Visitors Review

kevin-miller447 (2012-05-25 06:50)

A visual spectacular

I hadn't originally planned on seeing this movie for the simple factthat the trailer did not entice me and make want to rush out to go seeit. However, when the reviews came in from the critics, they were allpositive, though there were the haters who could not understand whatthe movie was about and trying to portray. Fascinated by the amount ofdifferent views on the movie, I went in with an open mind ready to beamazed and or confused. Terrence Malick is not known for making verymany films in his lifetime, but the films he has made are ingrained infilm history and are known by all or at least all of his fans. He isknown for making visually striking movies that make the viewer thinkand his films have several themes spread throughout that depending onthe person, one can relate to. This is a very long movie clocking in atnearly 2hr 30 min. For an action movie, a run time like this can passrelatively quick; but for a movie that has no action and is very storyand character driven it does feel long and at time drags to the pointwhere you are fidgeting in your seat wondering when something isactually going to happen. The movie has three separate things going onand 2 main story line's. The film inter-cuts throughout from a familyin the Texas suburb, random shots of nature and the big bang, andfinally we spend time with Sean Penn's character who is an architectwho now middle-aged cannot stop thinking about his brothers death whichhappened as a child. For the most part, I understood what was going onand I could relate to what was happening in the family what with thekids growing up and learning lessons. Brad Pitt's character isportrayed as the force of nature that wants his boys to succeed and notdaydream about things that are not reality. The mother playedbrilliantly by Jessica Chastain is more in the form of grace andteaches the kids about god and all he does. This movie is not foreveryone, and it has a fare chance at being nominated for best pictureof the year, and Malick for best director. I didn't understand certainparts toward the end and certain ideals portrayed I did not believe in.Overall though, if you have patience and enjoy thought provoking films,this is one worth checking out.

beenjammin69 (2012-05-24 18:40)

Stay Away From This One

This was the strangest 2+ hours on film.Wait for the DVDThis isn't worth the price of admission. I can understand Penn in thislow budget waste, but Mr. Pitt are times that hard?It has too many strange twists.Im glad to see Penn and Pitt togetherBut this effort was far short of any expectations I had for the bothmenI have made better home movies myself. Then I saw the review Before Mine about how it has a great story andcould not believe that this person and I watched the same film.

hyphenate-131-280442 (2012-05-24 01:31)

Worst movie ever-- and not because I didn't "understand" it

The glowing reviews I have seen for this piece of drek from"professional" reviewers wreak of that thing that happens when theydon't "get it" and then write something over the top positive to covertheir embarrassment of the fact.A good deal of artists seem to believe that having their melon twistedin angst all the time is a symbol pointing people to the fact that theyare great artists. I call this-- missing the boat. Anyone with anywisdom, spiritual maturity or some sense of what this ride is about...is usually generally happy or happily unattached.That Malick and Penn and company got to walk around with furrowed browsfor however much time was wasted in the making of this thing... I amsure was a wetdream for them. But the self-obsessed, totallyself-consumed, humorless, heavy-handed approach and perspective of thisfilm (save for the last 3-minute payoff-- implementation of every badfilm student art-film convention for showing us heaven and/or God'splan and/or the meaning of life-- was just indulgence-personified forthe rest of us.Some might have considered this an exercise in combating the A.D.D. MTVstyle of faster and faster editing that has finally reached itscritical mass and is imploding on itself. Even here this film confuseslonger scenes with "interesting".If you want to see something that shows what it is to get hooked on thepain and maya/illusion of life and then pays off with what can beachieved as such is let go of, turn instead to Aronofsky's "TheFountain", or DeNiro in "The Mission", or I am happy to give you a longlist.Please do not encourage these folks who are so very much missing theboat on all counts... in working out their unresolved shadow at theexpense of our ten bucks.

