Director: Terrence Malick
Year Released: 2017
Rating: 1.0
Oh Lord, Malick is still in Godard Mode: two music producers (Ryan Gosling and Michael Fassbender) have feelings for flaky Faye (Rooney Mara) but she leaves both of them for the 'company' of Zoey (Bérénice Marlohe) ... and every once in a while a rock star is dragged out (Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Johnny Rotten) to offer some anecdote. Like Knight of Cups, it's loosely built from fragments and banalities ("I played with the flame of life") and contains undeveloped 'characters' and situations - his stand-ins start talking but then the movie drifts off to somewhere else like it forgot to take its Adderall: the result isn't meditative or thought-provoking, it's irritating. It's fine to want to experiment with cinematic form, but this takes few risks (it doesn't help that there are plenty of A-listers in there as a distraction) and is unrewarding: at least the great Emmanuel Lubezki is there to capture the beauty of Austin, Texas (although the man could make a compost heap look magical).
