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Knight of Cups

2015

Terrence Malick

Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Brian Dennehy ...

5.6

2,205

Drama. Romance In this lyrical character study, a Hollywood screenwriter (Christian Bale) wanders around Los Angeles and Las Vegas while reflecting on his life of excess and connection to the natural world. At the same time, he struggles to bond with his brother and father, and has a series of love affairs with the women who drift in and out of his life.

	Author	Review
United Kingdom	Geoffrey Macnab The Independent	"Knight of Cups is best taken as an experimental mood piece, a cinematic meditation of love, loss and identity. As a feature film with an A-list cast, it is absurdly hermetic: a mystery without anything approaching a key. (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of five)"	NEU
United States	Robert Abele The Wrap	"By the time you've seen the fifth beautiful, lithe woman in flowing fabrics spinning around Bale, Knight of Cups starts to read more as a fleeting fetish epic than a powerful meditation"	NEG
United States	Todd McCarthy The Hollywood Reporter	"A resolutely poetic and impressionist film about creative paralysis (...) it doesn't build or pay off with what it seems designed to do, which is to provide either a dramatic or philosophical apotheosis."	NEU
United Kingdom	Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"Malick has frankly declined. There are moments of visual brilliance here, moments of reverence and even grandeur (...) But his style is stagnating into mannerism, cliche and self-parody (...) Rating: ★★ (out of five)"	NEG
United States	Jessica Kiang IndieWire	"Those of us who had hoped that "Knight of Cups" might see Malick changing tack a bit after the progressive steps toward a far-off horizon that were 'The Tree of Life' (...) are bound for disappointment, as his new film finds him more abstruse than ever"	NEU
United States	Justin Chang Variety	"There’s no denying this star-studded, never-a-dull-moment cinematic oddity represents another flawed but fascinating reframing of man’s place in the modern world."	NEU
United States	Rex Reed The New York Observer	With the corpse of a nightmare called Knight of Cups, I have finally given up on Terrence Malick. This dog of a film is as riveting and fascinating as a walk-in bathtub (...) Rating: 0 (out of four)"	NEG
United Kingdom	Mark Adams Screendaily	"A bold and ambitious film – some may say pretentious – packed with striking visual moments"	POS

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