200 Movies, 1 Woman, 1 Blog

The Tree of Life, 2011, USA

I have  a great deal of respect for this film, but I did not enjoy it. Perhaps I’m wrong in this belief, but I feel that an enjoyable film is one that you savour, and not one that you endure. I felt every moment of this film, and I went away from it without feeling any emotional connection to it. I felt very disconnected from it.

Peter Travers claims that the film was “shot with a poet’s eye”. This is probably the most accurate description of the film I’ve read. The cinematography is truly beautiful. But, may I suggest that the film is like imagism poetry? This poetry makes heavy use of image and metaphor to tell its story. Unfortunately, imagism is far from my favourite genre of poetry. It’s a genre I appreciate, but not one that I actively seek out.

The Tree of Life consists of a series of images and moments, and the audience must put them together to determine the meaning of the film. Much of the story takes place in the 1950s. Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt) and Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain) are raising three young boys. Mr. O’Brien is strict and bitter, while Mrs. O’Brien is light and carefree. They’re representations of nature and grace, respectively, and the conflict between the two. In the present, Jack (Sean Penn) has been heavily affected by the way both his parents raised him, and by a significant incident that occurred as he was growing up. I got the sense that the entire film was from Jack’s perspective, and that the scenes in the 1950s were his memories.

There was a beautiful sequence about a half an hour into the film depicting the birth of the universe. This was one of my favourite sequences in the entire film. It was beautifully shot. My only thoughts were that it was awkwardly integrated into the film. As in…it wasn’t really integrated at all. But that was consistent throughout the entire film. It was very scattered, which is consistent with my idea that the film was from Jack’s perspective. Memories are not linear; instead, they are scattered. They’re not reliable indications of how events really occurred, because they are coloured through time and reflection.

Chastain received a nomination for her work in The Help, but I’d argue she was more worthy of a nomination for her work in The Tree of Life. She gave an excellent performance.  Pitt played a character very different from any I’ve seen him play before, and I appreciated his performance, as well.

I believe The Tree of Life is worth seeing, and that it is an important film. That being said, I do not ever want to see it again. I’m sure I would have found more enjoyment in the film if I had an emotional connection to it. I felt nothing as I watched it, but this seems like the type of film you either connect with or you don’t.

Interview with a Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, 1994, USA

I shouldn’t have bothered with this movie. A few years ago, I borrowed a copy of the book from the library and couldn’t even finish. I got about 80 pages in before I became too disgusted with it and returned it. I thought it was nothing more than poorly written erotic drivel. It really speaks to how bad I thought the book was, because I almost never cease to finish a book or a movie. I had been reassured by someone that the movie is “far better”, so I recorded it a few months ago. This afternoon, I decided it was time to get it off my PVR so I reluctantly watched it.

The film is the story of Louis (Brad Pitt) and his life as a vampire. He is transformed by Lestat (Tom Cruise) who is desperate for a companion. Lestat and Louis have a difficult, and in many ways, sexually complex relationship. Lestat transforms a young girl named Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) in order to give Louis a reason to remain with him.

Vampires have been portrayed as erotic creatures throughout literary history, so it wasn’t necessarily the erotic content of the film that bothered me – it was just how hokey and forced it was. Cruise is entirely unconvincing as a bisexual vampire. Every time he touches a human being – woman or man, he looks repulsed by the act. The faces he made when he’s acting out sexual pleasure made me erupt into fits of giggles. It was painfully awkward to watch. Anne Rice claims was satisfied with Cruise’s performance, saying that “he was Lestat for me”. Evidently she has no perception of what decent acting is. Or, he managed to “improve” on her exceedingly weak story.

Through most of the film, I was expecting Cruise to pull off the lame wig, grab a pistol and start shootin’ bad guys. He was just embarrassing in the movie. Pitt was marginally better, but the real star of the movie is Dunst. She made the movie slightly more tolerable.

The story wasn’t great, either. I felt no sympathy for any of the characters, nor did I particularly care what they were up to. The film plays out like a soap opera. In some ways, it reminded me of the The Twilight Saga, but this movie is actually worse than any of the three movies currently released in that series. I have many moral and intellectual objections with The Twilight Saga, but at least they didn’t completely bore me.

I do need to give one bit of praise to the filmmakers: the costumes were fantastic. I was consistently blown away by the beautiful dresses the female characters wore. They were really the only standout in an otherwise terrible movie.

Moneyball, 2011, USA

I need to be honest: I’m not a baseball fan. This is probably the first baseball film I’ve ever seen. But I truly enjoyed it, and my lack of detailed sporting knowledge didn’t hinder the experience too much.