joaosantos20 (2012-05-23 15:52)

unbelievable crappy

Many liked this movie and that's great, there's something for everyone.For me this is the ideal movie to show how Hollywood fall in disgrace,if you don't believe just watch the Asian (japanese, korean)storytelling. Man that was to be the worst movie ever, only one at that level isBlair Witch. In few words first is very beautiful screensaver,beautiful but not original, they're all images you can find in the web,so it's like a collection the director had in is PC or MAC. Followingthat there's some story, something that could be told in 30 minutestops and is a more profound way. The movie (i really don't think itshould be called that) is long and incredibly boring, so, so veryboring.Really hard to judge the acting as there is none, OK, maybe iexaggerate, there must be some 10 minutes of acting there LOL Avoid.

odonnell_matthew (2012-05-23 02:53)

Tedious

I'll keep this short.If you hate Calvin Klein perfume ads, where people flounce about on abeach, whispering random phrases to each other while scenes come and goin no apparent logical order, then you will hate this film.If you wear a polo-neck, like conceptual art and poetry, or are namedJean-Pierre and study philosophy at the Sorbonne, you will love thisfilm.That's it really.I don't wear a polo-neck and so nearly walked out after about 20minutes, but the knowledge that there were (according to the reviews)some spectacular scenes showing the birth of the universe, and somedinosaurs (who doesn't love dinosaurs?) kept me watching.Unfortunately I wasn't overly impressed by this sequence either. Iremember being impressed by 2001 when I first saw it, but this justleft me cold. And it's the last time I get suckered into watching pretentious rubbishby the promise of dinosaurs.

labradors-1 (2012-05-22 15:10)

Pretentious twaddle

This was the second worst film I have ever seen, beaten (just) byWayne's World II.It was definitely a case of "If you can't dazzle themwith brilliance, baffle them with bs" as the saying goes. It brought tomind a large canvas where members of a family, including the dog, allcontributed splashes of colour in as haphazard as manner as possible... and then tried to sell it as a valuable piece of modern art. Wewere not fooled! The acting was wooden, in particular the performanceof Brad Pitt, while my favourite, Sean Penn, was seen more often fromthe rear than from the front. As my neighbour in the steadily emptyingcinema remarked "At least they didn't have to learn any lines". Ofdialogue, there was precious little. Emotions were clichéd andpredictable. The young boys were fine and at least appeared natural,but seeing them throwing a ball around time after time, was a bit likewatching old films taken in the back yard of one's father and uncles askids. There were a few (slightly) redeeming features: the photographywas great, especially the footage of volcanoes and the landscapes,although I must admit that I kept expecting David Attinborough toappear from behind a rock and provide a useful commentary. Strangely,considering I thought we were going to see a blockbuster with Brad andSean, the best part was the dinosaurs, incongruous as their presencemight have been. All in all, a shallow cop-out of a film that insultedthe intelligence of viewers. I wish I had stayed home and watched, yetagain, Planet Earth.

wendybrown2128 (2012-05-21 20:14)

Ugh, you lost me half way through

I love indy films and obscure art films but I just wasn't expectingwhat I got on this one. I guess with Sean Penn and Brad Pitt involved,I had anticipated something that at least made sense. It was likewatching a slide show of slow, hazy, piecemeal scenes of a boy's lifecombined with images of volcanoes, waterfalls and dinosaurs. Yes,dinosaurs. And Sean Penn staring pensively out of what I believe isPennzoil Plaza in downtown Houston....Frankly, if it had moved a bit faster/started tying it all togetherearlier, I might have survived to the end. I can't tell you the lasttime I couldn't finish a movie - it's been years - but this one had tocome out of the DVD player without seeing the end. It had a fewmemorable images, but it took too long to help you understand where itwas headed.

scrabbler (2012-05-21 05:34)

I really wanted to love this - I really did.

