome. An intelligent, exciting, and hopeful sci-fi film that we really don't get enough of these days. It'll be one of the best films of the year for sure. I just can't wait to see it again. I give Snowpiercer a 4.5 out of 5 stars. Happy Viewing! Don't forget to throw me a like on Facebook at Facebook.com/WhitsMovies and follow me on Twitter @WhitsMovies.