My Blueberry Nights

Year: 2007
Directed by: Kar Wai Wong
Written by: Kar Wai Wong and Lawrence Block
Starring: Jude Law, Norah Jones, Raquel Weisz, Natalie Portman
IMDB page & official trailer:

movie girl:
If you are a girl and you like blues, there is a very big chance you will love this movie.
The movie has pretty characters, lovely lights and atmosphere, good music and imagination. It doesn’t have much action or many settings; at the beginning I had the impression of a theater play.
Maybe that imagination I mentioned is also the one that makes it feel a bit like a composition - it looks lovely, but you will not find it in real life. The keys concept, the crossing of the street, the parallel bleeding, the blueberry pie, Katya's return, the poisonous addiction to someone you love, poker, freedom and a Jaguar are part of a glamorous dream we can make about love and life. Could it be true?
A thing I like about this movie is that all characters are living conscious lives. They are following choices they have made. Staying in one place so you can be easily found, traveling thousands of miles to achieve an interior transformation, living life like a poker game or punishing yourself with alcohol are all choices respected with no hesitation.
Another thing I noticed is that love, in this movie, is the deep kind, the one that devours you like an accepted parasite. This love is gone out of fashion nowadays.
All in all, I take My Blueberry Nights as an impulse to "compose" your life in a way that it represents you, so that it makes a great story.

Rating: 7,0

movie boy:
When in need of an easy-to-see, relaxing/romantic movie, I rather prefer soft comedies instead of initiatic road-trips. Still, a Kar Wai Hollywood-ish movie had not to be avoided. And if you know and like his style from the Asian movies he directed, you will clearly feel the American touch of this one.
Although I knew from the beginning this will be a happy-ending movie, the phases of this movie are like short films with no clear idea to where they are leading. What started like a "theatrical play" (credits go to movie girl) with two characters in a diner and a jar of keys, continues with stunning appearances (first by Raquel Weisz - but I also want to mention David Strathairn here - and then by Natalie Portman), both of them ending tragically with someone dying. As a matter of fact, the essence of this movie is losing someone you once cared about and maybe (my interpretation), how to release the strings by getting rid of the keys to their doors. It is an example about how good it feels to have someone to talk to when you feel lonely even though, on a very cliché-ish manner, it's happening over a bar counter.
The music fits, especially if you like Norah Jones - I personally don't - and the cinematography is very WKW, maybe a little bit more exaggerated here - a stronger mix of colors and light that is on the edge between warm atmosphere and... a thin line to kitsch.
Without telling you all the story, the image of melting ice cream over a blueberry pie is a beautiful hyperbole, almost erotic portrayal of the relationship between the first two characters, a relationship that is sealed by one of the most sensual kisses in the history of film.
Rating: 6,2    

The Tree of Life

Year: 2011
Directed by: Terrence Malick
Written by: Terrence Malick
Starring: Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken, Sean Penn
IMDB page & official trailer:

movie girl:
We (me and The Boy;))) saw this movie at some friends’ house, on a Sunday evening. By the time it ended, our friends were asleep. Now, this might not mean that it was boring, maybe just simply peaceful, and dreamy.
I watched it trying to suspend my judgment, with patience, after a certain point not expecting something that would tie it all together anymore. I’d say it had a certain naturalistic feel to it, it was like a being's perception of itself, of interior processes of life (the flowing of the blood through the transparent veins of an embryo made quite an impression on me) as well as the exterior development of life – in plants, in atmosphere, in human relations. The film makes a connection between the micro- and the macro-universe, in that sense.
Also, it gives existence a certain palpable consistency, which makes it strange and that’s probably why the viewer will tend to resist it. (We don’t like to feel our life; we like to live it, to consume it).
I would assume the movie was intended to reflect the perspective of a child on the world, but if it did, the world chosen was kind of one-sided and burdening.
Characters, in this film, don’t really have a strong contour, they talk very little, even act very little and relatively in one direction, they don’t surprise you, they don't have multiple faces or complex psychologies. They contemplate and are contemplated by the camera.
So, ok, it’s a film that makes you think about life, memories, childhood, the connectedness of the universe, love for all things and so on. But does it do it right? I didn’t get a clear sense of the way I should think of these things, it didn’t suggest a direction (or I didn’t see it). It shows how life lives through you and that’s kind of upsetting for the individualistic ego-enthusiast person that I am. I cannot adjust my behavior to that, but it is a point of view I will adopt once in a while.
Rating: 6,2

movie boy:
I have been warned to see this movie fully prepared to experience "dead" moments and almost-boring fragments. I gathered enough patience and I chose an uncomfortable chair over a welcoming couch. Seemed a good choice as I succeeded to stay committed and interested, more than that, some parts of the movie got me bending towards the tv.
There are three aspects of the movie I find as being very important to highlight. First of all, the tangible feeling of some of the actions. This is a movie that made me actually feel the grass, the water, a pain in a finger or the coldness of a window. The insistence and the duration of some of the movements or the small life episodes and their authenticity together with the whispering monologues or dialogues created a being there context. Secondly, it made me feel little, almost insignificant. Starting with the images of the Creation-like of the Universe, the forceful but yet majestic nature, up to a childbirth and his growing up, this movie is presenting his audience two powerful sides, the immensity of Chaos and the almost suffocating uniqueness of the human nature. It makes life important, but rather in a cycle kind of way, than in its individuality. Thirdly, it is one of the most genuine representations of the American family I have ever seen in a movie. Nothing exaggerated, a perfectly chosen speech, an experience close to what very well might have been a 50s documentary over a common life.
My final thoughts about this movie are pointing to a carefully selected soundtrack and a good acting from Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain. The patience that I thought I needed for this film is synonym to the presence and carefulness I have to have in my life, about my life. If it bores you those 10 minutes about the birth of the Universe, think about the fact it took Universe billions of years to form. If it bothers you that 1 hour from the kid's birth to an-age-he-could-have-a-fight-with-his-dad, think about the 14 years of life that passed. And also, think about the flashes in the year 2001, with the skyscrapers and all we call "contemporary". We got there in seconds.     
Rating: 7,0