Watch This Must Be the Place For Free

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Rarely have I seen a movie so consistently inept. How do you even take Sean Penn, France McDormand, a David Byrne soundtrack, Robert Smith styling, and make it all suck? I love all of the above and detested the movie enough to wonder how anybody signed on for it.Disclosure here that I have no familiarity with the director and have not seen his previous works. So that I do not comprehend what he was trying to accomplish with this stilting disjointed film. But even the premise of the film is of negligible interest to me. This was simply on TV, and so I watched it, thinking how bad could a movie with Sean Penn and Frances McDormand get? Although with the plot synopsis I had forewarning it wasn't my type of film.This would appear to be the type of weird work that foreshadows that even the most accomplished actors make mistakes, get involved in films they probably shouldn't, and get swayed by something in order to be part of the project.I'm trying to fathom any portion of this film that is redeeming or that makes it worth watching. Very rarely would I state this, I want my 2hrs back.

Sean Penn plays John Smith, a.k.a. Cheyenne, a Robert Smith-like former pop star with wild black hair, black mascara around his piercing blue eyes and a trepidatious mouth finely-etched in red lipstick. He has been out of the music business (and, indeed, absent from the mainstream of life) for 20 years, secluded in his Dublin mansion after two kids killed themselves while listening to his forlorn songs. Upon learning that his once-estranged, recently-deceased father was a victim of the Nazi atrocities of World War II, he consults with a Nazi hunter and embarks on a mission to kill the SS officer still living in the United States. Director Paolo Sorrentino, who also co-authored the screenplay with Umberto Contarello, is tantalized by offbeat humor so low-keyed it sometimes passes for pathos; he's also enamored of faces, and he allows Penn lots of screen-time (too much time, one may argue) for the actor to work his soulful stare into the camera. Penn doesn't quite work his way into the viewer's heart, however, and this is the fault of the filmmaker, who unfolds his highly unlikely story very slowly and with a great deal of artistic flourish (i.e., pretension). Cinematographer Luca Bigazzi's camera swoops and glides around barren landscapes and empty rooms with amusingly smooth panache, but the audience isn't picking up on anything substantial except for the technique. Penn goes out on a limb with his performance--talking in a prissy-timid yet direct way that recalls Andy Warhol's pattern of speech--but, in the end, the role is a costume, and many other actors could have played John Smith--and perhaps improved upon it. Sorrentino wants to make us laugh and squirm and take pause. He wants to break our hearts over the course of the lead character's picaresque journey, but there's no truth in it. *1/2 from ****

Retired aging rock star, Cheyenne, leaves his boring life for one hell of a diversion: tracking down the Nazi guard that persecuted his recently deceased father. As a result of his quest Cheyenne metamorphoses from a melancholy child-like moppet to a self-assured man.Cheyenne (Sean Penn) has kicked heroin and no longer gigs. Without his heroin Cheyenne is like a child: quiet; sensitive; speaks his mind; is thoughtful of other's feelings; is quickly apologetic. Yet, like a sage Buddha he always chooses his words wisely. Even more interesting, Cheyenne moves like an old, stiff man, but looks like his former self all decked out in red lipstick, white-powdered face makeup, heavy black eyeliner, and Johnny Thunders' mane of hair. With not much to do except shop at the local supermarket, play handball with his wife of 30 years in their empty swimming pool, play the stock market, and meddle in a young Goth girl's life, Cheyenne announces that he is depressed. His friend corrects him by telling him that he isn't depressed, he is bored and needs a diversion. And so begins Cheyenne's quest not only to find his father's nemesis, but to find himself.This Must Be the Place is a cerebral movie that puts the audience in the rafters like interns in a teaching hospital looking down on a patient being healed. So, if you prefer entertainment over enlightenment and transformation, then this is not the movie for you. Pros: Sean Penn as Cheyenne. How Cheyenne handled the Nazi Guard. All the unexpected scenes.Con: Would have liked to have seen a little backstory on Cheyenne's early years.

Cheyenne (Sean Penn) is a weird looking retired rock star living in Dublin. He spends his days hanging out with his young friend Mary (Eve Hewson, Bono's daughter) trying to set her up with a straight laced guy working at the mall. After the death of his father whom he hasn't talked to in 30 years, he finds that he's been hunting a little known Auschwitz guard named Aloise Lange. So he decides to continue the hunt himself.There is nothing wrong with weird, and I like Sean Penn's odd looking soft spoken ex-rocker character. I like his relationship with Mary. It's funny that he keeps trying to set her up with somebody who has nothing in common with her. Then it takes a turn into the surreal.It's like they abandoned a good movie to do another movie. All the characters in the first act are basically dropped once he goes on the Nazi hunt. The nice semi-father-daughter relationship is dropped. The wife is dropped. The final reveal is kinda interesting, but it's not worth the lost opportunities of good character relationships.