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Thread: Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick)

  1. #1

    Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick)

    Last edited by Philip J. Fry; 01-12-2016 at 11:22 AM.

  2. #2
    Moderator TGM's Avatar
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    Is this even still considered 2015, or wasn't it pushed to 2016?

  3. #3
    Screenwriter Lazlo's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting TGM (view post)
    Is this even still considered 2015, or wasn't it pushed to 2016?
    It's a 2016 US release. Either it was seen at a festival or it was pirated.
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  4. #4
    I'm not fond of the title.

  5. #5
    White Tiger Field Stay Puft's Avatar
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    Speaking of which, I guess we need a 2016 subforum...
    Giving up in 2020. Who cares.

    maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore (Sky Hopinka) ***½
    Without Remorse (Stefano Sollima) *½
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    Night Hunter (David Raymond) *

  6. #6
    Scott of the Antarctic Milky Joe's Avatar
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    This looks insufferable.
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  7. #7
    In the belly of a whale Henry Gale's Avatar
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    Soooooo I do like this (despite how everything I'm about to say might sound), but I do think my degree of affection for it comes down to just how much I love Malick's films and his overall sensibilities in general. Meaning here, him essentially doing what you expect him to at this point in his career is something I still see as a worthwhile and even compelling exercise that stands as important creative output to the medium in a bigger sense than just his filmography in my eyes, even if I think only existing fans of his would enjoy it.

    Dumb tangent, not actual spoiler, but for space reasons: [
    ]

    Bottom line, it's easily his weakest, but that doesn't mean I view it as a useless part of his growing body of his work. He might just need to broaden his visual vocabulary, lose some fat, speak more succinctly and to the point, and get rid of whatever gizzard in him lets him digest and re-digest this many shots of looking up at planes and people in pools / beaches on his plate to not only consume himself, but serve to us as well. (At about the halfway point, I genuinely thought it should've been titled "Pools and Planes".. And I felt oddly better thinking of it called that when it all kept happening.)

    So like I implied before, if he were a comedian, and this was his new tour and eventual special, this would be considered routine schtick, with him reliably going through the motions, keeping his point of view unflinchingly intact, only incorporating the changing world around him to derive new material from. But since he's also one of the best to ever do it, that's not an inherently bad thing, just disappointing considering how much I do love his Tree Of Life / To The Wonder, fragmented exhibit, Lubezki-assisted style. It's just that this doesn't feel like an evolution or expansion on those what we saw and heard in those two films, just more of the same from a different angle (through the eyes of an intentionally disengaged protagonist, to spare). It feels oddly minor and small in its scope even when one of its first shots is a stunning view of the Aurora Borealis from space.

    Even when it feels like the combined experiences of a life perfectly captured and whittled down to a gorgeous 2-hour trip into that person's mind, it lacks a sense of actual intimacy and emotional connection. Yet in its most inspired stretches, it's mesmerizing, if still carrying that lingering emptiness, and that seems okay for a bit, since we're following a knowingly empty character try to find meanings with the different stale feelings and passing entities in his life (I use that word since there aren't people or characters here as much as impressions and portraits of human beings living in his memories). But then it kind of just feels as if it spins his wheels with the same ideas until it runs out of different ways to put them. It's like a carousel, it's lovely, then mundane, but then(!) you see something/someone you may love come back around, before the same sequence happens again. And again. And then once the awe wears off you realize you're just watching strangers riding plastic horses in a circle.

    At one point a character tells Bale (but in disembodied voice-over, so it might as well be to us), "Dreams are nice, but you can't live in them" - except when I'm watching a Malick's film, I feel like I am. It's just a shame that this one, for the first time, like most real-life dreams, is finding a way to dissolve from my mind despite all the intangible feelings I may have had while I was in it.
    Last edited by Henry Gale; 01-13-2016 at 02:39 AM.
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  8. #8
    In the belly of a whale Henry Gale's Avatar
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    It does have an barrage of insane cameos and a Special Thanks to Diplo in the credits. So either way you kinda can't not watch it.
    Last 11 things I really enjoyed:

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    What's Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972)
    Diva (Beineix, 1981)
    Delicatessen (Caro/Jeunet, 1991)
    The Hunger (Scott, 1983)
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    Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)

  9. #9
    Quote Quoting Henry Gale (view post)
    It does have an barrage of insane cameos and a Special Thanks to Diplo in the credits. So either way you kinda can't not watch it.
    I've managed to not watch To the Wonder so far, so I think I'm up to the task on this one too.
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  10. #10
    Quote Quoting Stay Puft (view post)
    Speaking of which, I guess we need a 2016 subforum...
    I was about to do one, then I took an arrow to the knee.
    Last edited by Philip J. Fry; 01-13-2016 at 09:05 AM.

  11. #11
    White Tiger Field Stay Puft's Avatar
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    Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick)

    .....
    Last edited by Stay Puft; 04-12-2016 at 06:43 PM.
    Giving up in 2020. Who cares.

    maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore (Sky Hopinka) ***½
    Without Remorse (Stefano Sollima) *½
    The Marksman (Robert Lorenz) **
    Beckett (Ferdinando Cito Filomarino) *½
    Night Hunter (David Raymond) *

  12. #12
    White Tiger Field Stay Puft's Avatar
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    Probably too long for its own good. Like the recent Joe, I love the concept of this one more than the final product. But the final product is still pretty damn good.

