Movie Review-----THE TREE OF LIFE

I sat down to watch this movie late last year and made it through about 45 minutes before deciding to be merciful to myself and turn it off. I thought it was the most pretentious film I had ever seen and found it virtually plotless. So, imagine my disgust when last week it was nominated as one of the Best Pictures of the Year at the Academy Awards. Ever since I was a child, I have had an obsession with all things 'Oscar', so I put THE TREE OF LIFE back into my Netflix queue and decided that I needed to watch the movie in its entirety since clearly I gave up too soon. So this morning, I took a deep breath and pressed Play on my remote control. Two and a half hours later, I have decided that Writer/Director Terence Malick must have paid off several members of the Academy. Sitting through this movie was a true test of endurance. Part of the movie is a Period drama with Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain as a young Couple raising three boys in a suburb of an unnamed city. Part of the movie has Sean Penn walking around a desert searching for the meaning of life. And part of the movie is Terence Malick's vision of how the world was created. None of these parts equal a whole. Pitt and Chastain commit themselves and give good performances considering the weakness of the material. Penn is barely on screen long enough to truly make an impression. The cinematography is the only thing this movie has going for it. It's less of a movie and more of a beautiful screen saver. I don't understand how this was nominated for anything, much less Best Picture. It's the most ridiculous Best Picture nomination since THE SIXTH SENSE. Skip it.