SCHOOL OUTING: Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz in Bad Teacher
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THOR Kenneth Branagh, whose devotion to the works of William Shakespeare resulted in his designation as the modern-day heir to Laurence Olivier, might have seemed an unlikely choice to helm Thor, the latest in the growing line of Marvel Comics adaptations. Yet it's possible that the man who successfully brought (among others) Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing to the big screen took his marching orders directly from the Bard himself. "O that I were a god, to shoot forth thunder," wrote Will in Henry VI, Part 2, a sentiment that Branagh tries to capture in this superhero opus centering on the Norse God of Thunder. A perfectly serviceable entry in the cinematic superhero sweepstakes, Thor provides viewers with a good time as long as they're not taking notes and comparing it to most other high-profile Marvel properties. More straight-laced than the Spider-Man films and less exciting than the X-Men oeuvre (the first two, anyway), Thor can't even match the rollicking ride of the original Iron Man, which had the advantage of Robert Downey Jr. to steer it over rough terrain. But that's not to say there isn't much to enjoy here. The film is gorgeous to behold (the 3-D is used effectively), and the battle sequences are ably handled — there's a kinetic kick in seeing Thor twirl his mighty hammer Mjolnir to batter opponents, a perfect realization of the manner in which it was caught on the printed page. Chris Hemsworth is well-cast as Thor, and while he and Natalie Portman (as an astrophysicist) don't set off any massive fireworks, they prove to be an affable screen couple (at any rate, Natalie Portman + Chris Hemsworth > Natalie Portman + Danny McBride). **1/2
THE TREE OF LIFE Terrence Malick's latest cinematic meditation is a movie that's probably easy to hate and almost impossible to defend. Detractors will be quick to label it pretentious, which seems unfair to me — pretentious denotes insincerity, and Malick is nothing if not genuine in his attempts to use the medium as a means with which to explore subjects that are important to him. Here, he's made his most elliptical film yet, a mood piece of a movie that grapples with such capital-letter issues as Life, Death, God and Nature. It's a movie that's both universal (literally, as in the creation of the universe) and personal (the birth of a child), and its neatest trick is that it feels like a Malick autobiography even as it directly speaks to receptive viewers on a one-to-one basis. It's cinema as a give-and-take relationship: The movie can only provide as much as the viewer is willing to put into it. Its primary plot centers on a family residing in Waco, Texas, in the 1950s. Mr. O'Brien (Brad Pitt) is the stern patriarch, a man who loves his family but nevertheless takes out all of life's frustrations on them. Mrs. O'Brien (Jessica Chastain) is the beatific mother, full of love, grace and charity. Jack, the oldest of their three sons (Hunter McCracken), is inevitably torn — and molded — by the conflicting behavior of his parents, and, as with any person, his childhood is carried with him into adulthood, where a grown Jack (Sean Penn) grapples with all sorts of memories, not least the painful thoughts of the brother who died too young. For those who can get on its wavelength, The Tree of Life will feel like a godsend; others will be bored by a slowly paced tale that allows the film to clock in at 140 minutes. ***
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