Terrence Malick

The New World (2005)

[5] While I’d rather Terrence Malick make a live-action Pocahontas movie than Disney, the results are still far from amazing… and a wee bit boring. Malick focuses on a love triangle between our girl Poca (Q’orianka Kilcher), John Smith (Colin Farrell), and John Rolfe (Christian Bale). The first half of the movie is like Malick’s Days of Heaven, with Kilcher and Farrell running around in …

The Thin Red Line (1998)

[5] John Toll’s cinematography and Hans Zimmer’s music will wash over you in an ecstatic kind of way in The Thin Red Line. The shots rolling over wind-swept grassy hills are mesmerizing and director Terrence Malick incorporates many other elements of nature throughout his telling of James Jones’ story centered around Guadalcanal in World War II. The biggest takeaway seems to be that we and …

Pocket Money (1972)

[4] Paul Newman teams up with Lee Marvin to deliver cattle from Mexico to a shady dealer played by Strother Martin. Newman and Martin are re-teamed here with Cool Hand Luke director Stuart Rosenberg, with a script adapted by Terrence Malick (Badlands, The Thin Red Line). Despite the ingredients, Pocket Money is slow to rev up and ends up going nowhere. For a buddy picture, …

Badlands (1973)

[8] What an odd, beguiling vigilante road-trip romance this is. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek star as two oddly unaffected youths who casually pair up and embark on what turns out to be a killing spree through South Dakota. This was director Terrence Malick’s (Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line) first feature film, and much of his trademark style is here — the beautiful …