Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick film, 2015)

First trailer is out. Malick's take on Hollywood stardom:

 

Great. Really looking forward to seeing it.

 

I liked To the Wonder, but this already looks better than that film.

 

I have yet to see "To The Wonder", but I like the look of this one. I'm always excited for something new from Malick.

 

I hope this gets Malick back on track. We'll see.

 

Not a good sign that this got pretty mixed reviews and then basically fell off the radar for close to a year now. I assume it's been delayed into 2016.

 

Here again, Malick uses classic archetypes, this time from Tarot, as a lens to examine humanity.

 

How weird that I bumped this thread wondering when it was ever going to be released and then literally the next day a "new" trailer (it actually looks identical to the previous trailer other than the bumper at the beginning) and release date comes out:



March 4, 2016.

 

For those who have seen this, HOW did you see it? Was it in a theater near you? Just looked to see if it can be bought or stream online, and it doesn't seem so. Amazon currenly only shows a region 2 dvd. No blu-ray.

 

Is the release date still "March 4, 2016" as mentioned in Bryan's post from last November?

Funny that this is the first I've heard of this film, from the thread that was started over a year ago ... and it may still not have been released yet.

Did I say "funny"? I meant "sad," "disappointing," and "frustrating."

Craig.

 

Trailer looks so so.
Home it's not another armchair snooze.

 

this is spectacular ... it is Malick pushing to another level, discarding dialogue (for the most part), incorporating voiceovers (as usual) and the fluidity of Lubezki's photography.

I have seen it a few times now ... it warrants repeated viewings for sure.

 

Finally saw it yesterday and here are my thoughts:

I'm a huge Terrence Malick fan, but this was possibly his weakest film (maybe tied with The New World, which is more technically competent, but just so. damn. long. and also unintelligible without subtitles due to accents and mumbling line delivery)

It starts out strong, but after a (typical) slow-moving two hours you expect it to culminate in some sort of emotional catharsis or climax, as pretty much all Malick films do, and then it just sort of... ends.

I hope Knight of Cups wraps up Malick's semi-autobiographical period (this film along with The Tree of Life and To the Wonder form a sort of trilogy), and he once again explores other story ideas more outside of himself.

3/5 stars

 

Seen it twice thus far and planning on two additional trips. For me, this stands alongside The New World as his finest hour, a statement I would've once thought blasphemous. Malick (and Lubezki) is now operating completely under his own terms, somehow perfecting his filmic language of memory. The audacity of the man, and his accomplice, astounds me to no end.

 

Another amateur night at the theater. I wish that Malick would return to telling a good, solid narrative in addition to meandering as if in someone's head.

 

I do respect Malick very much for doing something different and creating something wholly originally, I just feel it was somewhat poorly executed in this latest effort. Like I said previously, Knight started out strong for me, but then meandered for way too long without coming to any sort of emotional climax or catharsis, and instead just sort of ended unceremoniously. At the end of the film, Rick (Malick's avatar), is still seemingly womanizing and living a life of hedonism.

One stray observation: what was with the few random shots of St. Louis towards the end of the film? Didn't make sense (even for a Malick film) to me when 99% of the movie took place in the greater Los Angeles area and Las Vegas.

 

Okay, the length of The New World being a pro or con is a subjective matter, but I'd be amazed if you can actually understand Farrell or Bale's heavily-accented, mumbling voice-overs.

 

At this point, if Malick made a movie with a straightforward narrative delivered clearly it'd probably destroy his reputation.

 

I feel like The Thin Red Line is a pretty good balance of straightforward narrative but also poetic philosophical meditation.

 

I think it helps that scenes of warfare are obviously going to grab you by the throat more than scenes of people spinning around in the back yard or splashing in water on the beach.

 

I do like Malick quite a bit but like Thomas Pynchon and some other notable artist-recluses, he's fallen heavily out of touch with reality and instead attempts to present some fairly obvious and widely-held observations about the world as if they're novel insights. And similar to Pynchon, because of reputation (assuredly not unearned), he's able to get away with a lot that would be roundly ridiculed if emanating from a less "heroic" artist. The journey is what is worth it in Malick's case, but the philosophical meditations just aren't revelatory unless you're also a 72-year old man who cancelled his subscription to pop culture in the early 1980s.

 

I agree and think he peaked with The Thin Red Line. I really think it's a masterpiece, where the story gelled perfectly with his dream-like philosophical aspirations. I like The New World and look forward to revisiting once the Criterion blu-ray comes out, but I feel like it took a step down. To The Wonder to me is beautiful garbage. Tree of Life I like, but I find it incredibly indulgent and had some of the fat been cut it really could've been something special. As for Knight of Cups, I really wanted to like it but struck me as step sideways from To The Wonder.

And to be honest, I've always wanted to see Malack direct a Transformers movie. I'd love to see a monologue from Optimus Prime about the burden of being a hero, Megatron as an ultimately misunderstood villain, and their conflict as a Cain and Abel story.

 

Exactly. The bonus dvd TRL segment on editing explains just how extremely intuitive he is. And I gather the editors (and biologists and whoever he hired) kept him from getting even more intuitive. I happen to think TRL is a masterpiece, though less of one on repeated viewings. It takes a lot of nerve to use WWII in the Pacific as a platform to work out your own existential quandries. So I gotta give him that. But he hasn't gotten away with anything like that since. Re:" Post #21, endlessly splashing around in the garden sprinkler is not enlightening or artistic.

 

to me, Thin Red Line is the story of war told from the point of view of Mother Nature (who doesn't give a damn). In the midst of mankind's transgressions, natural beauty goes on and continues.