Terence Malick's forthcoming films, 2015-2017

What is known?

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/what-we-know-terrence-malicks-725908

I've got to admit, I love the idea of giving an actor a 19-page monologue and then telling them to start it in the middle if they want. Totally subverts ego while simultaneously embracing ego.

Banderas also describes Malick interrupting his free-wheeling performance with "torpedoes" — or unannounced appearances by actors breaking into the middle of a scene, forcing Banderas to improvise mid-monologue.

predicting right now that if one or all of these projects are artistic failures then malick will be lambasted by the entertainment media for letting his artist's ego get away with him.

can't have a director wasting his producer's money...

What is known?

Are you speaking only of the known knowns, or are you including the known unknowns?

i'm not the biggest malick fan but i'm charmed by this sudden twist in his career, bring on the failure

poor attitude, z

i mean it in a good way tho

Malick has made three or four of my favorite films of all time and I still haven't watched his most recent movie. I'm scared.

I haven't seen To the Wonder either. Did it even get a theatrical release? Is it on demand or itunes? what happened to it? everyone hated it and it vanished.

it's my favourite of his, you should watch it, everyone is a bozo

It's on Netflix already, or was.

if you like malick at all you'll love To the Wonder. it's his euro art film imo.

I love malick and find to the wonder to be almost laughably bad

I stand corrected.

it's prob the first time in his movies something like modernism shows up so ymmv.

i like Malick, and yeah TTW is maybe his most 'problematic.' Still some great stuff in it.

sometimes i just watch ttw on mute and play music in the background. it's such a rhythmic movie... very much like ballet or something.

Malick has made three or four of my favorite films of all time and I still haven't watched his most recent movie. I'm scared.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, September 8, 2014 8:14 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this. it sounds awful!

and all his movies are completely modernist (whatever that means)--esp. the first two!

I mean it in the "loss of the referent" sense. anyway that's why I say it's his euro film--closest thing he's made to something like Antonioni.

Reviews painted TTW as Malick reaching full self-parody, women prancing through fields etc., but the end result is something much different than that. Less gooey, more... idk, cold? I got Antonioni vibes as well. I have a distanced respect for it, but not sure how much I actually like it, which is pretty much how I've felt about every Antonioni I've seen.

malick has always been inches away from self-parody, even in his great films, but the movies all had something there to justify it. ttw doesn't. it's just boring.

I prefer "ennui"

anyway I think TTW works on a lot of levels, not least of which is a sort of Protestant investigation of ritual and its relationship to feeling. reading the article above it almost seems like a philosophy of art is at stake as well--in that he seems to be abandoning "method" altogether and just trusting to chance.

To The Wonder is somehow both the best and worst Malick film. I'm not sure I enjoyed it while watching it, but at the same time images from it stayed with me for days afterwards.

loved Reverend Bardem

btw the topic is his next 3 films; where are all the Val Kilmer orgasms?

otm
even if the films are never released, & all that remains is a single frame that originally accompanied the youtube of val cutting his hair off on-stage: this is the best terrence malick film

two intersecting love triangles does sound like it'd require a kind of narrative focus & definition that the relationships in the previous couple didn't need. i think a cinematographer said they were slightly more traditional than the last, i forget.

Why anyone would put Antonio Banderas in a film is beyond me.

gere/affleck/farrell/&c&c&c

i finally worked up the stomach to watch to the wonder, and i made it about 3/4 through before bailing. it was too depressing. maybe i'll give it a shot again some time, but i wouldn't count on it. :(

it's up (down?) there with blueberry nights as the most deflatingly bad film by a (once?) major director i've seen.

still think it's the only fully realized malick film. camera swirls, actors recite poetry and it has 'wonder' in the title.

To the Wonder has been under-appreciated. The way he films Oklahoma is kind of incredible. The only scene I thought was outright bad was the one where her Italian friend comes to visit.

i guess the nicest thing to say would be that it isn't my cup of tea

i guess this is where i part ways with terence malick; don't think i'll even bother seeing his newer ones. he's got his new working method, and it's pretty clear that anything he makes will be along similar lines, so i'm out.

The last 1/4 has a few of my favorite scenes in his whole filmography.

heh not that i think it'll make amateurist persevere next time, but the ending of TTW is esp. strong - despite all the twirling and poetry and wonder and whatnot, it's actually quite a bleak film in some ways

Much more excited about the documentary Voyage of Time (2016), as frankly my favorite bits of all of his film are the shots of sun through leaves, and I'm not a huge fan of improvisational meandering.

TO DA WONDAH!

http://therealrevo.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Sean_Penn.jpg

when watching the supermarket scene i kept thinking someone ought to say "To the Wonder Bread!" but then afterwards i noticed that J Hoberman had already made that joke.

i was also thinking, "you know, they have big supermarkets in paris" (more in the suburbs, but still). but i think it's key that malick is basically shooting a version of his own experiences, which took place in the 1980s when france did have significantly fewer (and smaller) supermarkets.

no buffalo in Paris though.

i can't really begrudge the dude making barely-veiled autobiographical films but the reliance on his own life in the last two films can't help but feel (to me) symptomatic of a general lack of inspiration or new ideas. say what you must about his first three films in particular but there is a real reaching out to try to understand a multitude of experiences and worldviews. in the last three films it seems like all the "characters" (I use that word pretty loosely when it comes to To the Wonder) speak in the same voice (something that's already present in The Thin Red Line, but there it's not dominant). which i know some people think is a kind of breakthrough but kind of flattens the movies for me. i hope i'm making a little sense.

no buffalo in Paris though.

― ryan, Wednesday, September 10, 2014 3:30 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wasn't it the rachel mcadams character with ben m'affleck among the buffalo?

I think that's fair to an extent but I'd never accuse the last two films of a lack of curiosity about other people. if TTW is autobiographical at all it would seem to push him to the edges of the story in order to try to empathize with the unfortunate woman who fell in love with him. to the extent that all of his films are obsessed with seeing thing through someone else's eyes (God, obviously, first of all) then I think TTW does that as well--I just think his feelings about Oklahoma, being "home," are pretty conflicted.

his idea of women seems kind of narrow and blinkered and heavily indebted to some very questionable notions. watching To the Wonder i kind of wonder what sort of relationships he's had with women and whether he ever really got to know them or if they had some kind of relationship where there was a kind of mutually uncomprehending adulation rather than a kind of adult partnership. obvious who the fuck knows but it's hard for me to imagine taking a real-life relationship with a real person and transforming her into this ethereal creature who speaks (thinks) in unending romantic cliche.

i don't know that i'd say that he's not _trying_ to see things through other eyes--i guess i'm diagnosing his failure at doing so. which suggests a real insularity/solipsism to me.

I don't know that 'autobiography' is the problem, or *A* problem, with the last two films. Maybe read less about his life.

hell U2 proclaimed their new album "autobiographical." It means they measure out their lives in room service trays.

I don't see the solipsism, myself. esp given that the end of TTW has one of the more powerfully compassionate passages in any movie I've seen. But even more than that I think you'd have to pass over the passivity of the gaze that strikes me as one of the more dominant characteristics of his movies. There's a reason (iirc) that affleck always seems to be on the edge of the frame.

I mean yeah we can surmise that terry is a daydreamer lost in his own headspace a lot! I can certainly identify.

I'm all for artists being prodigal with their time, especially as the end approaches.

There's a reason (iirc) that affleck always seems to be on the edge of the frame.

well there's a sense that he's trying to displace his own avatar from the center of the film. which is interesting in theory. (or maybe he just hated affleck's performance?) but what /was/ in the center was just not compelling or interesting for me -- the female characters didn't seem to be much more fully conceived.

the lines and contrasts that are drawn in the film, to the extent that you can make them out, seem so stilted and sentimental to me. i sense that he's repelled by dialogue, so he tries to find visual correlates for the drama. but the visual language just struck me as impoverished. that was the biggest disappointment to me. even tree of life, which falls into many of the same traps, has a number of indelible, inventive, just-right images...and sequences of images that are more than the sum of their parts, that get something going in the montage. by comparison almost nothing in TTW felt purposeful, and in the absence of that sense of purpose and import the filmmakers fell back on a raft of visual cliches. at one point I wanted to yell, STOP SHOOTING INTO THE SUN!

i know that only schmucks make these kind of comparisons, and i'm inviting all kinds of attacks, but i recently rewatched film socialisme, and while i fully grant that late godard has his longueurs and silly aspects and is certainly an acquired taste, there is so much energy and invention in the images and sounds that the experience, for me, is ecstatic. TTW just felt so enervated, bereft of visual ideas by comparison. even things that should have been startling--the two characters surrounded by buffalo, kuylenko and afflect bouncing on the marfa flats--seemed engulfed in the overall sense of repetition and torpor.

