Review of The New World (2005) by Lindsay W — 07 Aug 2009

While the visuals are certainly attractive, the long shots of trees and water, and the heavy segmentation of scenes, makes this come off like a bad music video. There's very limited dialogue, which isn't necessarily a bad thing except the sound editing was done so poorly everything sounds like a mumble, requiring me to put on subtitles.

Most of the speech in the film consists of long soliloquoys from the three main characters, which not only pointlessly drag out the film but also make the flow of time and events confused. It's a closer match to historical events then other films, but is still heavily fictionalized.

Christian Bale was a relief after the tedious segment with Colin Farrell, yet the ending was abrupt and awkward. If you like nature scenes, this is for you; otherwise it's a pointless exercise in film-making.