People either love Terrence Malick or they think he's a total hack... Either way, his films will always garner plenty of attention because there really is nothing else quite like them. His newest film, Knight of Cups, continues the ethereal aesthetics, nonlinear storylines, and barely defined characters prevalent in his earlier works (To the Wonder, The Tree of Life, and The Thin Red Line to mention a few). Also, like with all of his films, dialogue and story are not nearly as important as the film's environment and mood created by Malick and frequent collaborator (and three-peat Oscar winner) Emmanuel Lubezki.
This is offically Malick's worst reviewed film and it performed disappointedly at the box office, but it's better than that! First off, if you've never seen a Malick film, this is a great one to start with since it focuses on a familiar and recognizable world (or at least one many people are fascinated by). The film stars Christian Bale as a struggling Hollywood screenwriter who uses his writer's block as an excuse to party/hook up with multiple women, including Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, and Imogen Poots. Oh, and he has a lot of daddy issues... So, yeah, it certainly doesn't read as anything revolutionary or anything, and it by no means is, but Malick sure knows how to create something gorgeous and cinematic! The vapidness of his directorial style actually works really well within the wasteland that is Hollywood, even if it does next to nothing to establish his characters (but, let's be real, who sees a Malick movie for the characters???).
Bigger themes can be found if you choose to dig deeper: success often comes with a price; dysfunctional families help to form creative, but equally dysfunctional, individuals; the difficulties one faces in the attempt to "have it all," both professionally and personally, is often overwhelming and occasionally debilitating. It's definitely not Malick's best (I'm partial to The Tree of Life and Badlands), but it's still much more interesting than pretty much everything else out there right now.
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