Invincible action stars are out of fashion. In the ’80s and ’90s we paid bookoo bucks to watch beefcakes like Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Van Damme buzzsaw through bad guys by the thousands. Today, we’ve got Liam Neeson, Denzel Washington, and even Helen Mirren (all sexagenarians) playing highly-skilled death dealers, raking in the action blockbuster bucks formerly reserved for men with glistening, 24-inch biceps (the old muscle-heads are clinging on for dear life, but their flame has dwindled considerably). French director Pierre Morel more or less started the “aging action star” trend with Taken, and now he’s giving Sean Penn the “Neeson” treatment with The Gunman, an international action thriller that unfortunately won’t be Penn’s springboard into genre superstardom because frankly, the movie’s sort of a bummer.

A lot of the film’s mopey vibe comes from Penn’s face. You know that first ten minutes after you wake up from a nap when you’re a groggy, unresponsive asshole? That’s what Penn’s like for most of the movie. He looks really, really miserable all the time, and it rubs off on you. His character, Jim Terrier, is at his happiest at the movie’s outset: It’s 2006 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Jim, an American private security guard, has got a smokin’ hot girlfriend, Annie (Jasmine Trinca), a humanitarian aid worker whose group Jim and his team protects. They’re supposed to share a deep love connection, but they come off more like intense shag-buddies.

What Annie doesn’t know is, Jim’s real job is as a sniper for a mercenary group, led by their friend, Felix (Javier Bardem), who’s got a less-than-secret crush on Annie. Conveniently, a secret mission involving Jim assassinating a government mining minister provides Felix the perfect opportunity to steal Annie away: after the hit Jim is ordered to leave the country without so much as a goodbye to dear Annie, who’s left to save lives in the middle of the Congolese civil war without her man.

Skip forward eight years and Jim’s back in the DRC, digging wells to help provide water for the locals, and surfing on his downtime. An odd scene sees a shirtless Penn hit the waves for a while and run up the beach when he realizes he’s late for work. It’s odd because it plays like documentary footage of Penn vacationing in Africa, and is a laughably blatant excuse to show off the gym-rat pecs and abs he worked so hard on for the movie. Anyway, a group of men with guns show up to one of Jim’s dig sites screaming, “Where’s the white man?!”, a deadly run-in that sends him on a quest across Europe to hunt down his demons and atone for his sins. When he finds Felix married to Annie in Barcelona, things get personal.

From here, it’s old-guy action-thriller 101. There are double-crosses, verbal dick-measuring contests with Felix and an assortment of other tough guys, neck-snapping, choking, hiding, shooting, reunion sex…everything you expect, nothing more, nothing less. There’s a wrinkle in the plot involving Jim developing a harmful protein growth in his head due to the hard knocks he took during his time as a contract killer, but the only consequence of this contrivance is that Jim occasionally looks super constipated and then passes out at the worst possible moments (i.e. when baddies are around).

Though every step of the way the movie feels telegraphed and unsurprising, the good thing is Morel knows how to shoot and stage action scenes very, very well. The fights feel weighty and un-rushed, and some sequences are pretty inventive, like when Jim and Annie are trapped in a villa bathroom with all entrances blocked by grunts and Jim starts a fire to make good his escape. It’s always better to see Morel’s characters MacGuyver their way out of situations rather than Rambo their way out, and thankfully we get a few instances of the former to break up what otherwise is a movie that sleepwalks through genre tropes Morel helped establish with Taken.

Speaking of Taken, what made that movie work was that there was a sense of fun and adventure and locomotion to it, three things Gunman sorely lacks. Even when things are exploding or Penn is roughing up bad guys who deserve their comeuppance, the movie just never feels all that exciting. The film’s overriding tone is one of sadness and regret, and the plot revolves around characters who, across the board, are pretty big jerk-holes. There’s no ending to Jim’s story that would feel satisfactory because it’s hard to feel compassion for a guy who curses his old days as a killer one minute, and the next proceeds to mass murder dozens of men with finesse, precision, and flair.

Trinca’s character doesn’t sweeten the pot either. She’s written as a narrow-minded, sassy prize for Jim and Felix to fight over, which is a shame, because Trinca’s a hell of an actress. The rest of the cast are excellent as well and are often the only thing keeping the film afloat. Though Jim Terrier is far from a great role, Penn’s still a captivating screen presence. Mark Rylance, Idris Elba, and Ray Winstone have a few scenes each and have some fun, with Rylance (a decorated British stage actor) being the most memorable of all, modifying his voice with a gravely croak to hint at his character’s violent backstory.

