Trees Lounge (1996)

Very disappointed :(

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

This film is effectively Steve Buscemi in a film. If you like Steve Buscemi, his acting style and the characters he plays, then you are almost guaranteed to enjoy this film. He plays a unemployed bum (a strange hybrid I think of Donny's welcoming and likable character, Carl's laid back attitude and Mr. Pink's authority) who spends his time at a bar and/or smoking pot, while he tackles various mid-life crisis type problems. The films low key attitude is what makes this enjoyable to watch with subtle humour and all in a surreal dimension.Not the most well written, well acted or most riveting film in the world but an entertaining watch nonetheless.

As a week-in-the-life-of a 31-year-old man named Tommy (Steve Buscemi), an out-of-work auto mechanic, this film plods along drearily and monotonously. Tommy's life is a mess. He hangs out at a local Long Island bar, called the Trees Lounge, where he hobnobs with other neighborhood deadbeats.None of the characters here have anything going for them. They drink alcohol, smoke, and talk. They're frustrated, unhappy, angry, and in a lot of emotional pain. Some viewers would call them losers. They don't know how to adapt to life's changes. They can't see beyond the dreary little world they've boxed themselves into. Their perspective is too confining.The best scenes take place inside the bar, where depressing jukebox songs play in the background. Outside the bar, scenes are largely uninteresting and perfunctory. But they do add depth to the characters, if the viewer has any interest in them to begin with. Some scenes play like a soap opera of life's defeated. Pace is slow. Dialogue is voluminous.Superficially, Buscemi, bug-eyed and anemic looking, is something of a trial to watch. Yet, he's no less attractive than other actors here. And that's a welcome change from blow-dried, photogenic fashion models, right out of central casting, who populate so many mainstream films.Low-budget, and very low-concept, "Trees Lounge" is just the ticket for the viewer who is depressed, bored, or feeling blue. One can empathize with Tommy, or his cohorts, knowing that the story is semi-autobiographical of Buscemi, before he got into acting.

I've been a fan of the diverse and clearly talented actor Steve Buscemi for quite a while, ever since I first saw Con Air back in '99. Naturally, when I heard he'd directed and written a movie by himself, starring him, I wanted to see it. I found this to be more of a drama than a comedy, but it didn't really bother me. It didn't have much of a plot, but that didn't bother me either. The film is about Tommy(Buscemi) who's an alcoholic. He just lost his job, and his boss took over his pregnant girlfriend. So, what should he do? Going to the local bar is probably low on the list of good ideas, but that's what he does. The plot is almost non-existent... then again, there's plenty of back-story to make up for it, and the movie has a pretty good pace, even though it moves kind of slow. The movie is primarily a study of the environment of alcoholics, and as such, it's great. Just great. There's tons of little details, thrown in here and there that don't really add to the plot, but rather to said study. The acting is mostly great. Buscemi is great, as always, and some of the supporting actors are equally good; Baldwin and Sevigny, in particular. The characters are well-written and credible. The humor is a rarity in the film, but it is mainly a drama. Also, what little there is, is great. The environment presented is entirely realistic and accurate. There isn't really anything about it that seemed to just be put in there, everything is perfectly believable. The dialog is well-written. There wasn't a lot I didn't like about this film, apart from the few tell-tale signs of Buscemi's inexperience in the director chair(long takes for no apparent reason, one or two acting performances that are either under- or overdoing it, the occasional odd camera angle), but I can see why many probably won't like it. It's not a fast film, it's not that fun, and the ending doesn't really resolve anything. Everyone is still caught in their respective situations, none of which are satisfactory. No major revelation is made by the end of the film. In the end, Buscemi just makes his point... that the life of an alcoholic is an empty one. Nothing else. Don't rent this to laugh or learn a useful lesson. Rent this to get insight into the day-to-day life of alcoholics and their environment. I recommend this to fans of Steve Buscemi and people who enjoy films that just indulge in study of a certain group of people. Not for those with low attention spans. 8/10

Let's be blunt: Steve Buscemi is one of the greatest actors of all time. And I say "actor," not "star," because he has re-defined the true art of divulging into character and literally performing so well we come to believe he is an entirely different person. He also has some of the best lines of all time. ("You're acting like a first-year thief; I'm acting like a professional"; "Whoa, Daddy!"; "You should see the other guy!")In "Trees Lounge," his directorial debut, Buscemi (pronounced "Bu-schemy") plays Tommy, a struggling alcoholic living in a pleasant middle-America town. Tommy thrives on the Trees Lounge, a local bar, where he mopes about all day long in self-loathing, hitting on the bartender (Carol Kane) and getting into brawls. His life is an utter waste until he lands a job as an ice cream man and thereby sparks a daring relationship with a 17-year-old girl (Chloe Sevigny). I'd be lying to you if I were to claim that "Trees Lounge" had a bare minimum of character metamorphosis. Tommy doesn't evolve very much throughout the film - in the beginning and until the very end he remains a miserable soul, unable to decide whether he's unhappy because he's drunk or drunk because he's unhappy. It brings to mind the speech by John Cusack in "High Fidelity," or even Mike Myers as Fat Ba$tard in "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me": Are they unhappy because of their passion, or vice versa?"Trees Lounge" is obviously a low budget effort by Buscemi, apparently powered by his own passion towards the project. A lesser actor and director might have turned "Trees Lounge" into an unfunny bar-based comedy in the vein of "Cheers," minus the likable characters and witty one-liners, and presented us with a one-dimensional character who displays all the characteristics of a hero and yet is found sitting in a bar all day long. Almost magically, Buscemi avoids these clichés and reveals a wonderfully wise and observant character study of one man - and although he isn't always the most likable of people, he always manages to remain realistically crafted, and realistically kind - he does things we disapprove of, such as drinking, drugs, etc. Yet we never feel any content towards Tommy. Perhaps because he connects with a vital human element within all of us.Indeed, Buscemi portrays Tommy as a very flawed character, and yet a strangely addictive one. I'm glad the focus of the story wasn't on someone else - out of all of the characters in the film, I liked Tommy the most, perhaps because he is given more depth and focus than the others. But yet I also firmly believe it has something to do with Buscemi's great acting abilities. As a character actor he is superb, and one of the funniest men in Hollywood - despite being what could be considered as a "serious actor." When he makes a movie as good as "Trees Lounge," it makes you wonder why he feels the need to pop up in all of Adam Sandler's tired vehicles. He's even the highlight in those films.The film has its fair share of cameos, most noticeably by Samuel L. Jackson in a role similar to that he played in "Hard Eight." But where the film truly succeeds is not via the surface, but through a much deeper level of realism. We meet people like Tommy a lot. Whether it is drunkards or loafers, they're everywhere. "Trees Lounge" is disturbingly depressing on a very subtle level because of the way it deals with Tommy. It's hard to truly explain the feelings the film creates without ruining the ending, which I will resist doing. But it's unexpected and somehow very depressing on an unusual level. No stereotypical deaths or such bold turns in the screenplay. It's the subtle stuff that drives "Trees Lounge." It has its flaws but it also surpasses movies of its kind on a level that not many manage to do.