Reverend's Review: A Theological Tree Worth Scaling

Terrence Malick's long-awaited The Tree of Life had its world premiere at May's Cannes Film Festival and received a decidedly mixed reaction. Reportedly, as many attendees booed as applauded it but the film was ultimately awarded the Palme D'Or, the festival's top prize. It has similarly received as many pans as kudos from US critics since opening in limited release here, and has grossed a mere $9 million at the box office to date.

Malick is the much-revered but far from prolific auteur responsible for such thinking-person's epics as Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line. The Tree of Life is only his seventh film in over 40 years as a director. His movies are naturalistic, frequently wordless, lengthy (this one is 2 ½ hours) and slow moving, all of which translates as "dull" to many modern filmgoers. I do agree with most, though, that Malick's last venture — 2005's The New World, based on the story of Pocahontas — was a colossal bore.

The Tree of Life, however, is easily Malick's warmest movie and may well endure as his masterpiece... although the obnoxious heckler at the screening I attended would surely disagree. It is also a profoundly theological work. While different viewers may draw different conclusions, the movie struck me as being about nothing so much as God's relationship with what God has created. This creation, as depicted in The Tree of Life, includes planets, dinosaurs, and a Texas family struggling with the untimely death of one of its members.

Brad Pitt gives a terrific, multi-layered performance as the domineering head of the O'Brien family, which also includes his wife (the radiant Jessica Chastain) and their three precocious boys. Oldest son Jack (played by newcomer Hunter McCracken as a youngster and Oscar-winner Sean Penn as an adult) increasingly challenges his father's authority as he matures. This serves as a fairly obvious but effective metaphor for many people's relationship with God and/or the faith in which they were raised while transitioning from childhood to adulthood.

Mrs. O'Brien comments early on in The Tree of Life about the choice human beings must make between the order of Nature which, she says, "seeks its own good," or that of Grace, "which seeks the good of all." Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, among others, would appreciate this framing device. The eternal tension between Grace and Nature is subsequently illustrated via gorgeous, painterly sequences (by George Lucas's special effects house, Industrial Light & Magic) replicating the creation of the universe and Earth's primitive past, as well as through Jack's decades-long effort to reconcile the family's loss and his feelings toward his father.

Most of what constitutes dialogue in the movie is intimate voiceovers, wherein the characters question God and themselves about whatever meaning there might be behind everyday events great and small. That makes The Tree of Life a film that must be listened to carefully, which apparently is increasingly difficult for today's cineplex attendees. The excellent music score — much of it woven from seemingly disparate classical and contemporary sources — by Alexandre Desplat (The King's Speech) similarly helps to make this an aural as well as a visual experience. Luminous cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men) accentuates the latter dimension.

Being a Terrence Malick movie, much of The Tree of Life is deliberately paced and intentionally vague. Roger Ebert has compared it to 2001: A Space Odyssey in scope, but I didn't find Malick's work nearly as confounding as Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi/pseudo-religious classic. Adventurous moviegoers who don't require over-amplified sound and 3D glasses (although this is one movie that would be even more spectacular in 3D) will likely be enthralled as I was. The Tree of Life is one of the very best films of 2011 thus far, no matter what its more graceless detractors are saying.

Reverend's Rating: A-

UPDATE: The Tree of Life is now available on DVD and Blu-rayfrom Amazon.com.

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Blade California.

Reel Thoughts: Don't Be Stupid

In a summer full of pumped-up superheroes and marauding car-robots, Crazy, Stupid, Love. is a much-appreciated change of pace, a witty, hilarious and constantly surprising comedy for adults without a single “We got so wasted... what did we do?” joke. Directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (who can do no wrong after I Love You, Phillip Morris) and starring a fantastic cast including Steve Carell, Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling, Marisa Tomei and Emma Stone, Crazy, Stupid, Love. is a multifaceted romantic classic in the vein of Love, Actually (maybe the secret of success is putting punctuation in your title).

Cal (Steve Carell) is blindsided when his wife of twenty-five years, Emily (Julianne Moore), announces over dessert that she wants a divorce, and that she slept with a coworker. Drowning his sorrows at a hip LA bar, he meets Jacob (Gosling), the ultimate player, who takes pity on the clothing-and-haircut-challenged Cal. Jacob gives Cal a macho makeover and ‘lessons with the ladies’, while finally meeting the girl of his dreams (Stone), who makes him want to reform.

Meanwhile, Cal’s thirteen year-old son (the unfortunately-named Jonah Bobo) is madly in love with his seventeen year-old baby sitter (Liv Tyler look-alike and America’s Next Top Model finalist Analeigh Tipton), who in turn, has a crush on Cal. Tomei has a priceless supporting role I can’t divulge, and suffice it to say, there are more surprises in Crazy, Stupid, Love. than in a case of Cracker Jacks. Ficarra and Requa, along with Tangled scribe Dan Fogelman, have mined yet another off-center piece of comedy gold.

Gosling seems to revel in playing off his good looks and killer abs, rather than hiding them as he did in Blue Valentine, and it is a joy to watch. Carell and Moore have such great, mature comic timing and chemistry that you can’t help but root for their success.  Stone is quickly becoming a Julia Roberts wattage star, based on this performance, Easy A and the upcoming The Help.

You would have to be crazy or stupid not to love Crazy, Stupid, Love.

UPDATE: Crazy, Stupid, Love is now available on DVD and Blu-rayfrom Amazon.com.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reverend's Interview: Meet Harmony Santana

Gun Hill Road has been winning rave reviews from critics and audiences since its premiere in competition at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Since then, the film — about a recently-released convict who returns home to discover his teenage son is living as a woman — scored the prestigious opening night slot at Outfest and a theatrical distribution deal. It will open throughout California and the US beginning tomorrow.