There is much in this film that is beautiful, but as a two-hour-plusexperience, it's like watching a beautiful painting dry. I loved all ofMalick's previous films and wanted to love this one, but it was one ofthe most boring, pretentious films I've ever seen. As it dragged on, Iprayed ever more fervently that it would get better, but...Most of the first third of the film consists of random images, somelifted almost directly from "2001". Picture the Stargate sequence, onlywith no thematic context or introduction. This just drags on and on andon, with audible sighs of frustration from the small audience andseveral people walking out. I was begging Malick to make this end.The rest of the film is slightly more interesting, but Malick neverconnects the "real world" events effectively with the metaphysical junkthat precedes them. When I read in the Trivia section that an Italiancinema mixed up the first two reels for a week and no one noticed, Ihad to laugh. There is no structure of any kind. This mad it impossibleto relate to any of the characters, adding to the waste of time.Just awful - recommendation is to stay home and rent Badlands or Daysof Heaven.

jkantorjunk (2012-05-20 22:05)

Didn't work for me - too abstract

I am watching trying to watch all 9 movies nominated for the bestpicture academy award this year prior to the AAs on Sunday. I have 6down, 3 to go. I rented this on BluRay. It's not that I don't get itper say. It's just that it didn't work for me. I understand that theyare trying to make an artistic work and not a traditional film. It justdidn't work for me. Art is like that. It connects for some people andnot for others.I am starting to think that the academy would be better off shrinkingthe list of best picture movies back to 5.There were just too many nature scenes that went on for too long. Andthe ending was just too abstract. Did he die as an adult? And thatbeach scene was heaven?The acting was actually good, so it is perhaps harsh of me to only giveit 1 star, but that is all that it merits.--After writing my initial review above, I thought about the movie TheDiving Bell and the Butterfly - which was great (unlike Tree of Life).They had a nature scene to represent death at the end of the movie. Butit was pretty much shown with the closing credits (after a fabulousmovie). It worked. It wasn't 45 minutes (that's what it felt like atleast) of nature scenes in the middle of a movie that had barely gotstarted (aka tree of life) and didn't do a whole lot when it came backfrom the 45 minute nature scene.

nrolfs (2012-05-20 07:37)

AbsoluteLiberalCrap

This show was meant for liberal idiots that have become so screwed upthat they have absolutely no grasp on reality. Only they can understandit. Of course they want to be the only ones that can understand it buthonestly they don't understand anything. You could smoke some dope andprobably get some meaning out of it. Well I already wasted enough timewatching 5 minutes of this stupid movie and I don't want to waste toomuch more time commenting on it. 5 minutes of my life completely wastedthat I can no longer get back. Man that sucks. Here are the rest of my10 lines of text. This movie sucks. Please save yourself a bunch oftime and do not waste time watching this stupid liberal crap.

Binoy Santhakumar (2012-05-20 00:41)

I would have loved reading it, definitely not watching!

The Tree of life fails to get deep into the soul, oh! might have comeclose to making imprinting an impression after all, had it been neatlypresented! I strongly believe this whole thing would have been a betterbook, as a movie it neither gets artistic nor appealing to the senses!The narrative style in itself is bizarre, and scenes of evolution andthe flame does make it real dark. The narrator supposedly asks "TheOne" several questions when certain incidents happen in life, and to behonest posing questions and making insights leave me perplexed, was itall being sarcastic or is it the genuineness of creation and evolutionthat we are genned up to keep mum?To put it together,this was a real let down for me. True, many of themhad their lousy childhood revisited. Not for me, albeit, I really didenjoy it in parts and wish had it been crispier in outlay! I would loveto get the screenplay, it should be a heavenly readable and as forwatching it, this is a sophisticated intellectual art which would beappreciated by super league critics, not for commoner.

dave-baxter-sa (2012-05-19 14:41)

Terrible, Pretentious, Load of self indulgent tripe

I would love to have given this movie a negative infinity score to takethe average down a bit (at time of writing it was 7.2 out of 10). Thisis a complete mystery for a film to achieve such a great rating and beSO POOR. I could not hear anything apart from the music, which was lovely. Theimagery was beautiful and the cinematography brilliant. However, icould only stomach 27 minutes and 35 seconds of this self indulgentclap trap. A movie is supposed to be entertaining and interesting. Thislost me from the moment I couldn't hear what the actors were saying.Utter cr@p.Very bad. Don't hire it, or even consider recommending it to anyone.Poor.Rubbish.I want to go outside and scream at my neighbours in frustration.Deary me.

