Popular reviews

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  Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★★ 11

  When aliens invade earth and unforeseeably exterminate our entire race in the passing of a millisecond with their incomprehensible bio-weaponry, the only human being that they're going to spare is Terrence Malick.

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 8

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  99

  As always, extended cut, although I should try to re-watch the First Cut or Theatrical cut to see if it tightens up the middle, which is probably the only issue I have with The New World. The final five minutes, a montage of the corporeal giving way to the spiritual, with souls departing, and bodies merging with nature, is an effortlessly transcendent moment. Malick makes it look easy, but the entire film carefully builds to the catharsis.

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 5

  99

  To say that The New World was a crossroad for Terrence Malick is to suggest that it was formed out of indecisiveness, and such a line of thinking is misguided, but it is his most immediately sinuous work; a landmark in wandering, meandering, losing its train of thought in the eyes of another. It's a nearly-flawless synthesis; nature and the confines of civilization - an early sprout of Malick's interest in primitive purity and ambiguous hustle and bustle within the modern - pushing and pulling on the same canvas for dominance. But it is romance which wins in the end, and the end is something elusive, relative in Malick's eye, but it is a victory nonetheless, not one which…

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  Review by Peter Labuza ★★★★★ 2

  "What else is life but being near you?"

  One of those times where you think "Damn it, why didn't I bring my notebook." So here's some discarded thoughts. This was my first Malick back in 2005 and it struck me back then as it strikes me now as monumental, much more than the visually ambitious but not as philosophically ambitious Tree of Life. Something of magisterial power being worked out here—a film that almost attempts to recognize the infinite ("There is no unreal," Smith tells us). It's also the film that I think best typifies what people think about when they think about Malick—The Thin Red Line is very much still a war picture with Malick's sensibilities, while this has…

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  Review by brendan o'hare ★★★★★

  It is so cool that Terrence Malick is real

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  Review by Stewie Griffin ★★★★½ 22

  a melancholy revery of a time when earth’s megacosm provided a spiritual sustenance that could not be replaced by religious or political orders. miraculously lyrical, greatly intelligent as a work of symphonic beauty, that seamlessly blends lavishly mounted wonders with subtle yet potent sentimental prowess, ‘The New World’ is more of an ethereal cinematic tone poem than a plot-driven story, and it carries the sense of discovery that comes with seeing an immensely layered work of art for the first time, a work that speaks personally to one’s heart and soul. 

  it defines true love as something more than desire, nostalgia, sexual chemistry. it boldly condones a higher love characterised by selflessness and fidelity. Malick, through terse and lustrous manners, forges…

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  Review by fran hoepfner ★★★★★ 2

  Horner score has me sweating

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  Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★★ 1

  Or: The Curious Case of Geometrical Juxtaposition

  First time seeing the Extended edition - it's easy for people to fault Malick's sincerity nowadays but it's hard for me to fault the sheer lack of cynicism: the very beautiful moments opening the film for example and the near tinges of a bridged cultural understanding, as well as Smith and Pocahontas's relationship touched me deeply; a rare earnesty in romanticism - I felt all my defences shattering, and free to let my guard down.

  Of course there's more to this one - Malick's most overtly political work? The shift to Britain at the end remains astonishing.

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  Review by Taylor Baker ★★★★★ 7

  Discussed HERE

  "There's something I know when I'm with you that I forget when I'm away. Tell me, my love. Did you wish for me to come back and live with you again?" -Captain Smith

  Almost 15 years ago this was my first Malick film. I must have been in my last year of middle school or thereabouts when this picture floored me and wracked my young mind with feeling I was unequipped to fully collate. I didn't know how to put it to words then and I scarcely can now. It echoed itself in a way I hadn't seen before in movies. It was poetic in it's rhythm but classicist in it's structure. It was a work of literature,…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★★

  "A land which had no end."

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  Review by Andrew Saladino ★★★★★ 5

  More and more, I think this is my favorite of Malick's films - every time I see it, I get swept up by it. It strikes the steadiest and surest of balances between the (relatively) tighter narratives of his earlier films and the abstracted impressionism that's dominated most of his films since. Follows the standard Malick story of a character longing to return to the eden of the past and their path towards acceptance and catharsis, but really completes and rounds it out with what's perhaps the clearest illustration from the whole of his filmography of the collision between the old pastoral world and the modern world of industry and order, which is center stage here rather than on the…

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★ 17

  "I have never truly been the man I seem to you to be."

  The New World is Pocahontas for grown-ups.

  What I love most about Terrence Malick—even more than his beautiful imagery and visual compositions—is his editing. His unconventional Kuleshov-inspired technique in Days of Heaven had me yearning for my film school days, and with The New World he continues to impress.

  Malick is notoriously meticulous with his editing, often recutting his films right up to their release, and this is no exception. A 150-minute cut was shown early in order for the film to quality for Oscar contention, but by the time it received a wide, theatrical release it had been trimmed down to 135 minutes. When the film…