Knight of Cups

Rick (Christian Bale) is a successful movie screenwriter in Hollywood. He goes out with free-spirited Della (Imogen Poots). He goes to a tarot card reading. Barry (Wes Bentley) is his brother and Joseph (Brian Dennehy) is his father. Nancy (Cate Blanchett) is his ex-wife. Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) is another woman from his past. Tonio (Antonio Banderas) is a womanizer. Helen (Freida Pinto) is a model. Karen (Teresa Palmer) is a stripper. Fr. Zeitlinger (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is a priest. Rick moves through L.A., Vegas, and other places as he searches for meaning with various loves and hookers.

The acting is improvisational. The movie moves through L.A. and this world in a dreamlike fashion. Rick doesn't say much. The camera moves through his world like a spirit observing his life. In a way, it's a very fitting vision of LaLaLand. It reminds me of an IMAX movie I saw back in the 80's with disconnected action vignettes in Canada. It was disembodying but fascinating... for about thirty minutes. Luckily, that's how long that IMAX movie was. In this case, this movie lasts for two hours. One does check out sooner or later. I try to stay with it but it does get away from me a couple of times.

Let's get one thing straight; Terrence Malick's films aren't exactly everyone's cup of tea. They're arguably the most unconventionally crafted movies from a well renowned director out there. Audiences normally criticize him for being highly pretentious and having no meaning in his work. But for some, his films represent everything we love about the artistic medium of motion pictures. With his latest offering, "Knight of Cups", Christian Bale stars as a screenwriter eager to explore his seedy persona in the dreamlike whereabouts of LA.

The film swoons along with a plethora of illusory montages, with Bale being Malick's primary focus as he trudges through the streets of downtown L.A., bizarre nightclubs swarming with vibrant dancers, house parties exclusively for the rich and meditative walks through the desolate wastelands of the Las Vegas desert. For the majority of the film he cuts a forlorn figure, basically looking to find some sort of significance of his life and finding the answer to faith. And in typical Malick fashion, none of what we see on screen is straightforward and we're left to determine our own meaning on the gorgeously composed images. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki once again has a vice like grip on how to bring an ethereal visual lyricism to surroundings.

Malick is one the very few directors who really embraces the beauty of artistic filmmaking. They may not follow a clear cut narrative, but there's no doubting that there's an alluring poetic rhythm that's present in his films. The key is for the viewer to figure out what Malick is attempting to portray. And even if you can't, just go along for the experience. Simply put, if you enjoy his films, you'll most likely find some sort of reward with this.

more clueless, going-nowhere pretentious. Trying so hard to find some unnecessary answers with a film to play out meaninglessly by a guy who miraculously relocated or misplaced himself in lot of big-deal events or scenes, either looking up to the sky or jumped off from a pier into the sea for no obvious purpose but spur-of-the-moment childish behaviors, or entangled himself with some females in close contact, flesh against flesh, intimate but without profound romantic feelings at all, or woken by a sudden earthquake, moronically and aimlessly roamed around inside his room with bare feet littered with shattered glass, then when the aftershock tremors hit again, escaped downstairs, still without shoes, looked up to the sky, saw chopper passing, sirens....on and on, situated himself in desert, movie shooting locations, swimming pool, bed for no purpose. The old voice narration....then with some white hair guys mingled among younger ones....on and on, without any meaningful purpose. lot of wide angled nice scenes, sunsets.

The whole movie failed to provide the viewers with any obvious intention but hollow camera works. Trying so hard to look deep but ended up with a big NADA! A pathetic copycat tried so hard to look like the heir of Fellini and his 8 1/2 film but failed miserably except in colors and wide-angle lens. A total clueless waste of resources and viewers' time and eyesight.

As we grow more and more tired of dull as dishwater, predictable, structure obsessed nonsense, we come to love films that want to use the medium to take us on a trip. I see nothing wrong with enjoying beautiful imagery, stunning music and a bit of emotional self analysis for a couple of hours. Or would you rather the story by numbers of say, Joy? I may not have loved this as much as Thin Red Line, or Tree of Life, But am I happy to spend two hours with Mr. M? Indeed I am. Anyone who has led anything verging on an interesting life will have plenty to ponder as this washes over them. This was like meditating. It's freeing to let a sense of the story wash over you without having some contrived plot shoved down your throat. I let the cinema invigorated and cleansed.

Knight of Cups (2015)

** (out of 4)

Terrance Malick's latest comes as a major disappointment as it centers on a screenwriter (Christian Bale) trying to cope with his life, his brothers suicide and trying to make sense of the various women in his life.

KNIGHT OF CUPS got released to mixed reviews and it ended up crashing at the box office, which is really understandable. I'm not going to say I enjoyed this movie because I really didn't but at the same time I can understand why some might see this and call it one of the best films of the year. As with THE TREE OF LIFE, this film is certainly going to leave viewers with mixed reactions but I found that film to be a masterpiece whereas this one is a blurred mess.

I will start off talking about the one great thing and that's the cinematography. This is certainly one of the greatest looking pictures of the year and Emmanuel Lubezki deserves a lot of credit for what he was able to do. The cinematography is so great that it actually upsets you that there wasn't more to the film. There's no question that the look of the movie is something brilliant and it comes across as a beautiful visual trip. It certainly adds an atmosphere to the movie and there's no question that it's the best thing about the picture.

With that said, everything else is pretty much a mess. The determining factor on your reaction to the movie will be your feelings towards the lead character. He's pretty much walking around in a daze of depression, thought or perhaps both. I never cared about the character or his problems so I got rather bored very early on. The majority of the movie has him banging hot ladies and then walking around feeling sad. Now I'm sure fans of the film will read a lot more into it and say I missed the point and perhaps I did. Or perhaps they're making it seem like there are things in the film that aren't really there.

KNIGHT OF CUPS isn't a film that's going to appeal to very many but even Malick fans are going to be divided with it. You've got a terrific cast include Bale, Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett, Brian Dennehy, Frieda Pinto and Antonio Banderas but none of them are really given a chance to act as they're all sucked up by the visual grace that the director was going for.