Review: A Hidden Life

by Cláudio Alves

Though I'm an atheist, I've long been fascinated with stories of faith and spirituality. When it comes to cinema, this is especially true. It's difficult to not be drawn to Bergman's reveries about a cruel God, Dreyer's religious ardor or Bresson's catholic severity. They move and engage, they challenge and inspire, even when the viewer doesn't believe in the cosmic orders they take for granted. Terrence Malick is a good name to add to that list. After all, the Philosophy professor turned filmmaker has dedicated much of his career to the transmutation of the soul into film. He creates spiritual odysseys out of light and color, intuitive editing and ephemerous scripts, star-studded casts and beautiful cinematography.

His style is so specific it's become prone to parody and his self-important themes can feel alienating. A Hidden Life exemplifies all of this to the extreme and, in some ways, it seems to announce itself as the ultimate Terrence Malick project…

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Cannes winds down. What's winning the Palme?

by Nathaniel R

Margot Robbie at Cannes for "Once Upon a Time in..."There are 21 titles competing for the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year. We've already talked about seven titles. Pedro Almodovar's Pain & Glory (Spain) is a potential prize winner (and a legit Oscar hopeful) and Mati Diop's Atlantique (France/Senegal), and Celine Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire (France) could be the key films in ensuring prizes to female directors (something Cannes has historically been bad at) since they were both extremely well-received.

In addition to those three potential Palme d'Or or Best Director winners (Cannes most important prizes), Ladj Ly's contemporary French drama Les Misérables and Kleber Mendonça Filho's Brazilian oddity Bacurau are also threats for jury love.  Diao Yinan's The Wild Goose Lake and Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die got decent notices but we don't expect prizes there.  

With Cannes ending this weekend we've run out of time so here are quick notes on responses to the other 14 Competition titles and our predictions after the jump...

COMPETITION TITLES

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Posterized: Terrence Malick on his 75th Birthday and his new film "Radegund"

We did this Posterized episode five years back but who would have thought that Terrence Malick of all people would need regular "updates" in filmography respective. Until this decade, Malick was like a ghost of the cinema, or perhaps more appropriately the Brigadoon of auteurs, emerging from the ether after long intervals only to vanish again just as quickly. But he's been working non-stop this decade so time's have changed.

To date Malick has made nine films with a tenth nearing completion. The posters and a still from his next project after the jump. How many have you seen? 

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Review: Song to Song

By Eric Blume

It’s difficult to review Song to Song, the latest film from Terrence Malick, because based on the standards of cinema (plot, characters, structure, acting, etc.), it’s a pretty terrible movie.  But with this film, Malick continues his journey to discover some sort of new cinematic language and style that has a weird beauty all its own.

The story, such as it is, revolves around three people in the music business (played by Michael Fassbender, Rooney Mara, and Ryan Gosling).  They go in and out of relationships with each other and a few other folks (notably Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett, and Bond girl Berenice Marlohe).  Malick gives you no real sense of time, so it’s never 100% clear what happens when exactly.  But there are many, many scenes with those five people running their hands over each others’ bodies while voiceover proclaims banalities about sex and connection...   

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Thoughts I Had... the "Song to Song" Poster

Chris here, with a look at the next Terrence Malick flick. Last his other films of the past decade, this year's Song to Song has been long promised and long in the can, and is suposedly related to last year's Knight of Cups (both of which shot back-to-back). This Austin rock and roll based film is another starry dive we know little about - however this time we'll find out soon when it debuts next month at SXSW Fest and releases in the following weeks. The trailer will be here soon, but we now have a vibrant poster to ruminate over. Some thoughts...

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