Knight of Cucks is Terrence Malick's worst

>>64483191
And it’s no wonder he’s so gloomy. The poor soul is handsome and healthy, and he is being paid a fortune to write screenplays for Hollywood’s top comedian. If that weren’t nightmarish enough, his writing commitments don’t entail any actual work, so he has to pass the time by strolling along the beach in his Armani outfit, usually in the company of his latest eye-meltingly gorgeous girlfriend. And it gets worse. Sometimes he’s forced to attend star-studded house parties, or to stand in the desert and gaze at the sunrise. He is even chased around boutique hotel rooms by models in skimpy lingerie. Where did he go wrong indeed?

>>64483212
All right, so Rick’s trials and tribulations may not sound especially punishing, but Malick wants us to take his chiselled hero’s existential crisis very seriously. Like his last two films, The Tree of Life and To the Wonder, Knight of Cups is an experimental, impressionistic collage which replaces most of its dialogue with fragmentary narration, and which abandons linear plotting in favour of woozy, elliptical montages punctuated by cryptic chapter headings. It presents itself as being more spiritual and profound than a conventional movie – and for the first few disorientating minutes, the viewer can go along with its own assessment. Soon, though, it’s plain that when Malick’s idiosyncratic methods are applied to an over-privileged California playboy, they don’t result in inspirational art. The result is ludicrous self-parody – somewhere between a Calvin Klein aftershave advertisement and a coffee-table book about the modernist mansions of the rich and famous.

>>64483255
Of course, it’s not impossible to make a sympathetic study of someone who is awash in designer-suited luxury. La Dolce Vita is the obvious example, and the numerous shots of helicopters in Knight of Cups may refer to the opening sequence of Fellini’s glittering bonfire of the vanities. But Malick is too vague about the nature of his hero’s dissatisfaction to engage us: if it weren’t for the portentous woe-is-me slogans that Bale recites in voiceover, we might not realise he was unhappy at all. It’s not as if Rick is addicted to drugs or alcohol, and he certainly hasn’t lost his looks or his career. The film’s most dramatic events are an earth tremor and a break-in, but neither of them has any effect on him. He watches his wired brother (Wes Bentley) arguing with their gruff father (Brian Dennehy), but their dialogue is so low in the sound mix that we don’t hear what they are arguing about. And while Rick may have split up with his wife (Cate Blanchett), it doesn’t bother him too much, probably because his parade of lovestruck younger partners includes Imogen Poots’ wild child, Freida Pinto’s fashion model, Teresa Palmer’s wisdom-spouting pole dancer and Natalie Portman’s married woman. And that’s not counting all the models in lingerie. If Malick wanted nothing more than to put Hollywood’s most celebrated fashion plates in front of his bobbing and weaving camera, then he’s achieved his aim. But if he wanted us to care about Rick’s first-world problems, then he’s gone about it the wrong way.

>>64483297
Still, if it’s difficult to feel sorry for Rick, it’s all-too easy to feel sorry for the actors, who appear to be wandering around the streets and apartments of Los Angeles without any idea of what they are meant to be doing. The one scrap of direction that Malick seems to have given Bale was, “Walk very slowly and don’t say anything.” Rick’s various girlfriends, in their assorted floaty dresses, all seem to have been told to dance and skip like schoolchildren at every opportunity. And there are times – such as when Portman shoves her toes in Bale’s mouth, or when Bentley jabs a fork into his own hand – when the actors’ desperation is embarrassingly palpable. Clearly, they felt they had to do something, however hammy and amateurish it might be.

Malick being Malick, he does put together some striking sun-kissed images, and he does – sometimes – generate a mesmerisingly dreamy mood. If nothing else, the orgiastic catalogue of parties, hotels and corporate skyscrapers may be valuable to future generations as a record of Western capitalism at its most vapid and decadent. It’s just a shame that the film itself is no less vapid and decadent than the lifestyle it’s depicting.

tl;dr

I hope this review is a joke

no way I'm reading this pasta

>hurr hedoism is so meaningless!
>woman comes into life and turns it around
How tired is this trope? For fucks sake

>>64483297
>La Dolce Vita is the obvious example, and the numerous shots of helicopters in Knight of Cups may refer to the opening sequence of Fellini’s glittering bonfire of the vanities.
Is this reviewer stupid? Malick has a fucking voiceover literally tell you as to why he's always looking up at the sky. It also ties to him going underwater in the momentary pleasures of the world while constantly looking for a "higher" purpose. Reminds me of how people completely missed The Tree of Life being an adaptation of the Book of Job even after the movie starting with a quote from that book along with a scene where a priest talks about it as well.

>"Once the soul was perfect and had wings, could soar into heaven ... But the soul lost its wings and fell to earth. There it took an earthly body. Now while it lives in this body no outward sign of wings can be seen yet the roots of its wings are still there ... When you see a beautiful woman or a man the soul remembers the beauty it used to know in heaven. Wings begin to sprout and that makes the soul want to fly but it cannot yet, it is still too weak. So the man keeps staring up into the sky at a young bird. He's lost all interest in the world ..."

>Nicholas Barber
>has given positive reviews to Age of Ultron, TFA, Spectre
These are the modern film critics

>>64484821
Malick is a hack with no interesting or original ideas of his own to present, he'd rather plagiarize the Bible, that fucking moron.

>>64485628
>I want complete originality after thousands of years of recorded human culture

>>64485691
TFA tourist detected.

>>64485772
>says the person who thinks Malick is a hack

>>64485628
t. imdbdora movie buff

>>64483191
>>64483212
>>64483255
>>64483297
>>64483341

You write really well and I agree with you. However, who was it that said that it is best to make your characters ridiculously rich, so that they (and the audience) are free to examine their psychology?

>>64485794
I'm not that guy tho

>>64485794

I swear Malick fanboys are the only ones worse than PTA fanboys.

I can't believe how obtuse people can be. How can you really think that Knight of Cups is literally about the problems of a rich screenwriter? With all of the voiceover and shots of nature, how do you not clue into the fact that it's about living in the world in general? Materialism, shallow experiences, these are things we all deal with.

How can somebody who calls themselves a writer on film not meet a fucking Terrence Malick movie halfway? It may not be his best work or even very good but he's an all-star.

This review offers poor criticism by taking the film literally, from what I can see. And frankly, even if we do take the film literally, dismissing a person's problems based on socioeconomic class reeks of jealousy and petty mindedness. As if empathy should be capped at a certain income level.

>>64486271
Why don't you believe in Malick, anon?

>>64485691
>thousands of years of human originality
>Malick can't be original

>>64487526
>human originality
Even the Bible ain't original, son