I will be honest, I have not seen a notable film in a good while. I saw Hunger Games: Mocking Jay: Part 1, and, that kind of sucked. Other people have also written about it, so why waste time on a review when the movie in itself was a waste of time. So I return to a time where my film-watching habits were more consistent. I have never written about a film I hated, and thus, Dumb and Dumber is on the table. The sequel had just come out at the time, and I had not seen the original, which was conveniently on Netflix.
Let me start out saying that if I was in the fifth grade when viewing this movie (I will not even call it a film), I would have possibly found it the slightest bit funny. Maybe not, I hope fifth-grade me was not a complete imbecile. But, I digress from what I can sum up in one word: garbage. Dumb humor is dumb humor and Dumband Dumber even does that poorly. I never laughed throughout the entire movie, it was mostly just cringing at how stupid and misappropriated these guys are for any sort of place in society. There was even a part that stooped to childish poop humor, where Jeff Bridges has severe diarrhea and, apparently, that's funny. This movie is that diarrhea. The script is fairly conventional in structure (still stupid) and even tries to develop an emotional attachment to our idiot friends, but the movie achieved the farthest thing from success in that aspect. I also hated Jim Carrey's haircut. I did not, however, hate Jim Carrey. I think he plays the same character in all of his comedic roles (very physical, almost a lunatic), but he does it well like in Liar, Liar and in Bruce Almighty. The film was also very long for a comedy, at almost 2 hours. I was indeed bored near the end. I refuse to say anything else because the movie does not merit more of my time.
In short, Dumb and Dumber is dumb. Do not watch it because of an opinion your friend made when they were in the second grade, because odds are if they watched it again they would see the error of their ways. Do not watch it. Maybe buy the DVD and defecate on it and send the picture to the writers, I would endorse that. I do not understand how anyone today can enjoy this film.
Since I have not seen anything I have a dying need to write about in the last while, I am reviewing a film I saw about a month ago, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. After hearing about this film in the early part of this year, I knew I had to see it. A film that can have some critics saying it is an absolutely transcendent masterpiece and one of the greatest pictures of all time, and have others saying it is pretentious garbage that should not be given a second glance, is a movie that immediately makes my watch list. I disagree that this is the greatest movie ever, but it is extremely ambitious project that succeeded for the most part and somewhat failed in others.
To give a synopsis of this movie in the simplest way possible: The Tree of Life is an art film that attempts to tackle human nature in the broadest possible sense, watch the trailer above, it really gives the vibe. It begins with Jessica Chastain talking about as people develop, they either follow the beautiful path to grace, or the stern path of nature. The exposition to this film can effectively sum up how I feel about the rest of the movie. The beginning is a bit confusing as it is extremely nonlinear,
but what I got is the main characters are Brad Pitt and Chastain are husband and wife in the 1950's, and they lose a son. Their oldest son (Sean Penn) is seen in the present day and he is confused about life (Nothing is explicitly shown). This is followed by, as Mr. D put it, a Discovery Channel documentary of the birth of the universe, earth, and a section with dinosaurs. The section with the birth of the universe is almost awe-inspiringly beautiful with the help of a fantastic score throughout, but it drags on for far too long. I have this voice for when I think someone is being pretentious and artsy, and I would use the voice here. It's something like "Ooohooo look at me I'm so artsy, I, like, get humanity and how we are so. like, small and the big bang was so big and pretty ooohooo". The dinosaur section's message is very obvious in its relation to human nature and a bit strange as CGI dinosaurs are just so out of place with the otherwise fantastically done visuals. But then the story of the parents goes back to when they first have children, and I was in tears at how well raw emotion was captured without much dialogue. It was all excellent music, and absolutely suburb cinematography (I have come to the conclusion that Emmanuel Lubezki is a master at his trade).
The film continues to have breath-taking visuals, and excellent music as the story continues. The raw emotional moments are powerful sometimes, but other times lackluster, especially the ending. As the main characters' children grow up, we see them form their ways towards nature or grace, taking after their parents. Brad Pitt is nature, as he is a stern ex-military. Jessica Chastain is grace, she is elegant and beautiful. It seems to be obvious in which one Mallick thinks is the better path, and I say that may be the films message or a flawed approach to the storytelling. The performances are fine, but the child actor who plays Jack, the son who is most conflicted in his path towards grace/nature, is done extremely well as the viewer can really sense his inner conflict. I rarely see a child actor perform this well. When the film comes to a close, it comes back to present day Jack, played by Sean Penn. A surrealist sequence brings everything and everyone together for a nice conclusion, but it felt weak and kind of dumb and pretentious, but that might be on top of the fact that the film was poorly paced and I wanted it to end. It tackles almost everything Interstellar tried to do in the exploration of human nature, and the parts it does well are amazing. Then again, even the bad parts are still better than Interstellar (Sorry, Nolan. Good try, though.).
This is still a beautiful art film, especially for a film class (wink, wink), and I would really like to discuss it further. Parts of it truly moved me. I recommend anyone who is well-rounded in cinema watch this film, and decide for themselves where they are on the love/hate spectrum. I do not usually enjoy or even try to watch experimental cinema, but I thoroughly enjoyed this piece. I give The Tree of Life