    There is some extraordinary filmmaking here. I love the sound editing (and overall editing), the way Malick builds characters and scenes and impressions out of fragments and different pieces, with dialogue often fading in and out in the middle of scenes (e.g. when Bale and Bentley are arguing with Dennehy on the roof), the usual voiceovers (Antonio Banderas in a Malick joint, this is what my life has been missing), background dialogue or other background noise (the Hollywood party scene is a good example of this, with its many textures), etc. Case in point: You don't actually see Bale speaking on screen until maybe a full third of the way into the film? And yet we do hear him speak throughout. The film develops a nice rhythm and I'd say for the first half especially I was thoroughly spellbound. It started to lose me somewhere around the Vegas segment, and even gets a little didactic. The film repeats itself (literally, in the voiceover, but also with e.g. one character in the Vegas segment who is basically a plot summary) and as I said, maybe should have been a couple segments shorter (I feel this would have worked better at 90 min maybe).

    I even had the same reaction as the ending of Cemetery of Splendour, i.e. it just sort of faded away without the usual overwhelming emotional impact I expect from a Malick (The Thin Red Line or The New World this is not). I'm also eager to revisit it, though, as I can see where some ambiguity could be read into the closing images, and my reaction may even be appropriate (or perhaps I was just too tired after its two hour runtime, I dunno). But for now, I'd rank this below the rest of the work produced during Malick's "busy" period.
    Last edited by Stay Puft; 03-29-2016 at 05:00 AM.
    Giving up in 2020. Who cares.

    maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore (Sky Hopinka) ***½
    Without Remorse (Stefano Sollima) *½
    The Marksman (Robert Lorenz) **
    Beckett (Ferdinando Cito Filomarino) *½
    Night Hunter (David Raymond) *

  13. #13
    Super Moderator dreamdead's Avatar
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    Malick's latest becomes a bit draining and repetitive in the Las Vegas segment, as Stay Puft notes. It works as a study in monotony, where Rick keeps succumbing to the same urges and failures, but that monotony does overtake an interesting first two "acts" (I'm aware that referring to classical film acts in this Malick film is wonderfully imprecise). Where it works are in some of the more understated elements, wordlessly comparing the passed out, desolate Hollywood dreamers that Rick hangs around with, against the LA homeless, equally strung out and unable to find their value.

    There's plenty of walking, planes, helicopters--movement without final destinations, and that motif feels clearly defined. The sound design in phenomenal. The cinematography is typically excellent and some of the art tricks in the first sequence (black and white doubled face, Xs on the broken wings) are new tricks that I'd like to see Malick continue to explore.

    Sarah noted that the structure of the film, beyond the Pilgrim's Progress and Tarot cards anchors on display, also works alongside T.S. Eliot's study in modernist alienation, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The wandering, inability to connect, and form all work towards that 1915 vision of fragmented self.

    If there's one weakness, it's that the Blanchett character doesn't gain much that isn't already in the trailer--her lingering affection for Rick seems to lack depth or reason given what's in the film.

    I can see returning to this later in the year, knowing its rhythms and seeing what else it reveals. If nothing else, it's more fascinating to think about than most of what's out in the theatres now.
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  14. #14
    In the belly of a whale Henry Gale's Avatar
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    Oh, can some sort of merging be done between this and the 2015 one here?

    Very good points here though.
    Last 11 things I really enjoyed:

    Speed Racer (Wachowski/Wachowski, 2008)
    Safe (Haynes, 1995)
    South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Parker, 1999)
    Beastie Boys Story (Jonze, 2020)
    Bad Trip (Sakurai, 2020)
    What's Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972)
    Diva (Beineix, 1981)
    Delicatessen (Caro/Jeunet, 1991)
    The Hunger (Scott, 1983)
    Pineapple Express (Green, 2008)
    Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)

  15. #15
    White Tiger Field Stay Puft's Avatar
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    Oh wow I even posted in the other thread. Ha. My bad.
    Giving up in 2020. Who cares.

    maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore (Sky Hopinka) ***½
    Without Remorse (Stefano Sollima) *½
    The Marksman (Robert Lorenz) **
    Beckett (Ferdinando Cito Filomarino) *½
    Night Hunter (David Raymond) *

  16. #16
    Super Moderator dreamdead's Avatar
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    Merged. The film's coming together a little more cleanly in my mind.

    The sound design here is indeed impeccable, and the way that Malick uses the St. Louis arch reminds me how much I miss geographic specificity in film, where everything is so generalized (aka Vancouverized) that any sort of specificity, however landmarked, is absent from the film.

    It would be interesting to study how he's become a more sensual filmmaker (the erotics of the body seems to have become especially relevant since The New World), and in that sense it's become more intriguing to see how women fit into that lens.
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  17. #17
    Evil mind, evil sword. Ivan Drago's Avatar
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    It's crazy how much better this is than To The Wonder. The visuals do get redundant after a while, but its very fast-paced with its editing, gorgeous to look at and adopts a stream-of-conscious style with its narrative. I enjoyed it immensely.
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