The Oakland Athletics are a lower budget baseball team and cannot afford the top players and the salaries they come with. Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is their General Manager and has to find a way to replace their best players who have signed contracts with more lucrative teams. He meets Peter (Jonah Hill), an economics major who uses statistics to determine which players are the best, instead of the traditional scouting system. His claim: many players are undervalued because of quirks in their playing style or their personal life. Billy hires Peter and together they come up with a new roster of undervalued players. Their strategy is an unpopular one, and they face opposition from the team’s coach (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

The film does use statistics at times throughout the film, and of course, those all went over my head. I don’t know a thing about batting averages or on plate averages. But that wasn’t a big deal as the filmmakers were careful to make it accessible to everyone. If our protagonists were happy with the players they were picking, I just assumed they had good averages.

I’m not the biggest Brad Pitt fan, admittedly, but he did a decent job with the film. Him and Jonah Hill had good chemistry and worked well together. Hill is playing the same awkward sort of character he often plays, but he was a charming sidekick. The story itself was very interesting. I had no idea that this sort of analysis was possible in baseball, and is apparently pretty commonplace today. I often underestimate the amount of skill it takes to put together a sports team. The folks who build a team (whether professional or not) need to look at the skill of the players and work to complement all of the people on the field (or ice) at any given time. It must be a ton of work.

Would it be possible to adapt this sort of analysis for other sports, such as hockey? I thought of the Winnipeg Jets as I watched this film. We must have one of the smaller budgets in the league, so if we were able to sign talent that has been “undervalued”, that would be great for the team.

While Moneyball definitely isn’t the sort of movie I see often, I really enjoyed it. It was a nice surprise.

Seven Years in Tibet, 1997, USA/UK

This movie is based on the real life Heinrich Harrer, the mountain climber who eventually befriended the Dalai Lama.  It is based on his book of the same name.

Heinrich (Brad Pitt) decides to leave Europe because he is not ready for the responsibilities of fatherhood.  He leaves his pregnant wife (Ingeborga Dapkunaite), who is furious with him.  Coming along on the expedition is Peter Aufschnaiter (David Thewlis). Peter and Heinrich have a difficult relationship and are often arguing.  Their mountain climbing expedition ends when the British army captures them and puts them in a POW camp because they are Austrian.  They escape and end up in Tibet.

I thought the first half of the movie was gripping and very beautiful.  But the second half of the movie, when Heinrich and the Dalai Lama (Jamyang Jamtsho Wangchuk) meet and become friends actually drags for me.  I suppose I personally found the travel portions of the film more interesting.  It doesn’t help that I disliked Pitt in the movie.  He has an atrocious “Austrian” accent, and he plays an arrogant jerk.  I don’t understand why arrogant jerks always end up being the “hero” in these sorts of films.  I suppose it’s because we get to root for them when they change and become selfless – which always seems to happen.  The second half of the movie focuses more heavily on Heinrich, so I’m sure that’s why I had some difficulty with it.

Pitt has a history of playing arrogant sort of characters, doesn’t he?  Is it because of the way he looks?  He’s “handsome” and that must have gotten him type cast as the arrogant young man early on in his career.  Age has been good for his career.  He’s branched out and has played a wider variety of roles in the last 10 years.

Despite the fact that I didn’t care for the second half of the film, I find the real life story of Heinrich and the Dalai Lama to be quite touching.  They remained friends until Heinrich’s death in 2006.  They knew each other for over 50 years.  That’s quite an amazing thing.

The story of the making of the film is really fascinating.  Pitt, Thewlis, and the director, Jean-Jacques Annaud were all permanently banned from entering China.  The movie takes a heavily pro-Tibet stance and the Chinese characters are shown in an unflattering light.

Additionally, about 20 minutes of footage in the film was shot in Tibet.  Two camera crews snuck into Tibet to get this footage.  That’s pretty amazing considering what the consequences would have been had they been caught shooting this footage.

I wouldn’t say I hated the movie – more that I was lukewarm on it.  I don’t know if I’d ever watch it again, but I’d say that it’s worth viewing at least once.

Twelve Monkeys, 1995, USA

I’d heard people rave about this movie many years ago and never got around to the movie until tonight. For some reason I was expecting more of an action movie. I suppose that’s because I think of Bruce Willis as an action star. But it was a science fiction drama and contained relatively little action.

Willis plays James Cole, a prisoner who lives in a futuristic underground society. Humanity was forced underground after a virus wiped out 99 per cent of the human population. He is offered his freedom if he goes back in time to get a sample of the virus. Along the way, he meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt) at a mental hospital. Goines is a crazy anti-consumerist and animal rights activist. He also meets and eventually kidnaps Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe), his psychiatrist at the mental hospital.

