good back-story, and good acting

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

This is real life stuff at its best. Two hours flew by while I was watching this movie because I felt like I was there at Trees Lounge. It was like I had my own barstool just watching what was going on.The character development is superb. Even though nothing much happens in the movie that is really profound, you feel like you are rewarded by watching because you get to know the characters, especially Tommy, played by Buschemi. You can almost feel that he is not really acting in this role...it feels more like he is re-living part of his life experience in the movie.It is a slice of life from the outskirts of NYC or Nothern NJ that seems like it would actually happen.

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

"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.

Watched this with some trepidation, having seen the absolutely excellent trailer. So few movies live up to their trailers, especially indies. Anxiety increased by having read Buscemi's fairly harrowing account of making the film in one of those 'The Directors' books.Shouldn't have worried. Great flick. Totally engrossing, especially to a *cough* former *cough* barfly like myself. Beautifully understated, funny, very sad, nicely paced and Buscemi very wisely NOT trying to dominate every scene, although he certainly dominates the movie.Movie appears on first sight plot less but actually it isn't at all: Buscemi's search for a second chance to escape from the morass of his own making is riveting. Everyone involved seems to have had a good time and the beautifully relaxed performances are the reward. Only the two knucklehead goombahs fall below the otherwise uniformly excellent level.A real treat, and thoroughly watchable-again able. My DVD was in TV format, which sucked, but otherwise the low budget doesn't really intrude.Nearest movie to it I can think of offhand is KILLING OF A Chinese BOOKIE. Radically different subject matter but similar bittersweet texture.A slightly, but only slightly, generous 9/10 from me.