Trees Lounge
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DVD details
Actor: Elizabeth Bracco, Eszter Balint, Mark Boone Junior, Michael Buscemi, Richard BoesBrand: BUSCEMI,STEVE
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-03-26
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Lions Gate
DVD Reviews of Trees Lounge
DVD Review: A deeply humorous, bleak slice of life..
Summary: 4 Stars
The title of this finely humble film, Trees Lounge, is the name of a New Jersey bar that acts as thirty something Tommy Basilio's (Steve Buscemi) second home throughout it`s running time. We initially find him hung-over, waking up in the Trees fifteen minutes after last call, demanding a shot of Wild Turkey. Tommy has just been fired, broken up with his pregnant girlfriend of eight years whose now involved with his once friend and former boss Rob (Anthony LaPaglia). Despite unable to keep his own car running, Tommy mooches around town looking for work as a mechanic, but spends most of his time getting drunk at the Trees making strained if appropriate acquaintances with some of the locals. Namely one Mike (Mark Boone Junior), who himself has his own domestic issues but has chosen to spend his "vacation" coming to the Trees everyday.
One thing becomes clear to all around Tommy - including his family, that he is a bit of a sad sack loser. A leech that expects everything but is unwilling to do the work required for a person to change their life situation. Unable to really get over his previous relationship or find work, he ends up taking over his recently deceased Uncle's Ice-Cream truck, causing more trouble than it's worth involving the seventeen-year-old niece of his former girlfriend.
Made in 1996, Trees Lounge reminds you of what a real independent film feels like. In recent years, the line seems to have become blurred in the mainstream as too who or what exactly constitutes such a thing. However, this film is the debut work of a true artist in writer/director/star Buscemi. Made for less than two million dollars, the film's confronting reality of the almost pointlessness of life at times, alongside an ensemble of great performances from the likes of Junior, Chloe Sevigny, Elizabeth Bracco and Daniel Baldwin give the film a real spirit and ironic humour.
Buscemi himself, as the central Tommy, plays out a meditation in all things loserdom excellently. Bad choices, selfishness, alienation, you name it; Tommy justifies such a label to himself and to all around him. Coupled with all that happens up until the poignant, almost depressing ending, it is difficult to sympathise with or for him. Not that Buscemi as writer/director expects or even wants us too. The laidback, but hardly laconic script slowly draws out circumstance in a very observatory way avoiding influencing the audience too much about how we should feel about these people. We can only gauge their actions, not really react.
The lesson here must be then that life is what you make it - and sitting around in a dive bar all day will not help your cause. Tommy, and many like him, are destructive people to all who are close, never fully realising until it is too late. In short, and incorporating a great soundtrack to boot, Trees Lounge is a deeply humorous, albeit bleak slice of life that, if you let it, can help put your own into perspective too.
DVD Review: Alcoholism invades small town America
Summary: 5 Stars
Tommy (the amazing Steve Buscemi) is an alcoholic, perhaps not ready to admit it to himself. He lives in a tiny apartment over a local dive named Tree's Lounge. Tommy shows up everyday and knows all the regulars, specifically an old man named Bill who sits in his favorite seat all day, and an elderly couple who come in to gossip and play cards. Tommy has recently lost his job as a mechanic for "borrowing" money from the business for gambling reasons. He's bothering those who still work in the shop by hanging across the street, including ex-friend Rob who is now with Tommy's ex-girlfriend Teresa who's quite pregnant. It's never sure if the baby is Rob's or Tommy's.
Then appears a new guy in the bar, Mike. He hangs out and drinks as regularly as the rest, but it turns out Mike has a family, wife and daughter, and a rather nice Moving Business that he runs from his barstool. Mike and Tommy become friends, which doesn't stop Tommy from hitting Mike up for a job. He's been cruising for mechanic work (while unable to keep his own car running) and finally takes a job running Uncle Al's Ice Cream Truck after Uncle Al suffers an unexpected and fatal heart attack.
