Knight of Cups - DVD Review

KNIGHTS OF CUPS (R) Starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Wes Bentley, Antonio Banderas, Brian Dennehy, Freida Pinto, Isabel Lucas, Teresa Palmer and Armin Mueller-Stahl.
Written & Directed by Terrence Malick.

★½

Malick's still determined to make stream-of-conscientious plot-free movies. He has a really beautiful eye, but his movies are like fuzzy memories as you watch them. Images, voice-over whispers, ocean waves drowning out dialogue, suggestions of a story without really telling one. They're dreams.

This one centers around Christian Bale's Hollywood player, who visits sets and attends parties but doesn't seem happy. Some familiar faces pop up and I don't know if they're a character or they're playing themselves. At one party we see Jason Clarke, Joe Mangianello and Nick Kroll, but that's it. I suppose you could say they're cameoing like many did in Robert Altman's The Player, or they could have had bigger parts that Malick just cut out.

After a while, I was like "Quit moping, rich man!"

I loved Badlands. I still hope someday Malick will tell a story again in one of his movies, but every new one has less plot than the one before. What can I say? If you thought To the Wonder had too much story, you'll love this.

To the Wonder - DVD Review

Starring Olga Kurylenko, Ben Affleck, Javier Bardem, and Rachel McAdams.  Directed by Terrence Malick.

★★

Malick is one of the most frustrating artists for me. I loved Badlands. I found The Thin Red Line to be tremendously overrated.  The New World was okay.  I was disappointed by Tree of Life.

But 21st century Malick is more concerned with images, impressions, moments that linger in the memory, disconnected.  He's not telling a story; he's pre-jumbling your memory of the movie for you.  We have shots or scenes that might stay in the head for a few days, even as most of it vanishes.

His movies are undeniably beautiful, but you can only watch an artist chase butterflies for so long. He films hours and hours of footage, and he doesn't use most of it, and the "most" part tends to include plot elements that would make the whole affair more comprehensible.  Jessica Chastain, Rachel Weisz, Michael Sheen, Barry Pepper and Amanda Peet were all in this movie at one point too, but he cut them entirely out of the picture. (Why as an actor would you want to be in a Malick film when you know how good the odds are your part will be whittled down to nothing, or almost nothing?)

Ben Affleck, I get the feeling, had a character and dialogue, but almost all of his lines are cut. I think he gets six lines of spoken word in the whole movie.  Olga Kurlyenko gets the most screen time.  She narrates her thoughts in French while she twirls in flowing skirts in fields of wheat.  Rachel McAdams shows up as an old flame that Affleck reconnects with, and then there's Javier Bardem as a priest.

About 70% of the words we hear are narrated, most by the wife but some by the priest (in Spanish), and most of those times it doesn't appear connected to what we're seeing on screen. I think this is a reflection on how our heads are often elsewhere from what our bodies are doing.  There are times it's jarring when the camera focusses on a person's face and they actually speak some dialogue. I can almost feel the frustration coming out of Affleck. "Let me speak! Some words!"

So while I love his eye, I wish he'd rewatch Badlands and see how it's okay to have a narrative attached to his images.  We can have both cinematography and a story!

Cinematically Speaking 11/8

Old Movie I Finally Saw

BADLANDS (1973) - I'd seen three Terrence Malick movies, and while I liked A New World okay, I wasn't wowed by it. Thin Red Line I found overrated, and then I found Tree of Life to be the most beautiful slideshow I'd ever seen, but it was a slideshow. Everyone loves Malick, so I decided I'd go back to the beginning and make sure I wasn't missing anything.

Well, from this movie, I can see why he's so beloved. It was really good, holds up really well. Martin Sheen is great as the young 1950's killer, polite to those he's shooting, with Sissy Spacek along as his naive, guileless girlfriend accomplice. I see where inspirations were drawn for True Romance and Kalifornia. Badlands is also Malick's most solid narrative accomplishment I've seen. Since it was his first movie, it looks like he's fallen more in love with cinematography and impressions and less so with cohesive narration. Now when I eventually rent Days of Heaven, my first Malick viewing will be complete. But yes, Badlands holds up just fine and is worth seeking out, whether you love or hate what he's putting out now.

The Academy Awards

I'm not heart-broken Brett Ratner's not producing the Awards now. I just wonder who they're going to get that Eddie Murphy's still comfortable working with. Each year I root for a good show, and last year, the gamble with James Franco and Anne Hathaway flopped when Franco worked stiff all night.