Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick, 2015)

5/10
Thinking that 88:88 had put me in the right mindset, I decided to watch Terrence Malick's new one. His last one, To the Wonder, was godawful trash that made me want to set my head on fire. Knight of Cups is not as hateable, but it's not very good either. For the first 30 minutes or so, it's actually kind of fun seeing Malick in a metropolitan setting like Los Angeles. The fun wears off, however, and then you have 90 more minutes with a mopey, mostly mute main character (Christian Bale filling the shoes here) and a succession of women who are famous (Cate Blanchett, Freida Pinto, Natalie Portman) but who really could have been anyone being that all they have to do is walk around and be lithe. I found myself thinking, around the 78th minute, that just once I'd like to see a fat person in a Malick movie, walking around barefoot in a field or running their fingers along a weathered barn or whatever one does in one of his movies.
Like I said, after about a half hour a certain numbness sets in when you realize this is all the film is going to be and nothing more, but there's a level of melancholy too because I realized that his two most recent movies really just feel like Malick doing cheap imitations of his own previous, better films (I know Tree of Life is divisive but I'm in the "yay" camp). It's really just depressing. Yeah, there are some great shots that maybe no one else in the world would do (the dogs chasing tennis balls underwater was a particular breath-snatcher) but lately it's hasn't been worth sitting through the rest of the junk for those few moments of affirmation. Malick is rapidly eroding the goodwill he's built up over so many years, and I'm not sure how many of these navel-gazing efforts we can collectively tolerate before we say enough is enough.
I did like the score though.

To the Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2012)

4/10
As much as I like Terrence Malick, most of his movies make me cringe at some point. That's the risk you take in being a poet, or being a romantic, as Malick likely considers himself (and he has a good claim to both titles). But To the Wonder is like Malick without a filter - a 2 hour stream of the worst bits to ever worm their way into his movies. The constant voiceovers are an unending source of embarrassment, coming off completely mawkish and juvenile. They would appear clunky in anyone's debut feature, but for a vet like Malick, they're unforgiveable. The characters flit and romp and carouse in every scene to the point of obnoxiousness, and god help me if Ben Affleck picked up a cheque for his "performance" in the movie.
Every now and then you get a glimpse of the good Malick can do - I really liked the sterile suburban housing setting, some images are indelible (a girl playing hopscotch in the sunlight pouring through a window) and Malick is still a fantastic documentor/recreator of something classically American in cinema. You can usually count on his pretty images to pick up the slack when Malick's storytelling falters, but they can't bear the entire weight, and even they start to appear cheap and repetitive as the backdrop for a wholly uninteresting, uninvolving and emotionally inert movie.

The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998)

8.5/10
I've only got one Terrence Malick movie left to see (The New World) but it seems apparent that if you don't like one, you're not liable to like any of the others. Similar themes and similar filmmaking approaches (namely striking photography, unhurried running times, loose plots, voiceovers, and pretentious chin-stroking) run through all his films. Fortunately for me, I guess, I've liked em all, and I'm trying to decide if The Thin Red Line is my favorite. I would say the last half-hour feels a bit disjointed compared to the rest of the film, especially after the breath-taking sequence where the soldiers storm the hill. I'm not really sure what to make of a major Hollywood star turning up in virtually every role - some say that Malick was making a dig at the Hollywood star system by casting mega-stars like George Clooney and John Travolta in bit parts (and completely excising roles played by Viggo Mortensen, Martin Sheen, and Gary Oldman) but I found it somewhat distracting. I do, however, drool at the prospect of one day seeing the initial 6 hour cut of the movie.

The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)

9/10
Probably one of the most gloriously self-absorbed, pretentious, portentous, silly movies I've ever seen...and I was pretty much under its spell for the full 2 and a half hours.
In a different mood I might have hated this - it's so ludicrously unsubtle and features so many lines that sound like they were pulled from the George Lucas school of dialogue writing, that I can't really fault anyone for not putting up with it. But I found once I was able to sort of surrender myself to it, it really became a pleasure that I didn't want to end. Just to compare, I re-watched Days of Heaven again this weekend, and that movie is so unsubtle and features some pretty brutal dialogue that I guess it just comes with Malick's territory. None of the themes he tackles are anything close to original, but the style in which they're presented is certainly one of a kind. I can't imagine another movie on earth comparable to this one (I was at seperate times reminded of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Enter the Void and The White Ribbon) and can't think of another American director currently working willing to try something this insane, so I think love it or hate it, you have to appreciate its existence.

Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978)

8.5/10
Not much to say that hasn't already been said - the movie is absolutely, almost unfathomable, gorgeous. Every scene is eye candy and some of them you never want the camera to break away. The story is simple and understated (though the narration is a bit heavy-handed and unnecessary at times) and the acting is great. It was really lovely, another movie I look forward to revisiting.

Badlands (Terrance Malick, 1973)

8.5/10
Beautifully filmed and just the kind of story I'm drawn to (rebel/s without a cause, road movie, coming of age, etc). Martin Sheen is fantastic and Sissy Spacek is also very good. This is a movie that deserves a better fate because it seems to have gotten marginalized over the years. We can start by upgrading the pathetic no-frills DVD it's available on. Criterion??