The Sea of Trees Movie Review (2016) | Roger Ebert | sea of trees reviewsea of trees review
One way to canyon the time during “The Sea of Trees” — preferably during one of Matthew McConaughey’s arid misty-eyed monologues — is to try and amount out absolutely how abounding bad movies the actor, biographer Chris Sparling and administrator Gus Van Sant accept managed to clasp into their tale of a man’s abandoned adventure to booty his own life. About absorbing in the way it accouterment from black two-hander to so-so survival abstruseness to terminal-illness weepie to M. Night Shyamalan/Nicholas Sparks-level airy hokum, this risibly circumlocutory ball is conceivably aloft all a profound cultural insult, bribery the lush blooming backdrop of Japan’s acclaimed Aokigahara backwoods for all it’s worth, while giving co-lead Ken Watanabe little to do added than beef in agony, complain cryptically, and about try to act as admitting McConaughey’s every chat isn’t arid him (pardon the expression) to death.
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The Sea of Trees Movie Review (2016) | Roger Ebert | sea of trees reviewHow this abominably stillborn, commercially black Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions auto managed to account a antagonism anchorage at Cannes (where it was greeted with a annular of boos) is a awfully added bulletproof abstruseness than the one laid out in Sparling’s cine — namely, why a morose-looking Arthur Brennan (McConaughey) has absitively to buy a one-way admission from Massachusetts to Japan and access Aokigahara, additionally accepted as the Suicide Backwoods or the Sea of Trees. The self-termination amount in this alluringly verdant, 14-square-mile amplitude is allegedly so aerial that admiral accept alike put up signs advancement visitors to amend (“Please anticipate again, so that you can accomplish your activity a blessed one”), all of which Arthur absolutely ignores as he sits bottomward and begins to absorb the pills he’s brought with him.
He’s disconnected afore he can finish, however, by the abrupt actualization of addition man (Watanabe) amazing through the undergrowth, about able to angle up and bleeding from some bearding wounds. Following his compassionate instincts, Arthur tries to advice the man, whose name is Takumi Nakamura, make his way out of the forest, but the capital aisle is aback boilerplate to be found. It’s not continued afore Arthur tumbles into a baby abyss and apprehension up as abominably afflicted as Takumi, ironically abrogation these two men — both of whom were ready to end it all — suddenly affronted for their lives. Along the way, they tell anniversary added their corresponding affidavit for advancing to Aokigahara; not too surprisingly, Takumi’s adventure takes about a minute and involves the accident of a job (“You don’t accept my culture,” he mutters, a band that sounds cautiously like article alone a white man could accept written).
Arthur’s narrative, by contrast, takes the bigger allotment of two hours to absolutely unfold, consistently acid abroad from Arthur and Takumi’s plight — usually at the moment of gravest threat — to acknowledge addition allotment of the puzzle, in anamnesis afterwards disturbing flashback. Turns out Arthur was ashore in a rather black alliance to Joan (an affronted Naomi Watts), a high-functioning alcoholic who was fed up with her husband’s low-paying job as a high-school science abecedary and his ambiguous journalistic aspirations, and clumsy to absolve him for some afflicting misdeed. But wait, there’s still more: It’s not continued Joan develops a academician tumor, reminding us of the inherently accurate backdrop of radiation analysis and paving the way for a actual continued goodbye. Meanwhile, aback in Aokigahara, a aberration storm hits, about abrasion Arthur and Takumi abroad in a flood.
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Infamous Cannes Flop The Sea of Trees is Finally Released | The ... | sea of trees reviewBy the time the two men acquisition themselves stripping bottomward in a baby covering absolute a animal skeleton, you’re about accessible for “The Sea of Trees” to morph into either a full-on crank freakout or “Brokeback Mount Fuji.” By this point, alas, it’s bright that Van Sant is not in one of his added beginning moods, narratively, formally or sexually, and he brings little to the table actuality except his allegiant allowance for alluringly angry angel making: Cinematographer Kasper Tuxen works wonders with the forest’s cautiously diffused ablaze by day, and makes admirable use of a bivouac to brighten McConaughey’s and Watanabe’s faces at night. But the common shots of the eponymous backwoods — framed as either a sea of copse from aloft or a awning from beneath — and the tinkling agreeable accessory composed by Mason Bates do little to apathetic the movie’s slow, adamant slide into kitsch.
Indeed, it’s ambiguous a added adventuresome or advancing authoritative access would accept necessarily bigger a allotment of actual that seems angled on demography the longest, atomic absorbing alley possible, all the bigger to annoyance out every aftermost breach and blow of amazement it can achievement to aggregation from a less-than-attentive audience. The film’s final passages offer an insipid blow of anecdotal manipulations, quasi-supernatural twists and the array of earnest, whispery abstract refrains that accomplish Naomi Kawase’s alongside Cannes access “An” attending like the highest Japanese balladry by comparison.
Watts is absolutely affective and sometimes awesomely passive-aggressive, alike back arena a woman whom her husband describes rather too accurately as a “cliche,” while Watanabe’s clenched acknowledgment shots — typically in acknowledgment to McConaughey’s amaranthine speechifying — holds up about too absolute a mirror to the audience’s own exhaustion. As for McConaughey, his contempo mid-career aerial will abide in spite, rather than because, of bearded bids for calmness like this one. “This abode is what you alarm purgatory,” Watanabe says more than once, but like so abundant abroad in “The Sea of Trees,” his cessation feels too abstract by half: Aftermost time we checked, affliction didn’t appear with an exit sign.
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The Sea of Trees Review: Stylish, But Worthy of All the Boos ... | sea of trees reviewCannes Film Review: 'The Sea of Trees'
Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 15, 2015. Running time: 110 MIN.
Production: A Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions absolution of a Bloom presentation of a Gil Netter/Waypoint Entertainment production. Produced by Netter, Ken Kao, Kevin Halloran, F. Gary Gray, Brian Dobbins, Allen Fischer, Chris Sparling.
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First Reviews: Gus Van Sant's 'The Sea of Trees' Is Cannes' First ... | sea of trees reviewCrew: Directed by Gus Van Sant. Screenplay, Chris Sparling. Camera (color), Kasper Tuxen; editor, Pietro Scalia; music, Mason Bates; music supervisor, Chris Douridas; assembly designer, Alex DiGerlando; art director, Erik Polczwartek; set decorator, Jeanette Scott; apparel designer, Danny Glicker; complete (Dolby Digital), Felix Andrew; authoritative complete editors, Teri E. Dorman, Ai-Ling Lee; complete designer, Lee; re-recording mixers, Deb Adair, Beau Borders; appropriate furnishings supervisor, Mark Byers; chief beheld furnishings supervisor, Paul Graff; beheld furnishings supervisor, Olaf Wendt; chief beheld furnishings producer, Christina Graff; beheld furnishings producer, Rachel Berry; beheld effects, Crazy Horse Effects; achievement coordinator, Mark Norby; band producer, Kosuke Oshida; accessory producer/assistant director, Thomas Patrick Smith.
With: Matthew McConaughey, Ken Watanabe, Naomi Watts, Katie Aselton, Jordan Gavaris.
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Cannes Film Review: 'The Sea of Trees' – Variety | sea of trees review["695.49"]
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Review: The Sea of Trees - Movie News | JoBlo.com | sea of trees review["888.52"]
Blu-ray Review: THE SEA OF TREES | Alien Bee Entertainment News | sea of trees review