(short and sweet and to the point; culled from watching 150 releases. constantly updated as i catch up to those i missed. click poster for review if applicable) #25: Heart of Now directed by Zak Forsman. #24: The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 directed by Göran Olsson #23: Win Win directed by Thomas McCarthy. #22: The [...]

“Why should I be good if you aren’t?” The above quote is spoken with auteur Terrence Malick’s trademarked voiceover, as is most of The Tree of Life when words are deemed appropriate enough to enhance the image-driven composition played out with orchestral precision. These words are meant as an internal question, young Jack frustrated with [...]

“I’ll find my way back to help you” I think there is a major cultural divide for me watching the Palme D’or winning Thai film Loong Boonmee raleuk chat [Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives] from writer/director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. There is such spirituality to its display of Boonmee’s (Thanapat Saisaymar) final days that [...]

While Jon Favreau may say that 2011 looks to have a bloodbath summer on its hands with blockbusters galore taking 3D screens from each other, I’ll say right now that those aren’t the movies most intriguing me. Next year sees a return for Jack Sparrow, Lightning McQueen, Holmes and Watson, the Witwickys, Ethan Hunt, and, [...]

The reason I started doing my marathon series was to finally start seeing films I’ve neglected and needed to see. Doing the filmography of Terrence Malick couldn’t have turned out better with some of the greatest works of cinema I’ve ever seen. Days of Heaven easily vaulted itself into my top 10 of all-time and [...]

“At the moment I was to die, she threw herself upon me” There is no way to mistake a Terrence Malick film for anything but. His use of score as a character rather than background, the hitch cuts in scenes as though only a few frames are removed, ultra short vignettes right out of a [...]

“The only things that are permanent is dying and the Lord” Pure, unfiltered, raw emotion. That is what’s front and center in Terrence Malick’s adaptation of James Jones’s autobiographical novel The Thin Red Line. The term itself may describe a thinly spread line of defense holding position in war, but I think the metaphor towards [...]

“But if you’ve been bad, God don’t even hear you. He don’t even hear ya talkin’.” Overwhelmed. The tagline got it right—every sense, by the end of Days of Heaven, will be overwhelmed. Terrence Malick’s second feature film is as breathtaking as you’ve heard, mesmerizing you with its sumptuous beauty until the hellish climax burns [...]

“He said that if the Devil came at me, I could shoot him with a gun” A character at the end of Terrence Malick’s debut feature film Badlands tells antihero Kit that he is “quite the individual”. That could be the understatement of 1973. Based on the 1950s Starkweather-Fugate killing spree, the film tells the [...]