(Slow) Motion Pictures

Did you know that I love the cinema?
I first started going when I was about seven (the Saturday Morning Kids Club at the Odeon, where the main entertainment was throwing ones Kiora carton over the balcony edge) and have never stopped since.

Fairly recently I have discovered the delight of HMV Cinemas. They are very "clubby", with cosy auditoriums where they show films that often don't make it to the main circuit and nice foyer bars where can be had a very coiffable glass of red wine. That's Shangri-La for me, especially as the entry ticket plus wine can be around a tenner. A cheap night out, by any standards!

However, sometimes the wine is better than the film and last week was a case in point.
I had heard so much about "The Tree of Life", starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, that I thought I was in for a wonderful Saturday night.
Instead, it was nearly three hours (it seemed like five) of meanderings through the dreary lives of a very middle American, lower middle class family. There were five members in this tribe. Brad Pitt was the tiresome and tyrannical head, imposing his idea of discipline on a pretty but spiritless wife, along with three children, two of whom were vacuous and the other seemingly permanently auditioning for a minor role in Lord of the Flies.

The whole exercise was conducted at a pace that would have embarrassed a tortoise. I kept tapping my watch to see if it had stopped!

Entertainment it certainly wasn't. The only redeeming feature was the excellent cinematography - but pretty pictures do not make a great movie and this one was just about as far from being great as it is possible to get.

 

Monday, 25th July 2011

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