At the movies: By The Sea.

If you missed seeing Angelina Jolie Pitt's third film as director, By The Sea, during its tragically abbreviated theatrical run, then let this missive serve to pique your interest until it surfaces in a home media format. It's an exceptional film that got shit on by lots of folk, and that's a damn shame.

At the movies: The Tree of Life.

So the latest Terrence Malick film had finally made its way to Nastyville. Here is my perfectly respectable review of it for The Tennessean.

Now for comparison's sake, here's my Metromix review, which is- at best, unhinged. This wasn't a case of me submitting this piece and the Tennessean version being edited out of it, but rather my submitting two different reviews for each of the publications. I wanted to try and encompass all the feelings the film posed, while at the same time remaining nimble and diffuse in making any specific grand statements. I can't decide if this take on the film is genuinely reflective or if it veers into gibberish. Let me know your thoughts on this one.

At the movies: Burn After Reading.

It's no Lebowski, but it's a vicious little gem that has a remarkably consistent fake-out tone; a deadpan farce shot and scored like a tragic thriller. The pleasures are in Richard Jenkins' brokedown dog of a performance, the way John Malkovich wraps his remarkable face around the script's baroque profanities, Brad Pitt's numbnuts enthusiasm and personal trainer pep (he's certainly hearkening back to the Johnny Suede days here), and J.K. Simmons' pitch black-humored CIA chief.

The plot is a typical conspiracy yarn, but nobody's working with a complete sense of the big picture. There's a very real sense of melancholy to the proceedings, because nobody actually ends up being as important as they think they are, and that realization drives quite a few reveals that linger, like the film's more baroquely violent tendencies.

And oh, sleazy, sleazy George Clooney. He's doing something very interesting here, an emotionally complex and vain hedonist who nonetheless has a way of sneaking up on you as a viewer and stealing your sympathy in spite of one's better judgment.

I wish there'd been more for Tilda Swinton to do, but the entire enterprise is such a concise and vicious jewel of a film that I can't complain too terribly hard about any constituent elements.