I can't really argue with you if the images don't move you. they moved me quite a bit! I thought TTW went places he hasn't gone before, even working within the same visual grammar he's been working on since at least the thin red line. but it's easy to see how that can fall over into torpor or boredom for others.

well honestly i should just shut up until i watch that last 30 min! i certainly was getting bored with the New World until the last reel, which is beautiful.

Ugh, you had to go and bring up Godard.

do you hate godard as well as hawks? you're like the anti-me :)

I'm an unrepentant sensualist w.r.t movies, so probably yeah.

(Don't hate Godard, btw. Weekend is all-time.)

godard is a sensualist too! esp. in his post-1980 phase.

actually i have no idea what you think my tastes of sensibility are/is. not that i care, really.

HYPED

any actual news about knight of cups other than it'll premier in Berlin?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC-3rnv_b3o, right?

some article i'm reading mentions that it's about celebrities and excess but i feel like maybe that could have been deduced from the trailer
the reach & variety of what's in the trailer are wild

oh no! I'm about to take off and I can't watch that for 2 hours.

i would try to describe it to you but

Somewhere II

I haven't watch the video above, but on a personal level, at least, I think I'm one film past "peak Bale".

peak gere peak farrell peak affleck &c&c&c&c&c
really excited to see him in this

that trailer is everything

looks prrretty dumb

it is probably unfair to accuse a trailer of humorlessness but

A Mann-Malick joint.

it *looks* amazing. not sure im terribly enthused to see malick's take on a life of excess but hey it's a trailer who knows what the "plot" or themes will be.

Maybe he'll edit Bale out of the final cut.

Brian Dennehy's gotta be Bale's dad, right?

any of them not about Christianity?

I'm really thankful that Malick's having his Christian period. I find his recent crop to be his most challenging work so far, and particularly loved To the Wonder. I think that late-period Malick has been defined by a sort of unleashed sincerity where he's been liberated from the shyness that comes from playing to an audience. He's doing away with craftsmanship and making art, and I admire that.

It feels funny seeing a trailer for a Malick movie - I find my Pavlovian conditioning where trailers automatically get me hyped up for the movie in question conflicting with the seriousness of the Malick experience that naturally resists silly feelings like excitement and hype.

Knight of Cups screens in Berlin on Sunday

"The Voyage of Time" seems to be actually happening too.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/terrence-malicks-voyage-of-time-officially-announced-2-versions-of-the-documentary-on-the-way-in-imax-35mm-20150203

man, once upon a time--like, three years ago?--i would have been so psyched to get this information. but now... i can scarcely think of another figure whose talent seems to have shriveled up so quickly and thoroughly than this dude. i know he still has his passionate defenders and some smart people really genuinely admired "to the wonder," but it seemed almost completely devoid of interest to me, to the point of being nearly unwatchable.

FWIW i was not a partisan of "tree of life," though I liked a lot of it.

as with michael mann I'm sure I could find a way to appreciate his last film a little more, but in light of their towering achievements earlier in their career it can't help but seem like a waste. even in The Thin Red Line, which in retrospect seems more and more to contain the seeds of malick's undoing, there are so many poetic juxtapositions of extraordinarily incisive power, something he just doesn't seem capable of anymore.

These last two were my least loved, but ToL improved on second viewing, so for all i know TtW (which i did not hate) may as well.

also editor Weber said Knight is more linear, so we'll see

yeah, maybe it would. at a certain point you gotta just make a decision though, and i think it's time for me to write this dude off. YMMV as always.

xpost

man i really need to watch TNW on something other than a laptop screen some day

TNW: highly recommend the blu-ray on a big as hell tv on a day you are sick or have a hangover. anyway, that's how it "clicked" for me.

overall I think it's clear that his films have become more process-oriented than anything else. I admire the risk inherent in this approach, it's really the opposite of a Kubrick like approach (as the increasing pace of his films shows). there's this weird tension between trying not to overthink things and Malick's obvious intellectualism. anyway that contradiction or paradox is the source of my enduring interest in what he's doing (whether or not that's what he thinks he is doing).

at least voyage of time will be full of beautiful images, right?

yessssszzzzzzzzzzzzz

For me, Tree of Life was worth seeing for the glimpses of early life, with the urge to push back against the shock of death with edited memories, idyllic reveries--but the ensemble interaction, the expressions and body language as much as anything, bring the complex, restive surface and texture of family life (also Dad off on a mission, showing them cards). That's the tree of life, standing its ground amidst the self-medicating cosmic re-contextualizing. That's my takeaway anyway, in my own memory's edit (though enjoyed the galumping dinosaurs etc).

floating mom 4 eva

well this sounds pretty great huh

my Twitter feed has been universally very, very positive but then again that's probably due to it being *my* Twitter feed. I hear there are a few detractors, at least.

I would be more concerned if there weren't

Burial is on the soundtrack to this

This looks ridiculous.

Tree of Life had some wonderful stuff in it, but how much of that wonderful stuff was just good ideas from 30 years ago?

a friend and local film doyenne is at Berlin and is horrified by the movie.

films that horrify festival goers are usually good

he's a festival organizer, so you might be right.

This does look a lot like Entourage.

I've read tow reviews that peg the movie's highlight as a slow motion shot of a dog jumping into a swimming pool. I think I can dig.

Two

I'm thinking back on my favorite movies and so many were festival horrifiers: Fire Walk With Me, The Brown Bunny, maybe Crash too?

is it true that Nick Kroll makes an appearance?

nvm, confirmed by Variety, along w/ Joe Lo Truglio

Tree of Life had some wonderful stuff in it, but how much of that wonderful stuff was just good ideas from 30 years ago?

― Matt Armstrong, Sunday, February 8, 2015 7:05 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The Weirdest Criticism

films that horrify festival goers are usually good

― Matt Armstrong, Sunday, 8 February 2015 23:08 (Yesterday) Permalink

sometimes movies that horrify people are great, sometimes they are awful. unless you're gonna stan for that movie where nicole kidman pisses on zac efron?

roundup... a number of To the Wonder fans seem to be gettin off the boat.

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-berlinale-2015-diary-4

based on the trailer alone that looks like the kind of pretentious shit I would love.

god knight of cups sounds vomitous

how does a guy move from being one of the most unaccountably great american filmmakers to making worse films than late-period peter greenaway? it's like he's taken leave of his senses. yeah, caveat emptor, haven't seen it, blah blah blah. but if it's one more film indicating the same direction he's been following these past few years... yeah, i'm not going to bother.

A Martin Scorsese Question

worse films than late-period peter greenaway?

Heeey now. (Admittedly I only saw Nightwatching, but I really dug it.)

"process-oriented" (above) is an excellent point, and i hope that making the film was edifying for malick and all the actors who flock to his projects. that sounds snobby, and it's kind of supposed to sound snobby, but i'm not being tongue-in-cheek. i imagine folks like bale, blanchett, portman, etc. are attracted to making films w/ him not just b/c of residual love for days of heaven (or b/c they loved "to the wonder," though it's possible) but because he offers them a filmmaking experience like none other. a lot of them seem to come out of it sort of disappointed, but maybe that will happen less and less as the nature of that process becomes more widely known. adrien brody was apparently incensed that nearly all of his scenes ended up cut out of "thin red line," but michael fassbender for example seems resigned to the fact that his part in the next malick film may or may not make it into the finished film.

Heeey now.

yeah, maybe i should say late-period mike figgis, but (a) i'm not sure if figgis is even working and (b) that's a little /too/ mean.

terrence malick should get an oscar or a macarthur or a nobel for casting adrien brody in his film & then recycling the film stock used to record his performance

The Tree of Life is the only masterpiece from his post-70s output, so.

