Screening Room: ‘Knight of Cups’

On March 9, 2016March 8, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

In the newest Terrence Malick indie, Christian Bale is a screenwriter undergoing a romantically attractive existential crisis amidst the Hollywood demimonde.

Knight of Cups is playing now. My review is at PopMatters:

Like the deck of tarot cards that provides its narrative spine, Knight of Cups is shuffled up and dealt out with a witchy randomness. Making a mockery of Syd Field’s rules of screenwriting (where’s the inciting incident?), the film offers stories of sprawling entropy. Whether that’s enough to sustain an entire movie will be decided by the viewer’s appetite for moony maundering in gorgeous settings…

The trailer is here:

Now Playing: ‘Ain’t Them Bodies Saints’

On August 17, 2013August 15, 2013 By chrisbarsantiIn Film - New4 Comments

Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck fiercely in love in 'Ain't Them Bodies Saints'. — Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck fiercely in love in ‘Ain’t Them Bodies Saints’.

The award for this year’s least likely to be remembered movie title goes to David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, a Terence Malick-inflected story of a young Texas couple (Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara) separated by prison after a crime spree. Keith Carradine and Ben Foster also star in this gorgeously photographed but rambling film.

My review ran in Film Racket:

Sunsets flood David Lowery’s soulful robber-on-the-run story, lens-flaring the screen and painting everything in a rustic ochre patina. It’s beautiful but gets in the way, as though distracting writer/director Lowery from getting to the business at hand. The cinematography is by Bradford Young (Pariah), whose patient lens captures the dusky halo of tree-shaded Texas streets and grassy fields under a humbling sky. What it can’t do is transform Lowery’s stretched-out short of a piece into a full-fledged story…

Here’s the trailer:

New in Theaters: ‘To the Wonder’

On April 11, 2013April 8, 2013 By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

to_the_wonder1 — Olga Kurylenko and Ben Affleck grin and bear it

When Terence Malick visited The Tree of Life on the world, it was something of a revelation. Whether viewers found it masterful and meaningful or grandiose and just plain silly, it left an impression. His newest, To the Wonder—in which Ben Affleck wanders around France and Oklahoma looking almost as lost as his female co-stars—draws from the same themes and stylistic template but to much lesser effect.