Jul 5, 2015 Tree of Life is clearly great, although personally, I prefer Thin Red Line. that soundtrack>>
Jul 5, 2015 Thin Red Line is excellent (its up there with goodfellas and pulp fiction for best 90s film imo) and the themes of death and our mortality are really moving. But it didn't absolutely wreck me the way Tree of Life did; I left different from when I walked in.
Jul 5, 2015 a lot of people i respect (even in this thread, like @Swizz and @Twan) love it. i'm not going to go full shark-jumpy and say i "couldn't finish it", but it's always felt pretty sterile to me. it looks beautiful, but i find it hard to grab onto the emotional throughlines. i get what they are, i get what he's going for, but it's an exercise in cinemtaography to me, and i don't find it affecting in the slightest. in that way, i think it's very specific, very narrow, and just not for me. i wouldn't be comfortable criticizing it with any seriousness, but i wouldn't say i like it or think it's great.
Jul 6, 2015 That scene from The Thin Red Line with the injured soldier left out in the field and Sean Penn running out to get him is perfection. Reminds me of that famous William T. Sherman quote: "I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is h---."
Jul 6, 2015 Malick doesn't know how to make bad movies so those are obvs great as well. My ranking goes: The Tree of Life The Thin Red Line To the Wonder Days of Heaven Badlands The New World
Jul 6, 2015 Pretty tough, but I think this is my ranking above. 3-4 are swappable. edit: It's possible we're overrating TOL, imo. Badlands and Days of Heaven are, as we all should know, at the pinnacle of 70s cinema
Jul 6, 2015 Oh of course, love those films. Malick is my favorite filmmaker so I hold all of his films in high regard.
Jul 7, 2015 my ranking is the same as Vahns. top 4 are masterpieces. I watched badlands at a younger time, and it was my first malick, so i suppose it needs a rewatch.