I agree with that.

Mike Figgis directed this masterpiece

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c97O2_FXCGE

I really enjoyed this exchange, not least because they walk the line between derision and genuflection that afflicts so many critical takes on Malick.

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/berlinale-2015-dialogues-terrence-malicks-knight-of-cups

xp that's interesting, that ad made me stop ff'ding my dvr

Knight of Cups: March 4

https://youtu.be/vl6BWTIZeOg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl6BWTIZeOg&feature=youtu.be

I had just been thinking "When's that Malick Entourage movie coming out anyway?"

this looks dreadful

i think that's a pretty excellent trailer but i have heard vv mixed things abt it.

for some reason this was released here way back in September. I found it fairly snoozeworthy but ymmv.

"A man experiences an existential crisis after finding fame and fortune in Hollywood."
The synopsis is enough to put me off as if Bale isn't enough, fucking hell!

synopses shouldn't be a factor

"Nut chases a whale"

i feel like 75% of the imagery in that trailer brings to mind one hideously cliché or another

:sigh:

xp
true. But I just know, despite liking lots of previous Malick that this will suck. Sometimes you make shallow judgements based on synopsises/trailers and they turn out to be correct.

were there really zero shots of grass blowing in the wind in that whole trailer?

no curtains billowing over a heater either, but i'm sure they're in the movie

amateurist otm throughout thread

This looks much uglier and more off-putting than his recent films. Excellent!

amateurist posting about nu-malick infinitely more eye-rolly at this point than anything in a nu-malick movie

we get it

^^^^^^

Good trailer

^^^^^

was hyped for this but per Xelab's Razor i guess it is destined to suck? glad we could at least lean on solid trailer data to avoid blowing cash on a ticket

i watched the lyrical Malickian young Abe Lincoln flick last night. produced by TM. nice bird sounds.

amateurist posting about nu-malick infinitely more eye-rolly at this point than anything in a nu-malick movie

we get it

― circa1916, Wednesday, 25 November 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Just happened to come across Amt's remarks on the Dawkins thread and now this..

this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS-5G5X9BFE

i havent watched trailer yet, but i think my own lack of enthusiasm for this one stems from thinking that To the Wonder took this current stage in his work (and Lubezski's) to a kind of logical terminus. which is not to say he cant find another worthwhile 2 hours or so in that approach, so i will certainly see this.

knight of cups looks more interesting than the last malick film i saw (to the wonder). at least it did until the second half of the trailer. first half made me think malick should direct project x 2.

are there any u.s. 70's-era directors still making great movies now?

apart from scorsese?

Malick. None of the others ever really did. Like, consistently.

70's Hollywood most overrated film-era ever.

talk to the hand

"great" is a pretty high standard, scott. How many great films by anyone have I seen in the last ten years? (scorsese making great movies recently is a lol)

but the closest answer to your question is likely Spielberg

not saying hes delivering winners ever year, but wolf of wall street was up there. but yeah, spielberg may be the most consistent overall.

Bigger lol: Scorcese or Spielbergo?

I mean, all Hollywood directors who were active in the '70s are between 65 and dead. Some have lost interest in conventional filmmaking (Lynch), others are essentially unemployable since they don't make superhero flix (John Waters, Bogdanovich, Alan Rudolph, Walter Hill -- tho Hill has a crime film in production, it seems).

i would also suggest woody allen, polanski.

Terrence Malick is ... Into the Void.

I suppose Malick's achievement (given what Morbz says) is to make something p/unconventional in an environment that is hostile to it, at an age where he should be parked off to a home.

Better than making something 'consistent'.

depends. if you want hollywood studio/genre moviemaking, and im not going to be snobbish about enjoying what spielberg does, then its hard to deny that he isnt meeting a certain standard. malick might be 'unconventional' by hollywood standards, never mind by standards of directors of his vintage, but idk, exalting someone just because they are making unconventional' work, seems in its own way, holding them to a pretty low standard. though that might just be because i thought to the wonder was - despite not playing like a ben affleck movie might be expected to - not too great.

he's obviously doing exactly what he wants to do. which is enviable.

This new one looks a lot like 'Flashbacks of a Fool'.

i enjoyed Hugo as far as recent scorsese goes. i had no interest in seeing shutter island or wolf of wall street. leo makes me cringe. (i did enjoy the departed okay.) in any case, he does still have pretty high standards for himself obviously. which is nice. and he has a lot of energy.

I was trying to put together some of the posts to get some sense out of this weird-ish side-discussion. So if most dir from that era aren't active or dead there isn't much to talk about?

Unconventional can also mean erratic. xps

Spielberg, then Malick, then quite a bit of space, then Coppola with many reservations.

I just saw a clip at MoMA of Orson Welles at Cannes in 1983(?), and he was asked if he'd seen the new Bresson film. Part of his answer was "It could be bad.... A good director will always make a good film; a great director, a great one and every now and then a bad one."

feel bad that i haven't really liked a demme movie since silence of the lambs. maybe i should watch a master builder.

Welles OTM.

godard had a movie out last year. jesus, 80's and 90's godard. i'm clueless. so many movies.

godard will be 85 in a week.

welles wasnt exactly a big bresson fan IIRC anyway though so....

xpost - i think malick is very erratic (and also more than a bit overrated) but i guess he deserves praise just for doing whatever the hell he wants, doesnt mean i have to praise the results of that though!

paul schrader sort of counts in this side discussion i would say (esp since we are not referencing bresson)

idk I'm no expert on Malick but I just found Knight of Cups to be boring in p much every respect. Obv the cinematography is ravishing but there is just the barest of storylines to hold it together. Bale's character comes across as such a self-centred oaf that I rapidly lost interest in anything he was doing. nice shagging scenes though.

*since we are NOW referencing bresson i mean

i will always have badlands and days of heaven. i don't really care what he does now. god bless and keep him. i'll bet if i still did acid i would love all these new movies to death.

Tree of Life was pretty great as well.

xpost - JLG's goodbye to language is indulgent, repetitive (for anyone whos seen his older stuff) messy, not always coherent, but also just a lot of fun, funny, interesting, and great if you like a director deliberately trying to provoke (or rather, just ANNOY you). also has one of the best/worst 3d shots ever when he overlays too diff shots on top of one another (it made me laugh anyway)

i still haven't seen all the new ones. i don't feel a great desire to see them. i watch all the trailers and stuff. i've had the new world sitting at home for months on dvd. maybe i'll get really stoned and watch it. i was kinda bummed out by the thin red line.

So JLG is good erratic and Malick is bad erratic.

I get you. xp

i find JLG considerably more entertaining and interesting than TM so yes, he is good erratic. JLG also has a sense of humor.

I really can't think of any popular complaints about recent Malick that also couldn't be made about Days of Heaven.

Shots of someone taking a dump always helps to lighten the mood that's for sure. xp

herzog bale probably better than malick bale, no? speaking of 70's people. because you can never torture christian bale enough.

days of heaven didn't feel so empty to me though. it still doesn't. just feel like the first two were lightning in a bottle and all the zen meditation in the world can't help you recreate that. it has to be somewhat organic.

malick + bale seems like a combination of more over earnestness than could be tolerable

Shots of someone taking a dump always helps to lighten the mood that's for sure. xp

its a lot better than a shot of ben affleck trying but failing to convincingly emote

as i'm sure i said before, i found the '70s films 1) v good and 2) good w/ many flaws; not masterworks. So i was more receptive to TM 2.0.

its a lot better than a shot of ben affleck trying but failing to convincingly emote

There is i) Acting and ii) acting in a 2.0 Malick film

i was kinda obsessed with days of heaven for years. ever since i saw it at the movies. i know it inside and out. it's way up there for me. i just think it's kinda impossible to recreate.

i do sometimes wish badlands was where real' malick started rather than days of heaven...

JLG also has a sense of humor.

