“Terrence Malick, who wrote, produced, directed, and spent a year editing BADLANDS, his first feature, is twenty-nine, the age that Godard was when he made BREATHLESS. But Godard liked his outlaw hero and identified with him, while Malick, in his gloss on Godard’s theme, shows no feelings. In BREATHLESS, Michel (Belmondo) and his Patricia (Jean Seberg) were affectless and disengaged – he about murder, she about betrayal – but we weren’t asked to be heartless toward them. If Michel’s view…

“Consciously sensitive movie-making is a sickly thing. ‘Stand By Me,’ Rob Reiner’s film taken from Stephen King’s autobiographical novella ‘The Body,’ is steeped in tenderness and understanding and nostalgia. It’s the sort of movie that you’re likely to see described as ‘a quiet little gem.’ It’s ersatz art. Seeing it is like watching an extended Christmas Special of ‘The Waltons’ or ‘Little House on the Prairie’—it makes you feel virtuous. (If there is any test that can be applied to…