I had the opportunity to speak privately with Harmony Santana, who plays the movie's central trans character of Michael/Vanessa, as well as writer-director Rashaad Ernesto Green during their recent visit to Los Angles. Currently undergoing her real-life transition from male to female, the 20-year old Santana is stunningly beautiful both on- and off-screen. She was just beginning the process when Green cast her in Gun Hill Road.

"I was looking for the genuine article," Green said. "I was looking for a real transgender person to play this transgender teen role, which was really hard." It took Green two months of searching through New York City nightclubs, GLBT community centers and drag shows before he was referred to Santana during NYC's Pride events. Santana was working an HIV prevention booth. Green described the part of Michael/Vanessa and asked Santana to audition even though she had no acting experience apart from a high school play.

Of her first professional acting experience, Santana glowingly recalls "It was like I was living a dream; I loved going to set, and the makeup and hair, everything." She said she found great support during the three-month shoot from her much more experienced co-stars Esai Morales (La Bamba, Caprica) and Judy Reyes (Scrubs), who play her parents. Santana gives an outstanding performance, and has already followed it up with what she describes as "a bitchy role" in not one but two entries in the Eating Out comedy series. "This is the start of my career," Santana says of her plan to become a successful actress and ultimately play non-transgender roles.

I asked her how she is both like and unlike the trans character she plays in Gun Hill Road. "We have the same boy problems; I think all transgender people do," Santana said in terms of the similarities. That being said, she had a boyfriend of two months at the time of my interview and reported things were going well. Of the differences, Santana noted her relationship with her father is much more estranged than that shown in the film between Michael/Vanessa and her father. "I haven't spoken to my dad in like four or five years," she said. Fortunately, Santana's family ties with her mother and 15 siblings are much stronger and they have been very supportive of her personal transformation. "I also didn't go through the physical stuff." Santana says in comparison to the abuse that Michael/Vanessa endures from her father and others.

Family isn't only the dominant theme in Gun Hill Road but was, according to Green, the inspiration behind his screenplay. "Someone very close to me in my life went through something similar, where he had a child in transition," Green shared. "I watched their family deteriorate over the course of a few years because of his inability to accept his child's transition, but at the same time he loved his child so much and I saw a child without her father." In the wake of this experience, Green decided he "wanted to make a piece of art that didn't necessarily give all the answers but at least pointed them in the right direction."

Audience response to the finished film (both nationally and internationally) has been tremendous, according to both Green and Santana. "People's eyes are being opened to a world they thought they knew but now they are getting to see another side of it," Green said. Santana has experienced viewers "coming up to me and hugging me and crying and saying how much the film means to them." She appreciates in particular a group of lesbians who came up to her and told her how much she is inspiring them, as well as Facebook messages she regularly receives saying the same.

As a trans person herself, I asked Santana about when she first began realizing she was different from other boys. "I was in the second grade," she replied. "I had gone into the bathroom at school and another boy followed me into the bathroom. We started making out and that was my first kiss ever. It all went from there." The three of us laughed as Santana debated whether her personal and romantic experiences have gone uphill or downhill after that early start.

Santana offered the following advice to other trans people: "Be yourself, be happy, and have hope in your family; they might not be supportive now but it takes time." Even if things don't work out, she spoke encouragingly of finding "family in other places, especially among your friends."

For more information on Gun Hill Road, visit the film's official website.

Interview by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Blade California.

Reel Thoughts: Red Hot Cookie

Melissa Leo wasn’t always a tough older woman with years of experience showing on her face, like her roles in The Fighter and Frozen River. Back in the mid-eighties, Leo was a fresh-faced redhead whose first starring role was as innocent teen hooker Cookie in the Roger Corman exploitation film Streetwalkin’, available on DVD today. The film’s director, Joan Freeman, intended the film as a serious examination of prostitutes in New York’s Times Square, which was a hotbed of sex clubs and adult movie houses in 1985. As she explains in the commentary, however, she understood that she was making a Roger Corman film, which meant that every ten minutes or so, there needed to be nudity, violence or both.

Like an R-rated version of Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield” video, Streetwalkin’ tells the story of a girl who’s been kicked out by her alcoholic mother and flees to New York City with her little brother. She’s at the Port Authority Bus Terminal for all of five minutes before handsome but unhinged Duke (hunky Dale Midkiff in full Elvis impersonator mode) picks Cookie up, compliments her and turns her into a streetwalker. Her fellow working girls include the statuesque “Queen Bee”, played by the luminous Julie Newmar with an unidentifiable accent, Heather (Deborah Offner), Phoebe (Annie Golden) and Star (Khandi Alexander). When Duke beats roommate Heather savagely, Cookie realizes that he is a certified psycho, so she looks for help from another pimp named Jason (Leon). Duke’s “lesson” doesn’t go as planned, and soon Cookie, Queen Bee and Star are fighting for their lives on the mean streets of New York.

Streetwalkin’ also stars Antonio Fargas, a.k.a. Huggy Bear from Starsky & Hutch. The film is a fascinating time capsule of pre-Disney Times Square and Leo does show the depth and complexity she’d later exhibit in Frozen River and her Oscar-winning work in The Fighter. She also shows a bit of skin, although it’s doubtful that many lesbians will enjoy it due to its violence and abuse towards women.

Since Streetwalkin’ is a Roger Corman production, it does have a bit of grindhouse and camp appeal, but you’ll be surprised at how real its seedy setting feels. The commentary by Freeman and producer Robert Alden (who were married when the film was made) gives an intriguing look behind the scenes of a low budget movie.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.