― StillAdvance, Wednesday, November 25, 2015 11:51 AM (1 hour ago)

Otm

He's definitely capable of some brilliantly strange humor (Deadhead Miles, Badlands). Always thought calling an artist "humorless", as if it's this unforgivable sin, has been ridiculous though.

yeah, fair point. i suppose when people often make that accusation, they arent necessarily asking for LOLs, they seem to just mean its a tad over earnest, or po-faced.

days of heaven didn't feel so empty to me though. it still doesn't. just feel like the first two were lightning in a bottle and all the zen meditation in the world can't help you recreate that. it has to be somewhat organic.
--scott seward

Thin Red Line is best movie he's ever made.

yeah that's the one that's in the sweet spot for me.

i really ought to give 'to the wonder' another chance. i do wish i had seen it in a theater; forcing myself to engage with it without the temptation of distractions seems like the least i owe the film (and malick). instead i tried to watch it at home and had such a visceral negative reaction that i could barely make it to the end.

aside from that film, which i can't really say that i've seen in a sense, i find something--a lot--to admire in every malick film i've seen. to the wonder is the only one that seemed barren to me (kent jones said the same thing). when i first say 'tree of life' i had a profoundly dismissive, negative reaction. but i went back and saw it several more times and each time i was able to appreciate more and more of it, though there remain aspects of it—-indeed entire long passages of it--that i don't think work at all. i haven't been quite convinced by the many very erudite commentaries that insist that malick is not repeated but utilizing clichés to some more complex purpose. to me it seems that often the edifices of his recent films are constructed on oppositions (visual as much as conceptual) that seem lazy and worn-out to no good purpose. when i watched the trailer to this new one, the same feeling hit me over and over again. though naturally you can't judge a film by its trailer.

(btw sorry if whatever i post here seems to fit into whatever people find so objectionable about me (or the online version of me) and my posts. i really have little idea what ticks folks off here--e.g. on the dawkins thread-- so i'll just try to be as nonconfrontational and sincere as possible.)

what's interesting to me about thin red line -- which i agree might be his richest film -- is that it contains so many of the seeds of his subsequent work... certain visual tropes, verbal clichés, etc. that he first employs in that film kind of hypertrophy in the later films and (to my mind at least) become objectionable, even embarrassing. but somehow the thin red line holds them in a tension that makes them not only less objectionable but genuinely surprising and moving.

this is a oversimplification but sometimes it feels like he took precisely those parts of the thin red line that were the /least/ promising and amplified them.

sorry for 'eye-rolly' posts! _-)

(Thanks amt - only said what I did bcz you seemed to be going a bit on about Malick the way Dawkins is going on about the kid.)

JLG often has a sense of humour (although ppl are forgetting some of the things he did in the 70s). I wouldn't use this quality from him against Malick. Bit eye-rolly.

Amateurist, I apologize about that snotty comment up there. Just feel like the "UGH, this is such an AFFRONT to my good TASTE" shit is a deadly banal criticism at this point and you've hit it a lot.

You've added a lot of great content to these Malick threads. Continue on! I basically just watch until I get frustrated.

i'm not sure how you distinguish between someone thinking a film looks unpromising and someone thinking a film is "an affront to my good taste". if someone had posted the 'fantastic four' trailer and people inevitably wrote something like, 'this looks terrible!' would you have said the same?

if you read my posts above i try to specify (as best i can in the short bursts of thought i permit myself on this board) the things about malick's recent films that have disappointed me (particularly some of the visual clichés); it just seemed, on the admittedly incomplete evidence of a brief trailer, that the new film indulges those things. it's very possible that this hunch is wrong, or that -- as some have argued of 'to the wonder' -- malick somehow transmutes or transcends those clichés and stock oppositions. some of the very best critics writing today (like nick pinkerton) have defended 'to the wonder' with great eloquence. i just disagree. for now.

also, i don't necessarily recall battering malick for his (latterday) lack of a sense of humor. many great works of art are absent this quality. i'm a big mizoguchi fan, and his films are as devoid of humor as anyone's.

if you think of malick's films as, um, quilts, then i guess i find that the first three films in particular are made of more diverse and unexpected materials, a heady mix of unlikely influences (by no means mostly cinematic ones!) and strains, that are all the richer for the juxtaposition. and yes, humor is in that mix -- and a mix of different kinds of humor: absurdist, rarefied, cruelly ironic, gentle, corny. so if i regret the absence of humor from the newer films it's because i regret the absence of that complex quilt (sorry for awful metaphor). the newer ones feel more 'of a piece', in their visual tropes, tones, sources of inspiration. indeed i was struck, when watching the 'director's cut' (or whatever it was advertised as) of 'the new world' that all the monkeying around with shot sequence, duration, etc. seemed to have no real net affect, because the overall tone was so similar, and often so enervated. the part of the film that felt the most precise, the most purposeful, was the last 20 minutes, and malick barely changed a frame of that from version to version. and you know what? i still kind of like that film! i'd watch it again today (and today would be a very appropriate day to watch it; happy thanksgiving!)

but then

http://i.imgur.com/Mx2QJfS.jpg

she looks like elizabeth olsen there, kind of.

The thing that I find most glaringly absent from nu-Malick is simply a decent storyline. Knight of Cups is visually ravishing but without a plot to hang all the painterly imagery on I felt bored in the extreme.

i don't necessarily recall battering malick for his (latterday) lack of a sense of humor. many great works of art are absent this quality.

That was mostly StillAdvance and a couple of ppl above.

'battering' is a bit of an exaggeration. and i clarified what i meant.

"dispensing with plot" (which is not something Malick has done yet, unless you define it solely in spoonfed terms) is something lots of avant-garde filmmakers have done. I guess TM's problem with some of his audience is his first two films were more straightforwardly plotty -- even as far back as TTRL he was accused of abandoning lots of James Jones's story (which he did; it's like 900 pages!) -- so he has one foot in trad narrative and the other in a-g. (Of course in multiplexes most ppl walk in not knowing who the director is, hence the Tree of Life refund offers in flyover country after angry walkouts.)

'flyover country'? manhattanites can be as philistinish (is that a word?) as anyone, as a lot of my visits to MoMA sadly bear out.

(that said, the passage of 'the new world' through the multiplexes--i saw it in cedar rapids!--was definitely a rarity to be savored. unlike 'tree of life,' 'new world' had enough of a family resemblance to a generic historical romance to seem like a genuine bait and switch to a fair # of folk)

to the wonder has a plot (granted, not a very complicated one), it's just treated with extreme ellipticality.

it's like BAM we're in paris now BAM we're in oklahoma and who is this lady?

i admire the chutzpah of this ellipiticality, even if i don't find the particular form very engaging.

In the UK, To the Wonder was sold (inasmuch as it was sold at all) as a Ben Affleck romance picture - I saw it in a mainstream multiplex and there were a number of walkouts (as there were when I saw Tree of Life in the same cinema). You can understand that a Pitt or Affleck helps gets these things financed and distributed, but I'm not sure how much their casting actually helps with the way that these films are received by non-'specialist' audiences.

stay in your box, movie stars!

never mind stars causing warped expectations, i wouldnt mind seeing a TM film without the de rigeur all star cast. less known actors might yknow, actually do a better job. you would think the TM name would at least be enough to get indie funding/audiences.

Malick goes mumblecore!

there is nothing that bale does that joe swanberg couldnt do...

I've never loved a Malick film, but I admired the first two and was moved by large chunks of TTRL and TTOL without thinking they were great films. I tend to avoid "great" as praise the more movies I watch and albums I listen to. So many movies have discordant and harmonious elements and compromised decisions and undeveloped ideas that often a couple years will pass w/out my thinking a film is GREAT. I see a lot of good ones, though; often they have a way of sneaking up on me. I was excited by Girlhood earlier this year and saw The Assassin a couple times.

I'd agree that Spielberg and Godard still make movies I want to watch despite misfires and the misgivings I noted above. So does Polanski.

never mind stars causing warped expectations, i wouldnt mind seeing a TM film without the de rigeur all star cast. less known actors might yknow, actually do a better job. you would think the TM name would at least be enough to get indie funding/audiences.

Sure, but as much as the star can upset some of Malick's delicate beats the star can also center the film in a way that pulls all Malick's threads together. Brad Pitt was well cast and did impressive work in TTOL, maybe his best ever, and Malick used him shrewdly. The elliptical epiphanic moments played to his strengths that in a conventional narrative might turn him into Gregory Peck.

whoops -- shoulda italicized first graf

first, the distributors don't care why you bought a ticket; the star strategy worked (and most theaters don't give refunds).

and yeah, Pitt was excellent in ToL and i didn't mind Ben as much as i usually do.