Bardem has a lot of fun as Felix, playing him like a drunk, semi-incompetent Bond villain. He and Penn share some good exchanges, but it isn’t enough to save the film from its misery. The Gunman takes itself way too seriously. Maybe Penn—who received producer and screenplay credit for the film—let too much of his method-actor intensity seep into the film. Morel’s got style and class, and it’d be nice to see him out of his comfort zone with his next project.

Sean Penn bulks up, whoops some ass and atones for his sins in The Gunman, a dark thriller with a stacked cast, directed by Taken helmer Pierre Morel. Penn plays Jim Terrier, a sniper mercenary who, years after carrying out a high-profile assassination in the Congo and abandoning the love of his life, must chase demons from his past across Europe and reconcile with his lost lover. Fans of Morel’s measured, cerebral approach to action will find the French director staying true to form as he gives Penn the Liam Neeson “grizzled tough-guy” treatment. Javier Bardem, Jasmine Trinca, Ray Winstone, Mark Rylance, and Idris Elba round out the cast.

While visiting San Francisco Morel sat with us to talk about his psychological approach to action; the mentality of men who kill; Sean Penn’s intensity on set; Mark Rylance’s raspy voice; his inability to settle down in a single location; and more.

One of my favorite sports journalists said something fascinating recently. He talked about how most people would like to think that, if their family or significant other were threatened on the street, they wouldn’t hesitate to protect them and inflict violence on the attacker. But in fact, most people aren’t able to do it. It takes a certain type of person who is capable of answering that call to violence at the drop of a hat. You’ve made a few movies about men with this capacity. What do you understand about the mindset of this kind of person?
I don’t know this kind of person, but the characters we’re portraying are what we all wish to be. It’s that fantasy: If my kids were threatened, I would immediately react and do what needs to be done. Many people cannot do that. But in a perfect world, we’d love to. Making these characters in movies is a way to personify our hopes and expectations of ourselves, which we may never fulfill.

It’s a bit strange to watch these men mass murder people. I think your movies are concerned with the psychology of that more than most action movies. I know you don’t consider your films straight-up action movies, and one of the things that allows your work to transcend that genre is your cerebral approach. Your action sequences aren’t necessarily about head-to-head fighting or brute strength. These guys are stuck in a corner, and they have to maneuver their way out with their brain.
I love that kind of thing. It is an action movie — it’s entertaining — but it’s not just that. It’s about the psychology of these guys and what leads them to do what they do. That’s more interesting than action for action’s sake to me. There are several layers of complexity in guys who actually do this kind of business. We met a few guys who do that kind of business.

Snipers?
Yeah. Snipers, black ops. They have a mindset. For those who have been close to danger, they have a mindset to get out of dangerous situations. It requires being very well prepared, also. It’s not something you can improvise, I don’t think. If you’re stuck in the middle of a massive fight and you’re not trained for that, you’re like a rabbit in headlights. If you’re trained, you can get out of it. The movie’s about that, but it’s also about the other side of it. There’s a cost to that kind of [mindset], a psychological and physical cost. The cost of killing is something that takes its toll on you, I think.

We see both mental and physical repercussions to Terrier’s work. Is his brain condition in the movie a real thing?
It is. It’s the same condition you find in football players or boxers. It’s repeated concussions that ruin the brain, causing it to create bad proteins that build up and disable your ability to act and function properly. It’s not a psychological condition like PTSD; it’s a physical condition. It impairs your ability to move, so if a crisis occurs in the middle of a fight, it impairs the hero’s ability to fight. It was interesting to us to give flaws to our hero. I like heroes that are human and have issues, not superheroes. If you know already that he’s going to win, what’s the point?

I enjoyed Mr. Rylance’s performance. Did he alter his voice a bit for the role? It’s wonderful.
People don’t necessarily know Mark Rylance because he’s a British stage actor, one of the most gifted stage actors of his generation. Sean had never done action, and Mark hadn’t either. He wanted to build a different kind of characters. In a few shots, you can see there’s a big scar on his neck, and he imagined he’d been hurt in combat before, so he modified his voice. That was his backstory for his character.

Mr. Penn got in great shape for the movie. You can tell he put a lot of work in at the gym. Is he intense to be around? He seems to take his craft very, very seriously.
One of the things that makes him so talented is that he doesn’t compromise. He’s a gifted actor, and he doesn’t compromise, so when he’s in character, he’s one hundred percent that character. He works hard. It’s easy to work with him because we had great connections and moments on set. We had early-stage conversations about what the movie’s about, who the character is, what his journey is, what his arc is, so on set you just make adjustments on an already great performance.

He and Javier have good chemistry.
It’s interesting to see them work together. They come from different schools, I’d say. Sean is method acting to the core, and Javier is from Spain so he has a different approach to acting. But ultimately, however they built their characters, the chemistry was pretty intense.

