TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Manthast Absolutely amazing

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

pseudonymmail It has some elements of big chill, except interesting characters, plots, and background.You can tell it was designed to be an intelligent adult movie, but without all the boring elements that were common of the era in film. I actually watched it to see Buscemi, but I like a lot of the actors and elements.It kind of reminds me of a plot and philosophical mix of Bottle Rocket and Box Of Moonlight which were both good obscure films. It's something I'd buy for a DVD collection and watch every once and a while when bored.

djbuddy97 Loved it....While not especially dark, this film really captures the lingering malaise that is a working life in the New York area burbs. If you spent any time growing up, living in the area you know a place like the "Trees Lounge" that is populated by "townies" that sort of never leave. I won't write a review of the performances/script other than it is a great "capture."Highly recommended -- especially for those that love theater as well. Stellar all around - glad I caught it on Netflix. You may very well want to watch this flick as a warning tale as well. You already know everyone in the film!

Flowbeer I loved this movie from the first time I ever saw it. I had it at the end of a video tape I'd recorded (off IFC) after 'Monument Ave.', a Boston-mob film that had a similar "bar tone" to it, but was nothing like 'Trees Lounge.' 'Trees' takes place on Long Island and the vast array of crazy characters are a lot to choose from! There's a lot of humor in this film - and a lot of secrets & desires. The lounge is a bar that has a lot of losers who frequent it - the main one being Tommy (Buscemi)! There are the standard barflys who sit there all day drinking, and who must be on a fat social security paycheck to pay for it all! Anyway, we follow Tommy through his break-up with a gal he treated like crap and who has left him for one of his more-stable friends who owns a garage, going to family funerals and getting beaten up by a certain 'guido' in the 'hood. The only thing Tommy has, and the rest of his drinking buddies for that matter, is drinking his blues away. One of the cool people Tommy meets at the Trees is 'Mike', played by Mark Boone Junior - who gives a great performance as a guy who's wife is also threatening to leave him if he doesn't straighten up his act. So Mike & Tommy drink together and at one point, bring home 2 teenage girls to smoke some pot and dance to some records, in a bout of drunken bad judgement. When the wife returns, she asks Tommy if there were any girls there and Tommy, as a pro, covers for his new friend perfectly. There'a also a small part with Debbie Mazar, who Tommy almost gets to take home - until she passes out and her friends tell him to leave her alone! And Carol Kane is wonderful as the feisty bartender who keeps Tommy in line when he needs it. Also look for Kevin Corrigan as a coke-head loser, similar to the one he portrayed in Buffalo '66. By the end of the movie, you really start to feel sorry for Tommy. You wonder how much of it is based on Buscemi's life in New York, before he made it in the business. They say he actually drove an ice cream truck for awhile in NY, so that part must be true. All in all, Buscemi gets totally DICKED OVER in this film. But it is still a great film. And real. If you're a drinker, you might just see a bit of yourself in this film. 8 out of 10 stars

noralee "Trees Lounge" sympathetically intersects a portrait of close-knit family and friends with that of a spiraling down, lonely loser in their midst.With an exceptionally effective ensemble, including notable cameos, writer/director/star Steve Buscemi in his debut feature film is particularly good at establishing the sense of a local bar where everyone not only knows your name but knows your relatives and where you and they live. In the movies, we usually see this kind of ethnic gathering, here Italian-Americans in the part of Long Island that's just over the border from New York City, at a funeral or wedding, rather than in the every day life of the casual, lazy days of summer when the neighborhood ice cream truck coming down the street is an event.What distinguishes this movie from so many others about losers is that each one here has a moment of recognition about what they're doing, and gets to see themselves as others see them. For a slight story, we do wait in suspense if Buscemi's "Tommy" in particular will have enough of an epiphany to turn himself around.While the alcoholics among them seem perhaps too comfortably tolerated, our attention is also kept by similar curiosity if their enablers will stop protecting them as they keep sliding backwards. But what happens to both sides in the struggle is handled in an unusual way. Rather than feeling like a tragedy, the sliding and prevaricating is done with love and humor. Even the other bar fly, Mike Boone Junior's "Mike", while played for some broad laughs, including his screechy but understandably fed up wife, also has pathos for our sympathy.Uniquely compared to so many other debut films that rely on some semi-autobiographical bases, none of the characters are frustrated artists seeking or getting a big break in Manhattan or out of the neighborhood relationship as a deus ex machine solution. Even the "city girl" rejecting these suburbs turns out to be from the outer boroughs that are not that different.Very unusual for a film set in this environment, it is very sensitive to the women, who are not stereotypes even though their options aren't much above the wife or the girlfriend or staying with a cousin in the city. They mostly are the ones who have backbone, particularly as they wisely see what is needed to protect themselves and especially their children. There is a lovely scene when "Tommy"s very pregnant ex-girlfriend, by whom she's not really saying, is viewing old home videos of happier times when they were all friends and younger. She's not the only one in tears.Also very refreshing is for a film to recognize that messing about with a pretty 17 year old is not a plus, but a sign that a lonely older guy is avoiding age appropriate women who have given up on him. Chloe Sevigny portrays less a jail-bait temptress handing out sweets than an envious, imitative "little sister" from a pop song.Mimi Rogers, usually so frostily WASPy, surprisingly does a Long Island accent well enough to believably be the wife of a one-note Daniel Baldwin. Also against type, Carol Kane is not a kook. Debi Mazar has a small but memorable role.Samuel Jackson is in the film for a minute a two, along with Larry Galliard, Jr, pre-"The Wire", but well helps to establish a different side of a character who surprisingly turns out not just to be an amusing barfly, but rather a serious alcoholic who has more at stake. Anthony LaPaglia was a lot thinner ten years ago, but is charismatic here and not just the mechanic as lovable lug.The soundtrack selections are a nice blend of bar band classic rock and older tunes.Live Entertainment's 1996 VHS tape seemed to be in blurry EP mode for a 96 minute long film.