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The Tree of Life

It's a love it or hate it work but I loved it. Terrence Malick puts his heart and his beliefs out there for all the world to see, and whether you agree with them or not, it's hard to argue with the craft and ambition on display as he juxtaposes the relationships between members of a family in Texas in the '50s against the very birth of the universe itself. Spellbinding and kind of crazy.

The Guard

Brendan Gleeson is a morally dubious Irish cop who winds up unwilling caught up in a web of murder, blackmail and international drug smuggling and banters with FBI agent Don Cheadle. Pitch black in tone and featuring some hilarious - and completely unrepeatable in polite society - lines, it's a weird combination of odd couple comedy and Sergio Leone Western (albeit one set in County Galway) that is tremendous fun from beginning to end.

Samuel Hoelker: Most of the art-house fare this year (and especially the past month or two) has been very good, but just falling shy of excellent. Looking forward to the rest of the year, I'm starting to get afraid that they're just going to have to take what they can get, even if they have fewer than ten nominees this year.

Melancholia

Before today, the only Lars von Trier film that I had seen was Antichrist, which also was the only film to ever give me a visceral emotion outside of shedding a single tear when Royal Tenenbaum buys Ari and Uzi the dalmatian. Knowing that von Trier's depression had only gotten worse in the past two years, and that his new movie was called Melancholia and was about the end of the world, I braced for something that, in the end, Melancholia wasn't. Sure, it's depressing and, more or less, about depression, but it doesn't hit in the same way. Instead, it's a slow and beautiful mediation on disaster and stress, championed by an excellent performance by Kirsten Dunst. For me, it made me realize the extent of my own depression (that's bad) but also how much I could have it worse (that's good!). I didn't like Tree of Life at all; this, to me, was what The Tree of Life should have been. My #3 of the year so far.

Take Shelter

This was the fourth movie this year that I had seen which had Jessica Chastain in it, and the only one that I thought was good, as well as the only one in which I thought she was good. She's actually excellent as the put-upon midwestern wife, dealing with Michael Shannon's deteriorating mental state (he keeps on getting visions and nightmares of a coming storm). Its plotting isn't perfect, and both starts and ends a tiny bit too late, but it keeps its growing tension throughout. Shannon's absolutely explosive; if there were justice in the world, these two movies I've talked about so far would have three of the acting Oscars won. My #9 of the year so far.

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