One and Two

I am so confused, what did I just watch? It feels like a movie that is arty and philosophical but it isn't. The only reason to watch this movie is if you have an hour and a half to kill and you really like Timotheé Chalamet. It is a beautiful film at times, aesthetically pleasing. The story goes nowhere and if there is a meaning to it, it is lost on me. Maybe I am not deep or arty enough to understand it. It seems to have some religious undertones. Sometimes it is meditative though to watch something that has a beautiful boy in it and some nice nature shots.

So it's okay. It's fine. It's a movie that was made, but not made well. There's no passion, no story, no style, nothing. It's a movie that proves this director can put a movie together, outside of Rich Hill. Autumn Durald does a great job with the cinematography, despite there clearly being more budgetary constraints than Palo Alto, most notably the oval bokeh and the obvious digital grain, from the upped-ISO.

The movie is bearable, it's watchable, but not interesting. The dialogue, however, is laughable, and the Tree of Life internal monologues are baffling. This movie is practically a series of events, albeit beautiful to look at and competently put together, with no real satisfying conclusion nor moral.

This movie doesn't deserve the critical panning it has from RottenTomatoes, it's one of the better movies of the year, which I guess isn't saying much.

Kiernan Shipka, and everyone really, look bored and brooding. They have nothing to work with, and when they do, it's executed laughably and obnoxiously. I have no doubt Shipka has acting chops, but this doesn't prove it, she mopes around with a vaguely confused face the whole movie.

Timothee Chalamet is the best actor in the movie, and he barely has anything to show, possibly because no one has any characterization besides "quiet, distant, scared." I hope he stops being type-casted as Tom Cooper, because even when he's given the opportunity to act in these movies, it's quickly cut short (in this, his screaming and clawing are drowned out by a glaring score, muting any actual skill required to show emotion or character struggle).

Hopefully Jeff Nichols' Midnight Special shows this movie up, I'm pretty disappointed. (If at any point you think I'm blindly "hating" on this movie, the very fact that I was even looking forward to a movie that wasn't advertised or talked about shows my initial interest.)

I don't really know what to say about this movie because frankly I don't really know much to nothing of what it's about.

A low-key indie-drama with a supernatural 'twist' (I say that lightly) that seems extremely random, but then as I can't make much sense of the movie it's not any more random than anything else in it I suppose.

The acting was fine, the cinematography was nice and but that doesn't help much when the plot is so in the air and we're never really given a chance to know why the characters do what they do and how they become to be what they are.

There is potentially some sort of philosophical or poetic meaning behind the all but colour me stupid but I don't know what that would be, and I'm not really sure I care.

It was a promising premise for a 'supernatural' movie, with strong development for the teenage characters. Revelation of mysterious circumstances began to unfold, but unfortunately stop cold in giving rewarding and satisfying conclusions.

The producers/director have done a remarkable job in raising expectations and heightening the audience curiosity, but failed miserably to bring closure to the very same question. In the end, the movie seems to simply took a snapshot of events that occur over a period of, say 1 week, and took the audience through it, and left without a shred of answers.

If the purpose is to do just that, then, they have achieved it greatly.

This is a slow but very beautiful movie. If you only are in to action then this is nothing for you. But if you like movies that will challenge and dare your mind and if you not are afraid of something more deep than a couple of men punching each other, then this is a film for you.

The film will get you in a state of mind that will begin to think, to wonder. Will this be possible? Can a father be like that? Loving and still so demanding and ... cruel.

And then you realize that it's the way people, mostly men, dictates their women and children to live exactly as they want them to do. It also shows how hard it is to break free from a family bond. Hard even if you don't want to be a part of it, if you do want to go. You can't go, there is too much holding you back. Fear, love, obedience even respect holds you back from leaving although you don't want to be there.

You know what you have but you don't know what you will get.

For me the film was not about their ability to "jump". It was about the fear of something new, something you don't understand, the will to have everything as it always have been. Their ability was just the unknown in the world. The film for me was also about breaking free and leaving old habits behind, leaving (killing) the tyranny, the dictatorship and seeking the freedom.

I liked the film and I will remember it a long time - maybe see it again in a month or two.