Do you enjoy putting your characters in hopeless situations and then try to plot out how they’ll fight or think their way out of it? Is that fun to you?
Yeah, it’s always fun. You work on the floor plans for your sets, like, “Okay, they’re coming in from here and over there…what do you do [escape]?” Cool action pieces are fun. I love them.

What new skills have you acquired on this film as a director?
I don’t know. I learn every time. Every day is a new experience. You learn many things on each film, but I haven’t analyzed that yet.

Is it a subconscious thing?
Completely. Very instinctive. I’m not very intelligent. [laughs]

I’ve seen and read a lot of your interviews. You seem to very much love what you do and get a lot of joy from filmmaking.
It’s fun. What’s not to love in making movies? Come on! It’s fantastic. It’s less a job than it is a passion. I watch movies as much as I can. You have to be a movie lover before you can make movies. I love movies, so I’m happy on the set.

And filming in these beautiful places doesn’t hurt, I’m sure.
That’s another part of me. I can’t settle anywhere more than a few months. [laughs] It’s a big problem of mine. But yeah, we moved a lot. We went to Spain for this movie, mostly. Barcelona is a pretty cool city, a beautiful city, and a really easy place to shoot. Wherever you put your camera is going to look good. [laughs] We shot in South Africa, which is probably the easiest part of Africa to shoot in, because it has an existing industry. It’s a world on its own, I think. Gorgeous.

On day 4 of the Mill Valley Film Festival, Sean Penn made a rare appearance to support The Human Experiment, a new documentary by co-directors Don Hardy Jr. and Dana Nachman that Penn narrates and executive produced. The beautifully shot doc explores the adverse–and sometimes fatal–effects of toxic chemicals found abundantly in our households, the food we eat, the drinks we drink, and what we can do to help stop the distribution of them.

Hundreds of Star Wars fanatics gathered at the Century Theaters in Corte Madera to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi with a costume parade full of wookies, storm troopers, rebels, a certain chirpy, thimble-shaped droid, and a screening of the classic final (for now) chapter in the sci-fi fantasy saga.

Check out all the action below!

Paolo Sorrentino’s This Must Be the Place is a film I love so much I cannot even begin to put into words why. If someone were to ask me to make a list of films that are the reason why I love film, this would surely be on it. This movie as unique as a snow flake, a one of a kind ace, a film like almost nothing I have seen before.

When I finished the film, I had a massive grin on my face that I tried (but could not) remove from my face 10 minutes after it had finished. A movie that is so good, as it was ending my heart beat faster and goose bumps rose from my arms.

The only film I could even come close to thinking it reminded me of was Wim Wender’s gleefully fantastic 80’s indie film Paris, Texas. A film I also adored. Wender’s film concerned itself with a man who was a mute who was caught walking across the desert with no recollection of who, what, where, or why. Beautifully shot landscapes with intimate and silent scenes filled with honesty and emotion. This Must Be the Place essentially has the fantastic landscapes and that’s about it, but for some reason I was reminded of Paris, Texas. I am not alone either. Maybe it is because both are films mainly shot in America by foreign directors. I do not know.

The film starts out in Ireland, our hero is Cheyenne (Sean Penn), a retired rock star who looks like the offspring mixture Robert Smith of The Cure and Tim Burton. I apologize for that image. He is played magnificently by Sean Penn who adds yet another unbelievable performance to his career. Living in a mansion in Dublin with his wife, Jane (Frances McDormand, who is also great), he spends most his days playing handball in his waterless pool and cooking frozen pizzas.

One of the best things about This Must Be the Place is that you do not even know where the movie is headed until about 50 minutes in when Cheyenne is called to New York to see his dying father. I love that the movie just flows for the first 50 minutes. Just observing Cheyenne and his quirky lifestyle hanging around the mall with his grungy dressed friend or watching his wife go to work as a firefighter.

Then Cheyenne gets the call to see his father. He flies to New York only to arrive too late. His father has passed on. But soon he finds out that his father, along with a Jewish Nazi hunter (played brilliantly by Judd Hirsch), have been hunting down his torturer from World War II.

And thus we are sent on a completely original journey about a retired rock star who makes it his mission to hunt down and kill his father’s Nazi nemesis. Obtaining a truck from a greasy business man, Cheyenne sets out across America in search of the treacherous Nazi. I chuckled at the images of an emo looking middle aged man driving a massive 4×4 truck down the highways of America. Along the way he meets oddities such as the Nazi’s ex-wife who is actually a former history teacher in a Midwestern state. Now an elderly lady she lives with an old friend and a goose who consistently honks at Cheyenne.

He meets a woman, who may or may not be involved with his quest, who lives in the desert with her overweight son. She waitresses at a local diner while he argues with Cheyenne about who originally sings the song the film is named after. The kid says Arcade Fire. Cheyenne says Talking Heads. After a minute of disagreement, they sing the song together. We learn Cheyenne also happens to be a fantastic Ping Pong player as he schools a young man. Who would have thought?

