The Tree of Life

#1 in my ranking of Terrence Malick's films. The intensely personal The Tree of Life recounts a childhood much like one that Terrence Malick led. One of three brothers, one of whom died at nineteen, Malick was raised in Waco, Texas in the 1950s where his father was a geologist for an oil company and…

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The New World

#1 in my ranking of Terrence Malick's films. For about the last thirty minutes of Terrence Malick's The New World, I'm a mess. The emotional connection that Malick creates between me, the audience, and his characters is so complete that the final emotional motions that the princess Pocahontas goes through as she finishes out her…

Days of Heaven

#6 in my ranking of Terrence Malick's films. This is the first time I've seen Days of Heaven well. That is to say, the previous couple of times I've seen it was the old DVD from Paramount with washed out colors and cropped. The Blu-ray from Criterion is gorgeous though, and it really increased my…

Badlands

#3 in my ranking of Terrence Malick's films. I've often found it difficult to write about Terrence Malick films. I started my review of The Thin Red Line three times before I came across a way to break it down. Malick's films are almost experimental from beginning to end, relying on sight and sound in…

The Thin Red Line

Terrence Malick #1 in my ranking of Terrence Malick's films. Storytelling is a form of communication, and like any form of communication it has languages. Telling a story around a campfire uses its own vocabulary of sights and sounds to convey emotion. Books have their own. Movies have yet another. Yet, storytelling is such a…