Film.
39 F I L M m a y 2 5 - j u n e 1 , 2 0 1 1 S A N T A C R U Z . C O M
Summer Movies Amid the sequels and the franchise builders, one summer movie worth thinking about all year long
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BY RICHARD VON BUSACK
WILL THE live-action film of I]Z Hbjg[h (July 29) resolve at long last
FATHER KNOWS BEST Brad Pitt gives the performance of a lifetime in ‘Tree of Life.’
the burning question: Are the Smurfs live-bearing or egg-laying creatures? The little blue buggers are essential to 2011’s load of familiar franchise builders, sequels and comic-book adaptations. Luckily, there is one masterpiece this summer. Terrence Malick’s I]Z IgZZ d[ A^[Z (mid-June) is already causing some nice scrapping on the Internet since its long-awaited debut at Cannes. This profoundly spiritual yet remarkably pagan film is about a person of today (Sean Penn, imprisoned in steel and glass) drawn back into his childhood in hopes of rescuing his brother’s spirit. The tension in the film comes from the opposition between the parents. The father is rigid with strictness and seething disappointment. The mother (Jessica Chastain) has the kind of limpid gentleness you rarely see outside of a silent movie. These two parents pull the children between them, gently but with tidal force. It’s a war indicated not through loud argument but through looks and signs and quiet capitulation. This impressionist director remembers the terrible respect those raging fathers of the last
century demanded. And as one such father, Brad Pitt gives the performance of his life. Nostalgia is an enemy of human progress. Even Woody Allen’s nicely appointed but essentially lame new chrononaut comedy, B^Yc^\]i ^c EVg^h (May 27), finds the director confronting his own career-long worship of the past. And good for him. (I like the way the hypochondriac director’s latest glove puppet, Owen Wilson, explains how he isn’t sure he could live in the 1920s, before the invention of antibiotics.) I loved Tree of Life like I haven’t loved any film in a long time, but it’s not because I want to go back to the Ike years. My fondness for the past is merely a fondness for a time when there weren’t always 25 people standing between me and my lunch. It’s really just that simple and just that greedy. I’m expecting those milling crowds in my way for the summer’s sequels. Well, well, M"BZc/ ;^ghi 8aVhh (June 3) turns out to be more ’60s nostalgia, this time with the ever-fascinating
Magneto/professor Xavier conflict carried out at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Bring it on. =Vggn
EdiiZg VcY i]Z 9ZVi]an =daadlh/ EVgi ' (July 15) wraps up the series, which was percolating before some of its youngest fans were born. And one always wants to see what Pixar does, even if it’s the follow-up to the studio’s least-interesting movie by far: 8Vgh ' (June 24). G^hZ d[ i]Z EaVcZi d[ i]Z 6eZh (Aug. 5) explains how super-intelligent apes from San Francisco prepare to take over the world: bio-tech monkeyshines. As for =Zh]Zg (May 27): You loved the “healing ethnic�; observe now the “healing wastrel.� Joseph Gordon-Levitt, one of the best actors around, is the weasel of the title who helps himself to a family’s garage. Oddly, he also helps his newly widowed host (Rainn Wilson) regain the sweetness of life. The Spielberg/J.J. Abrams sci-fi film HjeZg - (June 10) is under wraps, but it seems to involve a fiery train wreck—and whatever it was that was on board the train that gets
looseâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;captured Zapruder-style by a trio of Ohio kids of 1979 with a Super 8 camera. I was happier before I saw what â&#x20AC;&#x153;Cloverâ&#x20AC;? from Cloverfield looked like, so I can wait for more details. Ryan Reynolds stars as the Emerald Warrior of the D.C. Comics in <gZZc AVciZgc (June 17). Better than arguing over whether Smurfs are oviparous or not is whether the Lantern was indeed the most potentially powerful of all of the Justice League of Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the one who could wish anything he wanted into form. In the World War II of 8VeiV^c 6bZg^XV/ I]Z ;^ghi 6kZc\Zg (July 22), an undersized weakling is mutated to become a super-soldier: his mission to find the ultra-Nazi the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving, in a seriously impressive mask). Director Joe Johnston is an underrated member of the Lucas/Spielberg axis, whose Rocketeer, Jurassic Park III and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids have held up nicely, and the looseness and wit of the recent Marvels, in addition to the brio of the previews, make this one look promising.