I really love science fiction and I’ve lamented the fact that I haven’t watched much of it over the course of this project. I particularly love post-apocalyptic science fiction. I like the examination of humanity. I think our existence is a very fragile thing, and that we must be able to retain our humanity, even in the face of destruction. I’ve argued with people on that point and I’ve been called an idealist because of this belief. But, I think it’s important to be a good person, even if nobody else is around to see it (as in, nobody exists to see it). I argued this point after watching The Road, which was my favourite movie of 2009. In 12 Monkeys, humanity is retained to some extent, but it is implied that the government has taken on a totalitarian tone.

I’ve actually written some over the course of my life, including an entire novella. I’m sure I still have it somewhere. I wrote it when I was 16 so it isn’t anything great, but the idea is halfway decent. It served as a commentary of extremist political beliefs. If I were to ever rewrite it, I’d change some aspects of the plot to further develop that theme.

Twelve Monkeys is also a commentary on political extremism, but it also looks at the impact of memory on the human mind. As we all know, memory isn’t exactly a reliable thing. I really loved the movie. It did drag on at times, and a good ten or fifteen minutes could have been cut, but it was excellent. Unlike many other science fiction movies, this one doesn’t rely on faux-scientific explanations. James goes back in time, presumably using a technology that hasn’t been discovered yet in our “modern” world. It’s not important HOW it happens, just that it happens. I enjoy both approaches, and I think it just depends on what works for a particular movie.

One thing I can’t decide is whether I liked Pitt’s performance or not. He got nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars and won a Golden Globe for the performance. Something about his performance irked me, though. I cringed every time he was on screen. I guess it just seemed exaggerated and fake to me. But I also understand that I don’t particularly like Pitt. What does everyone think of his performance in this movie? Did they like it or did they dislike it?

I’m thinking of watching Philadelphia tomorrow. I almost watched it tonight, but I was in more of a science fiction mood. Should I watch it tomorrow?

Legends of the Fall, 1994, USA

Recommended by: Cindy, Robin and Amber

First off, a fun fact I found out on IMDB trivia: the movie was originally set to be filmed here in Winnipeg, but the city refused to move some trees, so production was moved to Alberta and British Columbia.

I didn’t know anything about this movie when I put it on. All I knew was that Brad Pitt was really good looking in the movie. Not in my opinion, since I’ve never understood the hype surrounding his apparent good looks, but other women tend to think so. After watching the movie, I can say that, no, I did not find him attractive in the movie. But I don’t fault other women for finding him attractive.

Pitt stars as Tristan, the wild and rebellious middle brother to cautious Alfred (Aidan Quinn) and young and naive Samuel (Henry Thomas). They live in rural America with their father, Col. William (Anthony Hopkins). When Samuel returns from school with his fiancée, Susannah (Julia Ormond), their lives are changed forever when all three brothers realize they love Susannah. The movie spans a number of years, from World War I to the late 1920′s (during prohibition), to the 60s.

I loved the movie, except for one tiny, little thing that bothered me, especially at the beginning of the movie. Pitt’s character is rebellious and unstable, yet Susannah is in love with him. His brother Alfred is a safe man, who’ll stick around and love her dearly. It got me thinking about stereotypes – do all women want to “tame” the wild and rebellious man, instead of marrying the one who’ll always be there? I honestly could not see what was so attractive about Pitt’s character. It does seem that, for dramatic purposes, in movies, women tend to go for the ones that are dramatic. Because marrying a character like Alfred just doesn’t make for an interesting movie, I guess. I’ve noticed that Hollywood tends to romanticize wild and “untamable” men, when, in reality, women who try to settle down with men like that generally get their hearts broken. But movies bear little resemblance to real life.

This annoyance quickly dissipated as I “got to know” Tristan. He became a remarkably complex and tragic character. All of the characters had a complexity to them. The movie itself was one of the saddest movies I’ve ever seen. A large part of it was the performances. All of the actors give realistic and painfully heartbreaking performances. Often, they were acting without speaking, and their body language was enough to convey tragedy. Hopkins was especially good at this. I cried a lot during this movie.

I’ve realized that 1994 was a really kick-ass year for movies. There was The Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction and Ed Wood, among many others. It’s no wonder this movie wasn’t nominated for Best Picture. There were too many other amazing movies released that year. And, surprisingly, this movie wasn’t especially well-received by critics. It was seen as being melodramatic. It was certainly a tragic and emotional movie, but I wouldn’t say it was melodramatic. I thought it was a beautiful movie. It’s definitely an underrated movie at the very least.