rosieplichta (2012-05-19 13:52)

Terrible

Really a complete waste of time. I hated this movie. And it makes memad that I paid to see it. What little meat there is comes quite latein the film, after a long disjointed series of slow-motion nature-ishscenes, with no dialogue and only a soundtrack of somewhat classicalmusic. I thought that at some point there would be some story emerge,but no such luck. No plot, contrived 'arty' cinematography, the film isso disjointed that it loses any meaning. This movie seems to me to bean attempt at a deep, meaningful big poignant story, and it just isn't.It is about anything. It is a soppy mess. The film assumes that theaudience will be intrigued. But I was frankly insulted at what I feltwas the filmmakers attempt to rigidly manipulate the reaction of theaudience.

kathrinschw (2012-05-18 23:52)

Boooring!

The film tree of life was my personal most boring visit to the cinemato date. I would state that this critic contains spoiler only thismovie has no plot what so ever. The story is quickly told, parentsreceived note of the death of one of their sons, in a flashback thebirth and growing up of all three boys is shown and their struggle withthe authoritarian father. The whole film shot in most extreme camerapositions and underlined with loud classical music and hymns. So whydidn't I like the movie: The plot line could have filled about half anhour however it where 2 and a half hour In the middle of the film apuzzling sequence of countless random pieces of film of ocean,universe, jellyfish, lava and ocean, lava, universe and universe isshown mounting in the depicting of a herd of badly animated dinosaurs.An off voice whispering accompanies the film to get an esoteric orreligious touch Worst of all is the end which drags on with scenes ofevery actor on a beach like place hugging, walking about and smilingand of course there were pictures of candles, hands and yes a field ofsunflowers (I just waited for the rainbow and unicorn to make thegoodness complete)So if you want to be bored out of your wits watch this film or betterwatch paint dry. If you want to see a film where a father mistreats hisson, better watch "This boys life" with Robert De Niro. If you needsome religious input why don't you go to church? And if you want to seelittle children learn to play baseball go to the park and don't forgetthe classic music. And of course: For scenes of lava and jellyfish turnto national geographic.

renzl (2012-05-17 19:20)

An Eternity by Calvin Klein advert?

Well that's what portions of this film looked and felt like when itwasn't being a National Geographic documentary. I saw this at the pressscreening at Cannes (where it got some jeers amongst the claps). I willadmit that the scenes with the children were beautiful and in placesthought provoking but Sean Penn might as well not of have been in itand I found his scenes in the film the most "Calvin". Now don't get mewrong, I'm not averse to slow moving, "difficult" films and I admit itlooks and sounds great, but for me, there just wasn't enough... Shame,because I really wanted to love it. *See Nostalgia de la Luz - 2010(which was at Cannes last year) if you want to see a moving film aboutlife and what it means.

Sa'ar Vardi (2012-05-17 11:13)

One big sloppy mess of a "film"

Pitt gave a good, minimalistic performance. But that's about the onlything that was good about this film.The movie as a whole is not really a movie per se. Sure, there aremoving pictures and some recognized actors (what did Sean Penn actuallydo there, anyway?). But what do they really present on screen? There'sno narrative, at least not a cohesive one, and instead there's just along stream of consciousness that jumps from one place to another. Thedialogs are scarce and few, the characters all lacking of portrayal andthus alienating the audience from them. The jumpy editing that startsright at the beginning of the film makes it hard to follow what thehell is going on, and after a while you give up on trying tounderstand. And if you do manage to follow, you'll soon find out thatit doesn't really matter. Its all just one big mess, and you have todeal with it (or fall asleep).At the end, it just feels like you've accidentally wandered intosomeone else's dream, with bits and pieces of information that meanlittle to none to you all jumping around at the same time. What startsas a semi-interesting and unique cinematic experiment at first, swiftlybecomes this dragging and painfully long film that should have been ahour and a half shorter, and better presented on the nature channel(for the dinosaur sequence) or the religious channel (for all thepreachy texts in between).Self indulged? Indeed.

