lmjakob Reviews

The Tree of Life (2011)

How did this get an award at Cannes?!

[2/10 · 23 June 2012]

I love art-house cinema but this was just awful. It was like a parody of art-house cinema but without the humour. People whispering over image after image of the sky or the sea. The first 45mins is barely watchable - CGI Dinosaurs? Seriously?

There are moments after the initial 45mins where you are actually enjoying yourself and in parts the film manages to represent the strength of parent relationships on the boy but it is surrounded by such embarrassing scenes of 'nature' that look like holistic medicine adverts or like the front of a whale noise CD that most of that is lost. The acting is strong especially Brad Pitt. Sean Penn does nothing, don't know why he's on the front of the DVD case.

No idea how so many people managed to enjoy this. Someone, please explain this to me!

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Why the narrator? Why? Why? Why?

[6/10 · 16 February 2012]

Everyone acts very well, and the whole film would have been really good if it hadn't been for this weird narrator the whole way through who sounded like he was telling children a story even when saying things like "they went to bed together". It was weird. I also feel if it had been more dialogue based we could have got a greater grasp of the characters. I watched it without subtitles but understood the relationship of Juan Antonio and his ex-wife (mostly spoken in Spanish) than I did of Doug and Vicky which just seemed to lack a huge amount of depth. There needed to be some redeeming feature Vicky and Doug's relationship.

Anyway well acted but yeah the narrator ruins it. Javier Bardem is amazing as usual.