movie critique: 'the tree of life'

terrence malick directs
brad pitt
sean penn
jessica chastain



rating: 'perplexing'

you feel a sort of personal antipathy towards period movies due to their inability to apply existentially to your experiences on earth

you see the trailer for 'the tree of life' and think, 'seems like a less narrative-oriented version of "revolutionary road"' and consistently return to this thought whenever thoughts of the movie 'arise'

you deduce from an article on 'hipster runoff' that there are dinosaur sequences in the movie and think, 'whoa, kind of want to see this now'

you read the wikipedia page for 'the tree of life' and feel confused about the casting of sean penn as brad pitt's son, and develop further feelings of ambivalence toward seeing the movie

you read an article in 'variety' describing the movie as 'more art than cinema' or something and feel annoyed, like... 'if this is art then it's probably boring, abstract, museum-y, etc. and not something that will appeal to me on a basic emotional level... so like... why watch it?'

you 'cave' due to overwhelming desires to experience a movie with a 'cosmic scope', which you have trouble discerning the definition of

you watch the movie over the course of ~3 sittings and consistently do 'other shit' while the movie plays in the periphery

you pause the movie several times to attempt to find interviews with the director, terrence malick, but only happen upon this:



you return to the wikipedia article and feel interested in reading about the special effects in the movie

you find an article saying that the 'sfx' bro who did some of the scenes worked on '2001: a space odyssey'

you finish watching the movie and return to the original state of ambivalence re 'period pieces' and 'abstract narratives' you felt after watching the trailer, but with a heightened sense that maybe some of the events occurred in the life of the director, and validate them in an existential sense

you feel compelled to watch more movies like 'the tree of life' and 'melancholia' that juxtapose planet-level enormity with 'relatable' images of 'modern life' and recall 'diebuster' with positive sentiments

NEW CHAIRLIFT VIDEO: EVIDENT UTENSIL

B. McGILLICUDDY

Good Salvia trip meets bad NTSC condensing meets gnarly love song. And now they're all best friends.



These cats went from nothing to something in thirty seconds flat with their equally gnarly love song/iPod Nano comersh last year, and have since released Does You Inspire You, an album full of what I want to call '10s MicroQuirk, a phenomenon that I don't think will be prevalent for another year or so, but that this album is prophetically rank with.

B. McGILLICUDDY

P.S.
They went straight from doing shows > iPod comersh, to be ironic. How fucking meta. I absolutely love this album, truths.

P.P.S.
♥♥♥EYE WANT♥♥♥

In like the deepest nerdcore way possible.