Swanberg and Bale also about equally studly these days... but i think the last CB performance i liked was The New World.

Swanberg looks like a mashup of Mark Wahlberg and the villain in Robocop disfigured by toxic sludge.

works for me

Swanberg did a good Malickian performance in Thou Wast Mild and Lovely.

the villain in Robocop disfigured by toxic sludge

The celebrity I most often get compared to these days ... presumably before the sludge.

the star strategy worked

well, to the wonder made like zero dollars; well, half a million, which is basically nothing: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=tothewonder.htm

aesthetically I mean (casting Pitt; I still haven't seen TTW).

Thin Red Line and Tree of Life remain my favorite Malick. The former I watch annually, the latter I saw once and might never see again. Still haven't seen To The Wonder, and don't really want to.

i saw Knight of Cups...and i thought it was pretty good! it's a minor film, for sure, and it's too long. (i actually had the thought while watching it that I wish Malick was as free with running times as he is with narrative and structure. why not a 45 min tone poem rather 2 hours?)

but that said...i found this surprisingly affecting while basically caring not at all for the actual specifics of the characters, relationships, setting, etc. but it moves like a piece of music, specifically a punishing dirge, when then, about 2/3 of the way through slowly gives way to something delicate and beautiful, like the clouds parting. it's quite a magic trick and so subtle it may be easy to miss if you're not sensitive to the rhythms of the editing and the lighting. there are even repeated shots that show things as if through an entirely new emotional pov. as a portrait of coming out of depression, even just for a moment to see the world as a place of hope and new beginnings, its a lovely film. the last word tells the whole story: "begin."

but i still wish it was shorter.

I like the trailer for it, knew who it was instantly. It looks cheesy but completely enjoyable.

some of it is slightly cheesy. kind of a prude's idea of excess...but that last 20-30 mins or so are so worth the previous 90 mins for me.

i still haven't watched to the wonder. i feel like it never even played in theaters. should I bother?

oh I already asked that.

should i bother is actually the title of the next malick film

Pinkerton on KoC:

Knight of Cups is a troubling movie, troubling in the way that it plays with the confusion between the language of spiritual yearning and the language of advertising, both of which work on our sense of “missing piece” incompleteness and exist to stir want, a sense of lack. The film abounds in images of just-out-of-reach objects of desire: dancers dangling from the ceiling at a Vegas cabaret act, like fruit ripe for the plucking; underwater shots of dogs diving into a swimming pool after squeaky toys, their jaws only just failing to close around them. Water imagery is everywhere, too, as is the refrain of “The Pearl,” which seems to complement both the recurring images of submersion and the faraway, opalescent moon. The source here is The Hymn of the Pearl from the Acts of Thomas, a third-century apocryphal text—many people writing about Malick seem to confuse him for a Catholic, which he isn’t, though he is certainly catholic in the breadth of his spiritual influences. (In Vegas we see an ersatz kind of Eastern shrine, and later Rick wanders the grounds of the Japanese garden at the Huntington Botanical Gardens.)....

The Malick of today may be the quintessential cult director: those who respond to his movies couldn’t be kept away from a new one, and you can’t tell anything to those who don’t. He has his devotees and his detractors—insofar as I can tell the factions are both well-populated, though this doesn’t keep commenters on either side from striking those self-dramatizing “lone voice in the wilderness” poses that are the bane of any worthwhile criticism. (For my part, I will never understand those hostile responses to Malick, which seem determined to hold the line so that American narrative cinema won’t be overrun by avant-garde abstraction, as though there was a flotilla of directors making experimental films on this scale instead of literally just one guy.)...

http://reverseshot.org/reviews/entry/2185/knightofcups

those who respond to his movies couldn’t be kept away from a new one

Love Malick, some/many of my favorites films of all time. Haven't seen the Affleck one, don't want to, so suck it, reverse shot. But I really want to see this one.

but this one has WES BENTLEY :/

wes bentley was in the most recent amer horror story season & is perfectly fine, he looks like jake gyllenhaal now m/l

ugh, u crazy man

that Pinkerton article is one of the better things i've read on Malick.

Love Malick, some of my favorites films of all time. They're beautiful. They're huge.

i saw this, didnt do much for me tbh

also, lmao there was nearly a fight in my theater. abt 3/4s in, two dudes made a loud comment or two or were talking or something i didnt hear clearly what was said. also worth noting that one of these dudes was looking at his phone quite a lot previous to that. there were a total of maybe 6-8 ppl but after the loud comment(s) a professorial looking dude off to the side said

'hey can you shut the fuck up'

to which the guy was like 'don't tell me to shut the fuck up wanna do something about it?'

professor guy was like 'yeah i do' and stood up walking toward the aisle

other guy was def 100% ready to fight, that type of person, and was like yeah ill knock your fucking teeth out, fucking faggot' and both these guys stood up and were moving toward the aisle

so all three are close to the ailse and this is reaching a nice level of drama heretofore unseen on the screen when the friend of the loudmouth plays the peacemaker and is like 'we were in the wrong, we'll just leave' and the professor guy goes back and sits down and the loudmouth calls him a pussy and the 2 dudes leave

cut to, movie ends im walking to my car and the two dudes are still in the parking lot by their car smoking butts. couldnt really tell if they were waiting for the professor guy specifically or what but he did then come out a second later and he approached them and shook each of their hands and went and got in his benz and drove away

http://i.imgur.com/qJcOi9A.jpg

Best story tho

Saw this last night and wanted Jeff Garlin in the lead versus a guy who doesn't really need status and money to get laid.

and this is reaching a nice level of drama heretofore unseen on the screen

lol

so all three are close to the ailse and this is reaching a nice level of drama heretofore unseen on the screen when the friend of the loudmouth plays the peacemaker and is like 'we were in the wrong, we'll just leave' and the professor guy goes back and sits down and the loudmouth calls him a pussy and the 2 dudes leave

professor guy is terrence malick, right?

other guy's christian bale

As far as I can tell Knigt of Cups was released in one cinema in the UK today.

Peaked at 68 theaters in N America, 4 last week... has grossed about $1 M worldwide.

http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Knight-of-Cups#tab=box-office

jed - four cinemas in London :-)

This and Evolution make it for the best weekend of cinema in the year so far.

Compare the Pinkerton with Bradshaw's rev.

Or better yet, don't.

Ah I could only find one, and at the Edinburgh film house although afaict nowhere else in Scotland.

Not playing at Glasgow Film Theatre? That's a surprise.

I saw tree of life at the gft. almost empty screening, a couple walked out after about 15 minutes - something ive never seen before or since.

One of the joys of watching arthouse cinema is the near-empty screenings and seeing couples walking out. Savor this, you'll miss it when they close it all.

https://thefilmstage.com/news/terrence-malick-announces-next-film-radegund-based-on-the-life-of-franz-jagerstatter/

as it looks like a change of pace, I'm very VERY excited about this.

do you not expect it to be ... Malicky?

oh I'm sure it will. I don't mind malicky of course but it would be exciting to see him do something else.

I dunno how accurate this is really but I tend to think of the post Tree of Life films as a continuous stylistic project--so leaving the autobiographical angle behind (and we'll see what Weightless is like) should bring something different. his historical films are for me the strongest because they have some kind of bedrock to work with that grounds them. or something like that.