Debbie "Deb" (Played by Chloe Sevigny - Kids), related to Tommy though his past relationship with Teresa, helps Tommy run the truck, and though she's only seventeen they form a bond. Jerry (Daniel Baldwin) and Patti (Mimi Rogers) are Deb's parents and still treat Tommy like family. This puts his relationship with Deb, especially after it spins out of control, on the dark edge of friendship with what little family he has left. Tommy is a disappointment with everyone, even Connie the bartender at Trees Lounge (played perfectly by Carol Kane) and he can't afford to loose family from wherever it comes from
The most poignant scene in the film is Tommy sitting in Bill's regular chair after Bill has been taken to the hospital (and no one has gone to see him, not even his "bar" family), and you can see the look on Tommy's face wondering if he is becoming the next "Bill" in the bar.
This film was written, directed by, and starring Steve Buscemi, one of my favorite actors. The movie shows his talent doesn't lay in just acting alone. It's a great story and beautifully directed. The role of Tommy was (of course) written for Buscemi and he plays it to perfection. You can clearly see Tommy's playful side, and why he's liked so much by his friends. The film is surprisingly visual, capturing the way people look and act when they're under the influence or simply not taking care of themselves. My only problem with the rental DVD I watched is that there were no subtitles for hard of hearing, and no extras on the DVD. I bought it anyway, hoping for extras and possibly an interview with Steve Buscemi on the triple role he played in this movie. I highly recommend this movie. Enjoy!
DVD Review: The transition from actor to director doesn't always work. Right, Steve?
Summary: 2 Stars
Good Gosh almighty, watching Tree's Lounge all the way through is in a way like allowing an embittered Croatian nanny rip your back hairs out one at a time, all while she sings the song 'Scarborough Fair' in her festive native tongue. In other words, it's a rough experience.
Okay, so it's not that bad, but it is like hanging out in your garage on a Saturday afternoon, watching your great uncle throw back cold ones while he drones on about politics and the state of the economy. It's not entirely horrible, but you know you could be doing something better with your time.
I tried to like Trees Lounge, which deals with a man who owns a bar and drives an ice cream truck around town doing his best now to be seduced by a local teenaged female, but I just couldn't. Be warned. This is not your older brother's independent film. It's Steve Buscemi with too much power and too little wit.
DVD Review: Trees Lounge
Summary: 5 Stars
Good movie! came as expected (new) and arrived in time for christmas- I think I ordered it a couple weeks before. DVD Review: Small, Rough...but Excellent.
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't have anything controversial to say here as I basically feel the same way about Trees Lounge as everybody else. I loved it when I saw it a decade ago and my opinion has not changed in the time since. I rented it the other day and was as pleased as I was the first time around. Buscemi's virgin directorial effort could not have been more resonant. He portrays Tommy as both a hero and an anti-hero. The plot itself takes us to quite familiar places as there isn't anything too "Hollywood" about this production. It is not happy, but its realism offers great value. Trees Lounge has the type of feel that Ed Burns has tried to create continuously over his career, but was only able to do so in Brothers McMullen. All of the ambiguities shared by Buscemi and his cast in the film add up to one thing: life.
Description of Trees Lounge
No Description Available.Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: R
Release Date: 26-MAR-2002
Media Type: DVD
Steve Buscemi, an icon of the independent film world for years, took the opportunity to write, direct, and star in this wistful low-budget gem. He plays Tommy, a Long Island loser who gets tossed from his job as a mechanic for questionable financial antics. He spends his days at a local bar, drinking his life away even as he denies that he's doing any such thing. And when he finally works up the gumption to get a job, he winds up driving an ice-cream truck in his old neighborhood--and getting involved in an inappropriate relationship with his teeny-bopper assistant (Chloe Sevigny), earning the violent enmity of her father (Daniel Baldwin). Low-key in its approach, the film has a sad humor that is both knowing and forgiving, as well as offering one of Buscemi's best performances. --Marshall Fine
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