zetes (2012-05-17 01:53)

Existence, from alpha to omega

Terrence Malick's fifth film in about forty years aims to be nothingless than the greatest film ever made, the ultimate statement on life,death and humanity's place in the universe. And if one were tocriticize it for having themes too big for its own scope, much of thefilm follows the intimate details of a very specific family in a veryspecific locale. The film depicts the birth of the universe, the deathof the dinosaurs and the first, shameful ejaculation of a pre-teen boy.It so very much yearns to be the alpha and the omega of cinema, maybeof art. So with that huge aim, not to mention the most massive hype ofany film released so far this decade, could it possibly work? In myopinion, it doesn't quite. That doesn't mean, however, that the resultsaren't something startling and vital. They absolutely are. It mightbite off more than it can chew, but, man, is The Tree of Life a wonderto behold. The writing is not unlike Malick's most recent film, The NewWorld, in that we often hear the poetic inner whispers of thecharacters as they wonder about the world and why... well, just why.The directorial style of the film reminds me of Gaspar Noe's recentEnter the Void. It's not quite as flighty as that film, but the camerafollows the characters with smooth, steadicam glides, very closely. Itfeels both like an impartial observer and, somehow at the same time, anintimate companion to the characters, always set exactly to the heightsof the children. Like Enter the Void, the film's scenes are justsnippets of observed life. They eventually combine to form a verysimple, though, by the end, very personal story of a small-town Texasfamily living their life. Sometimes it's wonderful, sometimes it'spainful.The inclusion of the history of the entire universe will undoubtedlybecome the film's most memorable sequence, not because it's one of theall-time ballsiest sequences the cinema has ever seen (honestly, I'dlike to think most directors would have decided it was too corny), butbecause, for the most part, it actually works. It may be a littleover-earnest, and Malick certainly could have dialed back the loudchoral music ("LACRIMOSA!", Latin for "tearful" (for God's sake), thewomen belt over and over and over again as the universe comes intobeing), but he grounds things nicely with a surprisingly movingsequence involving dinosaurs. That a film about the existence, life anddeath of a suburban Texan family should involve dinosaurs should havebeen ludicrous, but those dinosaurs are just as much a part ofexistence, life and death on this planet as the O'Briens are.The great bulk of the film is about the O'Brien family, partly set inthe past (the 1950s), where Brad Pitt (whose outstanding performancewill likely be dismissed, as people generally won't think of this as anacting movie) and Jessica Chastain (pretty much just a beautiful face,though she has her moments, too) raise their three boys. We get thepresent perspective, too, with Sean Penn as one of those three boysgrown, gliding through enormous steel and glass structures (the wayMalick and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men) film bothcityscapes and verdant suburban neighborhoods make you feel like you'venever really seen either in your life), reminiscing about hischildhood.The problems I have are pretty minor, really. The music I've alreadymentioned. I generally like classical music, but I don't think Malickuses it particularly well much of the time. He uses very powerfulchoral music to underline the grandness of the creation of theuniverse, as well as the beauty of everyday existence. It is needed inneither of those places. It would have served the film much better touse subtler music, or no music at all. Many of the whispered appeals toGod come off as corny. A lot of people criticized the narration in TheNew World, but I thought it worked there. Here, it works some of thetime. But almost as often it comes off as over-earnest, especially whenChastain is doing it. She overacts quite a bit when she's reading thoselines. While Brad Pitt finds his place beautifully, Sean Penn'spresence is a bit distracting. It just feels unnecessary, as thatcharacter doesn't require much acting. Probably my biggest problem wasthe film's climactic act. I won't describe it in detail, but it comesoff as too picturesque and maybe a little trite. I'd like to see itagain before I dismiss it that harshly, but I don't think it entirelyworked for me.As a whole, The Tree of Life is most certainly one of the mostinteresting and accomplished films to come along in a while. I canimagine it annoying a lot of regular filmgoers, but anyone with apassing interest in the art of cinema should be, at minimum, engagedwith it. I can imagine very intelligent people disliking it, but I alsoimagine that it will become an all-time favorite for many.

ravenosa (2012-05-16 10:52)

Worst "movie" I've ever seen in my life.