One of the best scenes involves Cheyenne running into an old man at a diner late in his journey. He is played by Harry Dean Stanton, who by the way was the hero of Paris, Texas. My connection came before Stanton entered the film in case you were wondering. When asked if he knows an old German in town he replies, “That could only be one man, but let me tell you about suitcases first.” Then proceeds to talk about selling suitcases and then directs Cheyenne to the famous German of the town.

This Must Be the Place is a true original. A movie that soars above just about everything else, filled with fantastic cinematography, funny performances and scenes that are consistently better than the ones prior. Movies that get better and better with each scene are rare. The film’s confrontational scene with Cheyenne and the Nazi henchman is done so well, I almost could not believe it.

A film about self-perception, family and vengeance, Sorrentino’s film is a fantastic original work that will only grow in stature with time. I absolutely loved This Must Be the Place.

From the acclaimed director Terrence Malick comes The Tree of Life, an artistic and profound film about the meaning of life centering on a normal and rather insignificant family of the Midwest. The film forgoes traditional narrative in favor of a visual opus that even Stanley Kubrick would appreciate. The best thing you could do is go into the film expecting a cinematic experience; it rids itself of any conventional qualities.

The Tree of Life starts off by tells us that there are two different ways through life either nature or grace and we must choose which one to follow. Grace does not try to please itself and accepts being forgotten, disliked, insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself, like to have it’s own way and finds reasons to be unhappy. Clearly that symbolizes the differences between how the mother and father end up raising their children.

The film then briefly shows a glimpse of Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt) and Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain) who lost one of their children. We hear from the father, mother and brother how they regretted things they did or did not do while the son was alive. A quick introduction is given to the present day Jack O’Brien (Sean Penn) who is an adult but is remembering his deceased brother from childhood.

To say the film is visually stunning is a gross understatement and it does not take long for the film to show it. The film shifts not just back to the beginning of the story but the beginning of time. Beautiful shots depicting how the universe expanded and life as we would know it began.

Fast forward millions of years and Jack O’Brien is born. It slowly shows different stages of him growing up, mostly consisting of his upbringing in the house with his family. A short while later another son is born into the world and shows Jack curious of him. The children grow up together living normal lives under the somewhat strict guidance of their disciplinary father. In one immensely emotional scene, the father breaks down a bit and admits his regret of pushing his kids too hard.

One of the things I enjoyed most about the film is how Malick shows us the smallest of detail and we can instantly relate to it. Such as the way the sunlight is reflected onto a wall, the way your hand moves through the air when you put it out of a moving vehicle, or the way the wind blows through clothes hanging from the clothesline in the summer. The way he evokes emotion through visuals instead of words is amazing.

There is definitely more style over substance overall in the film which is why a lot of people have a problem with the film, it can be a bit of a challenge to watch. I would say it was more of an experience than it is a traditional film. People hated 2001 Space Odyssey when it came out because of the long absence of dialog during the opening 25 minutes. If you dig deep though the film does touch on some philosophical questions such as the age-old nature vs nurture debate.

The cinematography and use of the camera was done masterfully from the very beginning and carried throughout. It might be the most technical and beautiful American shot film since 2001 Space Odyssey. The film would certainly have my Oscar vote for cinematography but time will tell if it actually will or not. It did, however, win the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival this year.

It is a rare that a film so poetically written and masterfully filmed comes along. Watching what Malick perceives what life and death looks like is stunning. The Tree of Life may be hard for most people to watch because of it’s non-linear narrative and art like visuals but that is really quite a shame because I think it would take multiple views in order to fully appreciate. Although, to fully understand the film may be difficult to do because of how subjective the film is, which is a subject that the film itself brings up.

Cannes Film Festival came to a close Sunday night and announced the winners of Palme d’Or, Grand Prix, Best Director and other high status awards. Kirsten Dunst won Best Actress in Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia and thanked the director after a very controversial comment he made about Nazi’s during a press conference that caused a lot of media attention last week. The top prize, Palme d’Or, went out to The Tree of Life directed by Terrence Malick which stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn.

See the full list of nominations.

The Tree of Life, (director Terrence Malick)

The Kid with a Bike, (directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, (director Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive

Joseph Cedar, Hearat Shulayim

Las Acacias, (director Pablo Gorgelli)

Polisse, (director Maiwenn)

Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia

Jean Dujarin, The Artist

Cross Country, (director Marina Viroda)

Arirang, (director Kim Ki-Duk)
Stopped on Track, (director Andreas Dresen)

Elena, (director Andrey Zvyaginstev)