My favorites are TTRL and New World, so i get ya.

might be even more interesting to work with someone other than Lubezski.

can a mod ban ryan from this thread

ryan's Malick posts are the best Malick posts

- ryan
- circa1916

it is mouthwatering to think of malick working within sober, quiet parameters for this, though, a kind of terrence davies mandate. i am thinking of marc rothemund's terribly moving sophie scholl

yes!

incidentally I am reading a book about Gnosticism right now and Knight of Cups is more or less a modern retelling of "the hymn of the pearl."

ry ry you shd be friends w malick. i bet he has a real gregarious streak. mark cousins once sent him a weed from the grave of david hume & they talked on the phone for a couple hrs. i think it is largely the case that ppl reading books of gnostic parables have few people they can comfortably talk abt what they're reading with

ty for this tho i am speeding directly to the wikipedia precis

i am pretty sure i live within a few miles of him right now! keeping my eyes peeled at the coffee shop, grocery store, etc.

i think i have seen him frolicking in the surf at the beach, try there

twirling in the frozen food section

Loved Knight of Cups, one of those I wanted to bore you all about in here - wanna see it again tho'.

pls bore

October

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cl90dnfWgAAiYXz.jpg:orig

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVyWObJY9FQ

i am so here for malick-does-planet-earth

about to start knight of cups -- if i liked ToL and loved to the wonder, i will like this, yes?

http://movies-somnia.tumblr.com/post/66407673080/newborn-i-open-my-eyes-i-melt-into-the-eternal

btw here's the full collection (as far as i can tell) of marina's voiceover's from 'to the wonder' -- moving to read if you loved the film

yeah i already made plans for the opening of the history of the universe flick, v pumped for that

Knight of Cups did belatedly make it to the Glasgow Film Theatre. Thought it could be twinned w/ either Tree of Life (daddy issues, new ageish mystical religiosity) or To The Wonder (again, those odd moments of 'documentary' and the occasional shift into low grade video footage). To the Wonder was like Malick's Red Desert, and Knight of Cups is both his Zabriskie Point - so hollow urban modernity is set against timeless deserts - and his Passenger - v similar shots of ppl driving in cars and a woman joyously raising her hands raised in the air. Also, a surprisingly heavy Kubrick vibe in places (right down to a certain middle-aged auteur fondness for flawless model bodies on display in skimpy lingerie - see also JLG, another director Malick seems to be heavily operating under in these last two films). At the same time Knight of Cups is the obverse of To the Wonder - it's a much more hopeful film in many ways, and the final word of dialogue - 'begin' - ambushed me with unexpected personal appropriateness (god help me, I turn 50 tomorrow). So a great film to end my 40s on.

happy 50th birthday, Ward!

Thanks!

Surprised to see how different Knight of Cups felt than To the Wonder. Still digesting, but thoroughly enjoyed it. Fairly tale. Also, yeah, some Kubrick in there! Most obvious at first being a guy at a party dressed up in The Shining dog suit.

"Livin' my life... is like playing Call of Duty on easy. I just go around and FUCK SHIT UP."

The background Hollywood d-bag conversations were quality.

And whoa at the Twin Peaks thing dropped in there.

initial reax to Voyage of Time

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-venice-toronto-2016-terrence-malicks-voyage-of-time-lifes-journey

Then there's this: http://www.indiewire.com/2016/09/voyage-of-time-review-terrence-malick-documentary-1201723878/

i will watch the shit out of this no matter how terrible the reviews are

it sounds pretty bad

“Malick being Malick,” writes Screen‘s Lee Marshall, “a strand of interference is dropped into the mix, consisting of grainy, color-leaching Academy-ratio home-video footage, much of it apparently shot on a Japanese retro ‘Digital Harinezumi’ camera (think moving Polaroids), of today’s troubled, chaotic, colorful world. In inserts that last no more than a couple of minutes at most, we see homeless people, refugee camps, Hindu festivals and Cairo demonstrations, an elderly pigherd, a Jewish marriage ceremony. It’s debatable how much these brief and often rather random-feeling sections add to the edifice, but they do, taken together, serve the director’s assumed purpose—of suggesting that our petty human problems don’t add up to much.”

I don't know, that part sounds like the best images of To the Wonder and Knight of Cups, lol. All in all it sounds pretty tough, though.

just the sort of fleeting images of humanity struggling make me think of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLPj2h0N3bU

yeah i mean as a huge fan of later-period malick (though KoC wasn't great), "malick being malick" seems right in my wheelhouse

how many flowy curtains in this one?

That's the 90 minute one though, right? The US release is the 45 minute IMAX that's probably just the Creation stuff.

it sounds pretty bad

“Malick being Malick,” writes Screen‘s Lee Marshall, “a strand of interference is dropped into the mix, consisting of grainy, color-leaching Academy-ratio home-video footage, much of it apparently shot on a Japanese retro ‘Digital Harinezumi’ camera (think moving Polaroids), of today’s troubled, chaotic, colorful world. In inserts that last no more than a couple of minutes at most, we see homeless people, refugee camps, Hindu festivals and Cairo demonstrations, an elderly pigherd, a Jewish marriage ceremony. It’s debatable how much these brief and often rather random-feeling sections add to the edifice, but they do, taken together, serve the director’s assumed purpose—of suggesting that our petty human problems don’t add up to much.”

― wizzz! (amateurist), Wednesday, 7 September 2016 16:44 (three hours ago) Permalink

I'd strike that conclusion from the images and 'colourful world' remark, and it sounds good to me.

our petty human problems don’t add up to much

i guess it's possible that this is the moral of this movie (fwiw I dont think malick is much interested in morals) but it would be a terribly stupid reading of all his other films.

Mondo Malick

National Geographic TV on fast fwd never hurt no one.

Mondo Malick

i wish! this will be far too polite, no doubt.

The cycle of life - new Terence Malick film announced, amateurist pops up to tell us it will be shite without having seen it, repeat until the end of time

So he's just made koyanisqaatsi with some space bits and dinosaur bits, right?

Man, Koyanisqaatsi would have been so much better with a few dinosaur bits

With a T-rex miming Albert de Ruiter's vocal.

ward, i didn't "tell you it would be shite"

are you really insecure?

After years of reading your posts I think I'm secure in at least one or two things

a lot of nastiness for no good reason, i hope you're proud

i haven't done anything to disrespect you or anyone else on this thread -- in fact, my tone has been pretty diplomatic. i'm not a fan of his recent films and i've tried to explain why to my best abilities. but you can't help taking potshots at me to make yourself feel bigger or something.

Can we get back to a T-rex miming "Koyaanisqatsi"? Just think about it. Or maybe T Rex. Bit of thick Visconti guitar.

tony or luchino?

i haven't done anything to disrespect you or anyone else on this thread -- in fact, my tone has been pretty diplomatic. i'm not a fan of his recent films and i've tried to explain why to my best abilities. but you can't help taking potshots at me to make yourself feel bigger or something.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Thursday, 8 September 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, but must this go on, especially if you haven't seen it.

Post after post

The same thought regurgitated over and over ffs

Multiple posts, do you see what I'm doing here.

?

if a few posts over the course of five years (!) bother you so much...

i also didn't make any assertions about the film! i just block-quoted a passage from a review.

it's amazing how many touchy assholes are on this board.

lol

it sounds pretty bad

this will be far too polite, no doubt.

Yeah, no assertions at all, lol.

i can never quite articulate it, but there's something about Malick--maybe that strange mixture of the overt and serious religiosity, hyper avant-garde or modernist techniques, and a fondness for cliche as an avenue for deep feeling and meaning--that makes me really aware of how unprepared most film critics are for responding to his movies. someone i know and respect once complained that his movies, the latter ones in particular, are even "oppressive" (she may or may not have used the word "fascist" lol) because they are put together in the same way as advertisements (as people never tire of pointing out)--the viewer must either submit or resist. but i have some weird intuition that malick doesn't necessarily see people walking out of his movies as a flaw of the movie or the person walking out, but just one of those mysteries of reception that are really at the bottom of how we respond to art, much as in max weber's claim that he was "religiously unmusical."

and malick's last few films have really doubled down on this approach, as they are in some ways a really dense set of symbols and (often quite obscure) references and, perhaps most difficult for viewers, a disembodied expression of feelings that aren't anchored to a narrative or characters or even performances at this point (does anyone really "act" in the last two films?)--all of which strikes me as less oppressive or sentimental or whatever but instead as a kind of meditation on the mysterious qualities of the feelings and emotions which don't necessarily emerge from some inner core of selfhood but seem to pass through us as momentary visitors--as occasions for "seeing," or Emerson's notion that "life is a train of moods like a string of beads." so his last few movies seem to me exist as a kind of invitation to sit still and process and analyze the quality of those feelings (many of which are negative!) in the act of being receptive (or not) to a work of art.

incidentally I think the more or less explicit subject of the last two films is how people cope (or don't) when feelings like love pass on.