"Tree of Life" was a very depressing experience for me. I'm apassionate movie geek, always looking for a film to move and inspireme. After sitting through 50 minutes of "Tree of Life" I couldn't helpbut feel that the fast food nation I live in will never be asartistically relevant as the rest of the world. Where Russian andGerman directors can put together profound film experiences for theviewer, this was just an embarrassing, failed experiment.The one thing I've had to wonder after watching some of "Tree of Life"was; would a bunch of monkeys armed with cameras capture lesscompelling material? The heavy handed "artyness" of the camera movementwas anything but fluid or effective. It actually made the presence ofthe cameraman felt, completely taking me out of the film. The fact theactors were playing archetypes instead of actual people didn't helpmuch. Lack of narrative completely killed any potential for the film.The interspersed Natural Geographic shots bordered on comical. Would bekind of funny to think if every director of family dramas tried so hardto be profound.I couldn't help but feel bad for Sean Penn, especially reading hiscomments after he saw the final product. What a waste of his time andtalent. He's always created an actual character with human traits, in"Tree" he's a prop in a music video. Nothing more. Though, the same canpretty much be said for all of the human props in the film.I do think there's a sad, ironic justice in "Tree of Life". Everywhereacross the continent there are filmmakers experimenting in differentways to affect the viewer. Here in Michael Bay's McAmerica we get abloated, two hour music video directed by Hallmark and try to label itas "art".Makes me realize how small and irrelevant we are in the big picture, asan American... As a Stanley Kubrick fan, I can't help but feel a bitsad and sick to think of how far the art of film has fallen. I'll nevergive Malick another second of my time.Oh man, I didn't even mention the whispering or the random, arbitraryshots of nature. Why bother, watch the trailer. It's more effectivethan the actual film and tells the exact same "story"...

kleinenacht (2012-05-16 10:52)

Religious tosh

No need for me to go into details. The film is pretentious nonsense. Ihave a feeling that the director tries to give out religious message onbehalf of the catholic church. Some of the nature footages seem to bebased on evolutionist/Darwinian theories, but they conflict with thefinal scene as the mother look at the sky, shouting out "I give my sonto You!" which clearly conveys a message from Creationist point ofview. Perhaps this is an attempt of re-interpreting the bible. Second point, the director obviously tried to make a "deep" and"philosophical" film in the same vein of 2001-a space odyssey, Solaris,and some of F.Fellini's films, with slow-moving camera work, minimaldialogues, and plot less narratives, but there is no comparison. Theclassics by Kubrick, Tarkovsky and Fellini are by far superior, theyare original to say the least.I wouldn't slag off this film completely though. The use of classicalmusic was very effective, even moving at times.

whalen-8 (2012-05-16 04:58)

A well done movie you are allowed to hate

I watched this film and I had to stop about 15 minutes into it. I wasbored to tears and lost. I was NOT entertained. If I were to rate thefilm at that point a 1 or 2 would have been generous. I would say I hadseen better low budget B- horror flicks. But I did not stop. I happenedto receive a call from someone whose opinion I value and trust and allthey wanted to do was rave about how good this movie they had just seenwas. I asked him which movie that was and he told me, "Tree of Life."We discussed what he liked and what I hated and many of those samethings seemed to bring out the polar opposite result from each of us. Iwent back and finished watching it trying to take his praises to heartbut I still hated it. I respected it but hated it. Don't feel bad ifyou are a hater. This movie is not for everyone.