Change Your Image
dcbartel
Reviews
The Tree of Life (2011)
A Tree Grows in Snoozeville
It took an estimated 13 million years for life on this planet to evolve from primordial ooze to its present level. Terrence Malick outlines this biogenesic theorem in what feels like slightly less than real time, pausing occasionally to ask God if this is what he had in mind from the start. At least the interior design is heavenly. Think: Kahlil Gabran reimagined as a columnist for Architectural Digest. To Malick's credit, as dull as his movie is, it's hard to look away and the pacing gives you plenty of time to wrestle with life's weightier questions. Like, why cast Sean Penn to walk silently through desertscapes and ride up and down in elevators? Jessica Chastain is radiant though. She's a natural and the camera loves her. She is deserving of a breakout role, but this isn't it.
The Invisible (2007)
Moronic.
"Sleep walks...and talks." And if it made movies, they'd be like this. This film adaptation of a mildly interesting police procedural teen novel with otherworldly dressing is criminally slick with no logical sense whatsoever. The intent here was to use the genre film as a vehicle for a statement about adolescent angst and how teenagers are invisible to the adult world and each other. The original Swedish version is lent some gravitas by its motivations rooted in racial hatred, but the Hollywood Pictures americanization jettisons all that in favor of a "Fast and Furious" flavor, turning it into a ridiculous "rich boy meets poor girl / poor girl kills rich boy / dead rich boy makes poor girl realize the error of her ways / poor girl saves rich boy" story replete with squealing tires, frigidaire moms and trendily-clad cops who care, all saturated in a syrupy adult-alternative soundtrack. (I don't think I can listen to Snow Patrol again) Director Goyer employs every cliché in his limited arsenal. I think there was even a fleeting homage to "Titanic"!