Review of Knight of Cups (2015) by Conrad T — 27 Jul 2016

"The artful new film from Terrence Malick is not my cup of tea".

Movie Review: Knight of Cups.

Date Viewed: April 2 2016.

Written and Directed By Terrence Malick (Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World and The Tree of Life).

Starring: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Wes Bentley, Freida Pinto,.

Brian Dennehy, Antonio Banderas, Imogen Poots, Teresa Palmer, Isabel Lucas, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Cherry Jones, Dane DeHaan and Nick Offerman.

The artful new film from Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World, The Tree of Life) is not my cup of tea. It has the same structure and narrative as his other films and I was mostly bored throughout this picture. I do not know what Malick was trying to accomplish here but it's pretty sad to see a great director get trapped in a muddled balloon. "Knight of Cups" needs more than voice-over narration, beautiful imagery and cinematography to keep it floating, it needs a real story and compelling characters. Malick's filmmaking rate used to be one new film every seven or ten years, since "The Tree of Life" he is now making a new movie every two years. That is a big problem for Malick because talented directors like him take a long time to create the groundwork for their next film. His new film "Knight of Cups" is his worst yet, it feels like a novel that would've been better suited at the book counter at your local CVS pharmacy.

Christian Bale plays Rick, a L.A. screenwriter who is in a spiritual crisis, he thinks his life is empty and he is faced with one dire circumstance after another but hanging out with girlfriends provides the perfect ingredient in dealing with the pain he is enduring. Rick's search for love takes six different women including a serene Indian model, Helen (Freida Pinto), a young married woman, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), a determined rebel, Della (Imogen Poots) and his physician ex-wife, Nancy (Cate Blanchett).

In typical Terrence Malick fashion, we also get a lot of walking around and pacing from Bale, that covers about 70% of this entire movie. I sometimes don't get Terrence Malick at all, is this his new filmmaking style now? If it is then Malick has finally lost his edge. The supporting cast also includes Brian Dennehy as Rick's father, Wes Bentley as Rick's brother, Teresa Palmer as a playful stripper and Antonio Banderas as a playboy Hollywood producer. Bale's barely non-speaking performance is not interesting and Cate Blanchett provides the only fine performance in "Knight of Cups" as Rick's ex-wife.

Will Malick find his grip again? I do hope so because like his two previous films "The Tree of Life" (which I think was really overrated) and "To The Wonder", "Knight of Cups" is all sound and imagery with no substance or story.