I haven't always seen eye to eye with amateurist but have much more often enjoyed his input and found it illuminating. you're being total assholes to him here and It's totally uncalled for.

(I've v often been an asshole on here too so I'm not taking the moral high ground but this is a bit weird)

feel like i'm trying to convince myself that i like Malick post Tree of Life. not sure if it's working. so much of this but without the correct pacing to make it hit hard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5d0fHAocNM

he's a different guy from Antonioni, tho they are hated by many of the same people

and still ryan's post above makes me reconsider. serious treasure in the Malick threads.

Malick undeniably different from Antonioni, but i nonetheless feel a similar pulse through TM's last two films.

that scene from the passenger is my favorite moment in my one of my favorite movies.

https://thefilmstage.com/features/terrence-malick-talks-filmmaking-and-his-future-in-rare-live-appearance/

very excited that Radegund is happening!

oh yeah i saw the IMAX version of Voyage of Time. it was...nice. for perhaps the first time i felt what many others have complained about his other films: i didnt see any need for the Brad Pitt narration.

http://variety.com/2016/film/in-contention/terrence-malick-ultra-wide-voyage-of-time-re-release-1201933834/

apparently Malick doesn't see the need for the BP narration either. being re-released in ULTRA WIDESCREEN w/out the voice over.

did anyone see this?

oh looks like ryan did. guess i'll try to find the longer version?

i wouldn't go out of your way -- pretty much exactly the same as the ToL sequence (in style) without the emotional resonance of the story. it's definitely minor work for malick. though i reiterate i was in a bad mood when i watched it.

Song to Song sounds promising, can't be worse than Knight of Cups.

i've been talking about a french philosophy named Michel Henry on the rolling philosophy thread.

i think his work could be a great resource for understanding malick's technique and general sensibility. particularly in that Henry represents a fusion of the phenomenological tradition (which has obvious cinematic relevance) and a really radical understanding of christianity. malick's entire editing style becomes lucid in Henry's description of "world" (not to be mistaken for reality).

philosopher

this does violence to the context of the post upthread but

weed from the grave of david hume

would smoke

Reverse Shot repping for Knight of Cups on its end of year list. Even I can't go that far.

http://reverseshot.org/features/2292/best_of_2016

Top 5 of last year for me.

https://thefilmstage.com/news/terrence-malick-returns-to-wwii-in-first-look-at-radegund/

Sales agent desperate to note it has a script.

haha yes. though combined with a new cinematographer and malick himself saying at a public appearance that he was interested in moving back to more structured work...this could be his most "conventional film" since, uh, let's just say The New World is conventional for him. but very excited for this, apart from my own interest in the story it just seems like an ideal combo of director and material.

Who's the cinematographer?

Jörg Widmer. dont know much about him but apparently he was a camera operator and second unit cinematographer for the last few Malicks.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002152/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cr12#cinematographer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9t4SKWryWM

Song to Song roundup (limited opening Friday)

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/terrence-malicks-song-song

He's doing a discussion following screenings of Voyage of Time at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in DC tonight.

aaaand i will be attending that. thanks for the heads up.

Which screening? 6:30?

at this point, it's hard to imagine cinematic entreaty less enticing than terence malick + lovely young lovers in the fading daylight + winsome indie rock

i haven't seen song to song yet but knight of cups was definitely worse

at this point, it's hard to imagine cinematic entreaty less enticing than terence malick + lovely young lovers in the fading daylight + winsome indie rock

― Not raving but drooling (contenderizer), Wednesday, March 15, 2017 5:21 PM (forty-two minutes ago)

wrong!!!!!!!!!!!

i'm getting a little tired of defending malick (knight of cups was, in fairness, as self-indulgent as the critics said), but when he nails a movie he's in a class of his own. sounds like another try at the "to the wonder" magic

Was at the 6:30 showing. 40 minute IMAX cut w/out narration was good, but feel like post-Tree of Life, post-Planet Earth, post-Ron Fricke or whatever it's nice, but maybe less awe-inspiring than one would hope.

Really a treat getting to see Malick in the flesh though. Came out with a physicist and had a good 20-30 minute discussion and took a few questions from the crowd. When asked about working without a script he stressed that that was only a recent thing and his new film will be a return to the scripted. The tone seemed to be that he knew his latest few were not totally successful.

A group of people shuffled in right next to me and an older lady asked if the seats were saved. Realized after eavesdropping on their conversation that I was sitting next to his wife.

Interesting! Could you say a bit more about his tone and knowing the last films were unsuccessful?

I wonder why he did this after 30 years of not talking to anyone in public.

I would take that with a huge grain of salt. He just kinda chuckled and grinned wryly when he started talking about those films, so whatever that meant.

Wish I could give a more detailed rundown about the conversation, but there wasn't a lot that was soundbite-y. Talk of entropy, Bertrand Russell, string theory, multiverses. Malick said he saw time as being filled with "new beginnings" and seemed to espouse a less bleak view of the future.

Someone asked him about how he's changed as a person through the years (referencing how his films have evolved) and he said it was impossible to know, more or less. Said that his "early pictures" felt someone foreign to him now, like they were made several lifetimes ago.

I went to the 9:30 screening and the Q & A afterward was particularly science heavy, e.g. much talk of the expansion of the universe accelerating, now slowing down. One thing he talked about which I wasn't aware of was the creation of some of the "liquid" cosmic lighting effects in Tree of Life and Voyage of Time, some of which were done simply by dumping various dyes in a big tank of water (he referred to it as "skunkworks").

He also mentioned the narration in the previous cuts of VOT was added mainly as an "educational" prerequisite to secure IMAX funding, as a big part of their revenue comes from school-sponsored screenings.

(the 8:00 screening, I mean; there were two).

While briefly discussing the process of finishing and releasing his films, he compared it to a bowler watching the ball roll away while unconsciously trying to steer it the right way with body language.

Adam Nayman‏
@brofromanother
Is SONG TO SONG the first movie to have a pro/con dual village voice review since Hoberman and Sarris on DRESSED TO KILL?

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/song-to-song-malicks-latest-matches-formal-abandon-with-moral-resolve-9769321

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/song-to-song-is-chastely-childish-9769343

Song to Song is opening here this Friday, just found out it's 145 minutes, obligated to see it, luckily there's a revival of The Thin Red Line next week...

it's not actually that long, i saw that it was 145 minutes too but then when i went to see it, it was just a little over two hours

It's already out in Chicago. Who knew?

oh good. iirc Knight of Cups was just about 2 hours and that was plenty. the people i went with hated it so much they left 20 minutes before it was over

I liked song to song, not a masterpiece or anything but i kind of feel like all the knives out on this one have more to do with "lol indie rock" and "he's old and therefore must be 'out of touch'" than anything I saw on screen

I enjoyed Song to Song - much more compelling than Knight of Cups, and warmer. Spending 2 hours with Christian Bale was such a drag. At least Gosling, Mara, Fassbender, and Portman are fun and have a sense of humor about the whole thing (especially Gosling). I liked Mara a lot more as the lead. Musician cameos were cool. Definitely had a minor psychedelic effect on me, walking out of the theater a storm was brewing and I felt like I was walking in slow motion. But I'm glad he's moving onto more structured and scripted work after this.

Song to Song belongs on the Architectural Digest pile with KoC

also demonstrates TM's 'woman problem' depite Mara's best efforts

Patti Smith as annoying as ever

otm but imo patti smith was the best part of that boring, boring, boring movie

I am shocked at my own transition from "Malick is one of my favorite directors, too bad he will never make another movie again" to "wow, his new movies are among my favorites of all time, thank goodness he came back" to "huh, I have zero interest in seeing his last three films, I hope he goes away again."

https://pagesix.com/2018/10/31/terrence-malick-helping-make-lil-peep-documentary

The acclaimed filmmaker behind “Badlands” and the “Thin Red Line,” who is a friend of Peep’s mother, is executive producing a documentary about the late rapper’s life

This dope beat.
This sick beat.
Where did it come from?
What was the point of origin?
The hi-hat. The trembling bass.

lmfao

xxp Josh otmfm, although I will forever be glad he came back to give us THE NEW WORLD because damnnn

Badlands and Days of Heaven were so special and sui generis. Remarkably strange and haunting. They’re perfect. Diamonds.

