Movies: best bets for June

On June 10, we’ll get a chance to see The Tree of Life.  Every ten years Terrence Malick directs a film that critics call a masterpiece: Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World.   At Cannes, audiences found The Tree of Life at once visually stunning, confusing, brilliant, trippy, profound and self-important.  Brad Pitt plays a 1950s Waco dad who is both caring and brutishly domineering.  Sean Penn plays his grown up Baby Boomer son reflecting on his childhood (without much dialogue).  From the music in the trailer, you can tell that this movie takes itself very seriously.

Also releasing June 10 is Beginners.  Ewan McGregor’s dad (Christopher Plummer) has just died, shortly after coming out of the closet.  As if this weren’t enough to deal with, McGregor is a depressive anyway. But then he meets Melanie Laurent (and they meet cute).  Directed by Mike Mills (Thumbsucker).

On the same weekend, we’ll also have The Trip,  a reportedly very funny movie in which Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon take a foodie road trip through the north of England.   Along the way, they snidely battle each other with their impressions of Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Woody Allen, Al Pacino and the like.

The next weekend, June 17, we have Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times.   This contender for the year’s best documentary is a peek inside modern journalism at a troubling time.

You can see the trailers at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

Here’s the trailer for Beginners.

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