On a single, devotedly attentive viewing, I couldn't grok the logic of these headings beyond the lamely prosaic.

| Sep 28, 2017

I just need a break from Malick.

| Original Score: D | Mar 21, 2017

A superlative triumph that transcends any rational critical analysis I could ever have hoped to throw its way.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 15, 2016

More of the same from Malick, but as thin as it is, this is a trick that still hasn't run its course.

| Original Score: B | May 26, 2016

Knight of Cups is not without moments of poetry however: an underwater shot of dogs in a swimming pool, chasing elusive tennis balls, is as effective a metaphor for Hollywood as the rest of the picture put together.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 8, 2016

This mess of tracking shots of deserts, roads and rotating love interests stubbornly refuses to coalesce into anything resembling a narrative film.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 7, 2016

Whatever Muse drives Malick, whose best work feels both found - in the sense of discovered in the shoot and edit - and profound, he could be accused of cheating on her in Knight of Cups, leapfrogging between unsatisfactory short-term conquests.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 5, 2016

It's Terrence frickin' Malick... Stand up and pay attention.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 3, 2016

For a director who's tackled big themes so often, Malick finds little worthy of his gifts in the field of male solipsism.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 28, 2016

There's nothing quite like a Malick movie. But once viewers have contemplated the mysteries of the universe itself, perhaps anything else will feel like a step down.

| Mar 30, 2016

This is all simply Malick being Malick - you're either on his wavelength or you're not.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 18, 2016

Virtually every scene is delivered through a gauzy cinematic curtain that obscures rather than elucidates, and we never come close to penetrating the angst-filled veneer of the protagonist.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 17, 2016

There's no denying the poetry at work in his film, but so much of it is inchoate and fundamentally sexualized that it becomes more of a turn-off than a turn-on. Malick's Cups is ultimately half-full.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 17, 2016

Malick captures fleeting moments and ethereal visions and lets them swirl alongside the remnants of a shredded script like confetti in a vacuum.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 16, 2016

Malick has moved from self-discovery to self-affirmation; he knows exactly what he's looking for, and Knight of Cups, for all its splendor, made me wish that he could take a swig and forget.

| Mar 11, 2016

Taken as a straightforward movie, "Knight of Cups" is an indecipherable mess. Taken as a piece of nonlinear visual poetry, "Knight of Cups" is still an indecipherable mess.

| Original Score: D+ | Mar 11, 2016

Sitting in the theater, watching Knight of Cups, you hear an incredible amount of thought-balloon babble, but you don't hear anything approaching the sublime.

| Mar 11, 2016

The inwardness also has the happy effect of making the film's physical settings - obscene palazzos, gray temples of commerce, Vegas casinos, desert wastes, neon clubs, and various and sundry bodies of water - serve as interior landscapes.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 10, 2016

Terrence Malick at his worst-tossing a bunch of stars into an ill-defined story.

| Mar 10, 2016

A ponderous affair, never taking 30 seconds to make a point when four minutes is available.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 10, 2016