The Thin Red Line, The New World, and The Tree of Life are imperfect and messy but have stretches of real transcendence. I think his highest highs are in these films.

I... talk myself into appreciating elements of the films after that. But really I think they diminish the magic of what came before.

late period malick is like season 25 simpsons

“to the wonder” is maybe my favorite film ever

A Hidden Life, about a Nazi conscientious objector, premiered at Cannes last night. Apparently it "will have a more structured narrative than his previous works", which can only be a good thing. Also, it was Bruno Ganz's final film.

what was the reception like?

idk I wasn't there

Fox Searchlight bought it

Terrence Malick’s ‘A Hidden Life’ Snapped Up By Fox Searchlight In 8-Figure Deal After Late Night Bidding War — Cannes https://t.co/xupu1cD4rz pic.twitter.com/DIzMMRCm5R

— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) May 20, 2019

they distributed Tree of Life, expect an Oscar campaign

it got panned in sight and sound. this piece of information is particularly bizarre:

Most peculiar is the use of languages. Whenever anyone shouts or has bad things to say it’s always in German, whereas the voiceovers and anything gentle or kind are in English. This problem is particularly pronounced in the trial scenes where the Nazi prosecutors scream in German while the more reasonable Judge Lueben (Bruno Ganz, who got a sigh of sad appreciation when he came on screen) speaks English to Jägerstätter. (To be clear: both are meant to represent Germans and Austrians speaking their native language.) Obviously, to Malick, good and evil speak different languages.

and then:

If anything A Hidden Life is more God-adoring than Malick’s run of films since Tree of Life. But I don’t sense any attempt to convince or convert. Malick is just vaunting an ordinary farmer from the wrong side of the war who’s been beatified by the Catholic church. It’s almost as if Jägerstätter’s then-unsung death holds more import than the millions being slaughtered in cities and at the front, not to mention the death camps. A Hidden Life is above the clouds in the worst possible way.

https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/hidden-life-terrence-malick-franz-jagerst%C3%A4tter-anschluss-story

A Hidden Life is above the clouds in the worst possible way.

sounds like a Malick movie!

"The war, in fact, barely intrudes on the proceedings" Hm yes, how weird that this film about a guy who doesnt go to war doesnt have a lot of war stuff in it.

If only we knew what Terrence Malick thought about WWII combat, imagine what a movie that would be

lmao

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/a-hidden-life-review-terrence-malick-cannes-1202142833/

here’s an encouraging rave

Anne Thompson also really liked it I think

I didn't get this one.

has he been trying to get got?

Bresson used to film these Explorations of Faith in Dark Times in 88 minutes.

A Very Hidden Life

I loved it

I thought this was riveting and incredibly moving. Probably my favorite of his since The Thin Red Line.

I'm torn on seeing this one. I don't like Malick at all, but I feel a need to see everything he does. I really respect what he did after Tree of Life, trolling everyone with three completely indecipherable masterpieces and making the lives of a few hundred die hard fans. That's awesome. but it's cold as shit here and it's 3 hours and I've already seen Thin Red Line and didn't like it at all. Should I put on the gloves?

Well it will definitely kill three hours!

I am struggling to articulate to myself why this felt so much different/better than the last few (which I admired as experiments without really loving). The flow of the images in this one just felt totally necessary and purposeful and very often I was moved just by a simple cut.

I’ve been checked out on Terry even though I love everything pre-To the Wonder unreservedly. This is probably enough to make me go see this today.

I was half joking about its length, but, really, I get what you mean, ryan, by how scene for scene the film impressed its theosophy, but by the two-hour mark its banality also wore me down. Malick still thinks wives and children romping through the fields is paradise lost?

I know what you mean, but I actually think there's not a lot of romping? There is, however, a lot of toiling. I don't think I've seen so much manual labor in a movie in a long time...it's constant (and weirdly mesmerizing).

And I think a lot of the malicky stuff in the town (which, again, for me felt different...those shots of the moutanins aren't "aw" they're like that shot of the bison in To the Wonder...the strangeness!)...is necessary to set off against, say, the empty prison montage with the anguished roving camera searching for light and space, which felt like a high point.

I freely admit I may have been in the right mood for this movie! Which often happens with Malick.

In any case, while mileage with Malick may vary, I felt grateful he's around, that this movie exists...because no one else can do this quite like he does.

Also quite appreciated how maddening and mystifying Jaggerstatter's (sp?) beatific stubbornness was, the seeming gratuitous senselessness of it being the whole point-. "You'll be free if you sign this." "But I am free."

he's Melvillean.

I thought this was riveting and incredibly moving. Probably my favorite of his since The Thin Red Line.

― ryan, Saturday, December 21, 2019 1:07 AM (eleven hours ago)

ok, I'm sold. I was disappointed brody didn't like it because we tend to be on the same page about malick

ryan why do I remember you loving TTW

I did love it! That's one I'll really go to bat for. Probably went on about it in this very thread but I won't look since seeing my old posts makes me feel like Adam Driver on Terry Gross.

I also admired Knight of Cups but definitely felt "done" with that approach and did not see Song to Song. Wasn't even that interested in this but Nick Pinkerton's essay on it piqued my interest.

I do think set and setting are important for Malick consumption. But I dunno I'll have to figure out why this worked so well for me. It has a bit of that quality of TTRL where there feels like there's another movie going on off camera but on a much larger scale. I found myself wondering how their donkey and cow were doing.

sorry, a much *smaller* scale than TTRL

I wonder if Paul Schrader would hate this like he did with Song to Song.

he's Melvillean.

took me a minute to realize what you meant but this is a brilliant observation

MF Doom and Madlib?

Bartleby!

yep

I really liked this but it definitely felt like almost an hour too long. Found my mind wandering off in the last third. Think the two leads (and those kids!) were perfect, glad he didn’t stick marquee names in there. More than a few moments that really fucking struck. The village and mountain vista were almost enough to justify a movie on their own, stunning but alien and surreal in a way, as Ryan suggested above.

Still can’t help but think this would have been something greater if it was more concise. But idk, this was good. I’m glad he’s still capable of doing this.

saw this today and agree completely with that post

I was also struck by the amount of physical toiling in this movie: in the first half, as ryan notes, the labor that seems incessant -- I thought it was notable that on the screen franz and his wife are constantly at work, even when speaking to each other or to others, really emphasizing the the toll that their chosen path takes on their bodies and their minds. and in the second half, the violence.

good point

The length, and arguable repetitiveness, will really be a sticking point for many, I think. I was locked in for some reason. I loved those long fades to black that punctuated the movements of the film. And, I think this is true of all his later films but the rhythm of the editing was really wonderful this time. There's something he does that feels musical, not repeating the same exact shots but a kind of repeated motif of relationships between shots, that reminds of a musical theme coming up again and again in different registers throughout a symphony or something. Hard to take it all in on one viewing but the shot of a doorway followed by a wide vista is one I noticed that occurred a few times. But the sublimity of repetition can be super subjective.

I was also happy with the leads...really hope he can avoid using stars in the future...though I wonder how many movies he has left.

Also yes the kids! The little blonde one with curls...when the mother was kissing her goodnight and she gives this totally disarming grin...I feel like Malick must have leapt up in the air when that happened.

def better than the last two

also should have its own thread like many worse new films do

There's something he does that feels musical, not repeating the same exact shots but a kind of repeated motif of relationships between shots

Thinking the same thing... symphonic

I read more than one review of “to the wonder” that described is as a ballet, yes

I liked this one. The length is appropriate to convey the obstinance and weight of his choice. And for everyone who complained about Malick's twirling women, here's lots of grueling manual labor.

I'll also remember that news of Kobe Bryant's death broke right as this was starting and I found out while walking out 3 hours later.

I still think about this one a lot. Had a chance to see it a third time in the theater and almost went for it, since I don't know if seeing on anything less than a giant screen will be the same, but it was sold out. They had a special screening here in Austin, where it's been out of theaters for weeks. Half thought the man himself might show up!

this is so good:
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/08/14/the-unbearable-toward-an-antifascist-aesthetic/