FilmSnobReviews

Title: Knight of Cups
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Terrence Malick
Starring: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman
Runtime: 1 hr 58 mins

What It Is: Fathers and sons, husbands and wives all of this surrounds Rick (Bale) while he soaks in the City of Angels. Through the lens of six different women, we deal with the love and the life of this man as he traverses through Los Angeles and for a small time Las Vegas. Familial issues cloud his search for love and the existential struggle continues for Rick. Visionary director Terrence Malick walks through personal fire and strife as he searches for his other half.

What We Think: Nonesensically pretentious arthouse drivel. I’ve read numerous review that summarizes their thought on the film as “you just didn’t get it”. There right I didn’t get it because (pardon my French) this shit doesn’t make any sense. Why do people keep praising Malick for his all style no substance college kid mid-term art school BS? Just because a film looks beautiful does not give it the right to be completely inept narratively. That is what this is. It’s all fine to dabble in metaphors and subterfuge. Sometimes, however, I just want a damn story and far fewer shots of random freaking nebulae!

Our Grade: D, I cannot fail a movie so delicately filmed and wonderful looking. Having said that do we really need that many damn fisheye shots? I posted on Twitter a few days ago a photo I though perfectly encapsulated my experience with this movie. It was not a pleasant one nor is it one I will likely ever want to go through again. Skip this pretentious load of garbage. You know that weird kid from American Beauty he probably really likes this movie, ironically Wes Bentley who played the weird kid is in this movie. Skip this do not let me catch you in the theater watching this. I will judge you, hard! Hopefully, Malick hasn’t forgotten how to make great films that make actual sense and he isn’t lost in a world that understands the last decade and a half or so of his career have been spent up his own posterior.