“The Tree of Life” – Domestic existentialism

Dir. Terrence Malick
(2011, PG-13, 139 min)

There are a lot of ideas contained within Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life, so many that I couldn’t keep hold of any one for long. I’m not sure Malick does either. It opens with tragedy: Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain), a suburban mother, receives a telegram informing her that her middle son has died. What follows is a montage of mourning so vague it takes us a while to learn that the boy was nineteen at his time of death, and we never learn the exact cause, though perhaps he was killed in action somewhere – I’m not sure how many other kinds of death notices come by telegram, though not many deliverers of death notices are as nonchalant as this one. Those are the kinds of details that preoccupied me during this film, but never mind that for now. What is important is that a child has died, and the existential journey that follows – tracing, it seems, the birth of the universe and the beginnings of life on Earth – seems to be driven by that terrible grief.

“Fair Game” – The Plame game

Dir. Doug Liman
(2010, PG-13, 108 min)
★ ★

What’s wrong with Fair Game can best be observed in its depictions of infamous Bush administration officials Scooter Libby and Karl Rove. Libby (David Andrews), whose entrance could as easily have been scored to the Star Wars Darth Vader music, storms into the halls of the CIA, where he demands that someone make the case that Saddam Hussein is acquiring weapons of mass destruction; no one investigating Iraq believes there’s credible evidence, except one zealous half-wit who soon is briefing the President on aluminum rods. Later, Libby and Rove (Adam LeFevre) conspire to ruin covert operative Valerie Plame and her husband Joe Wilson, and they’re so cartoonishly sinister that even a good liberal like me can’t take any satisfaction. All they’re missing are white cats to stroke and mustaches to twirl.

Academy Awards 2009: Oscars in Review

How did you do in your Oscars pool? My guess is very well. Like the rest of us. I made predictions for every category except the short-film races, which I knew little or nothing about. Of the categories I predicted, I was correct on every race but two: Sound Mixing (I picked The Dark Knight, the winner was Slumdog Millionaire) and Foreign-Language Film (I picked France’s The Class, the winner was Japan’s Departures). Was the Oscar telecast predictable? Resoundingly so. Was it boring? No.

Academy Awards 2009: Predicting the Winners (Acting)

BEST ACTOR:
Nominees: Richard Jenkins (The Visitor); Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon); Sean Penn (Milk); Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button); Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

Winner: Sean Penn
After Mickey Rourke won the Golden Globe and delivered his touching speech, it appeared that momentum might have been shifting away from early favorite Sean Penn to the Comeback Kid. Penn’s victory at SAG put him back out front, but this is a tight two-man race.

Penn has other factors working in his favor. First, he plays a real person. Oscar is a sucker for stars transforming themselves for lofty biopics: Forest Whitaker (Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland), Helen Mirren (Elizabeth II in The Queen), Marion Cotillard (Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Truman Capote in Capote), Jamie Foxx (Ray Charles in Ray), Adrien Brody (Wladyslaw Szpilman in The Pianist), and so on. Second, Milk has widespread Academy support that The Wrestler doesn’t have: eight nominations, including Best Picture. But watch out for Rourke if voters decide that it’s too early for another coronation for Penn, who won this award just five years ago for Mystic River.

“Milk”

Dir. Gus Van Sant
(R) ★ ★ ★ ½

I debated myself on the way home from Milk. I took notes full of stylistic criticisms and disappointments, and soon I was almost convinced I hadn’t seen a very good film. However, I knew I had seen a very good film, one that affected and galvanized me. Its story has an emotional power beyond any qualms about its aesthetics.