KNIGHT OF CUPS (2016)

Rated: R

STARS: Christian Bale, Brian Dehnehy, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Freida Pinto, Teresa Palmer, Isabel Lucas
DIRECTOR: Terrence Malick
GENRE: Drama/Romance


To frame it in language that my uncle Lemuel back in Nebraska would find user friendly: Terence Malick makes weird movies that some consider to be absolutely brilliant, while others just shake their heads and say:  Shit...I'll never get  those two hours back!

Case in point: Tree Of Life.  It was lauded as a masterpiece by many and was nominated for three Academy Awards. I found it to be disjointed and tedious. However, if I were to view it a second time, I might get a better grasp on what Mr. Malick was trying to convey. The same can probably be said for his latest offering, Knight Of Cups.

The "plot" is as follows. Rick (Christian Bale) is a Hollywood writer who drifts in and out of reverie with six pivotal women in his life--played by Imogeen Poots, Cate Blanchett, Freida Pinto, Natalie Portman, Teresa Palmer, Isabel Lucas, and Brian Dennehy. WHOOPS...Dennehy plays his father...heh heh...with whom Rick has flashback encounters designed to give us an inkling of past tragedies.

The characters in Knight Of Cups speak solely through their own interior monologue--in other words, they are talking to themselves. The action moves from one dreamlike sequence to another, through the kaleidoscopic cityscapes and the "beautiful people" of L.A. and Las Vegas--to the beach, to the bedroom, to the boredom (my own).Through all of this cinematically pretty navel-gazing, Christian Bale, as Rick, is trying to figure out who he is...or what his life is all about...or maybe what he is doing in this film in the first place.

It's a lot of weirdness, Uncle Lemuel (which I'm not averse to), but after awhile it gets to be too much of the SAME KIND of weirdness--like watching Freddy Krueger come back to life every damn time they kill him, or listening to Marco Rubio up on the debate stage!

Maybe Malick is making a statement about the dreamlike nature of life. That I can grasp. You sit in your living room gazing at a chair where somebody sat weeks, or months, or years ago and you wonder...were they ever really there?

I didn't love Knight Of Cups. I didn't exactly hate it (it's smattered with " T " and "A"). But it's true. I'll never get those two hours back.

Grade: C


JILL'S TAKE

I suppose after seeing Remember, a movie I felt was one of the best I'd ever seen, it's only fitting that the next one should be – bar none -- worst movie I've ever seen! I have very little patience with stories that have no discernible story. Obviously the producers of this turkey knew what they were dealing with and decided (after seeing the final cut and tearing their hair out) to make the trailer look as if it was a triangle love story between Bale, Blanchett and Portman. That's what I thought I was going to see!

Instead I was subjected to long silences, Tarot card headings, self-indulgent soliloquies and a film that seemed to go on forever. The only people I think might get something out of this meandering mishmosh are the 420 crowd. Warning: Take a BIG toke before entering the theater...

Grade: D ----

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER--2010

Rated: R

Stars: Gemma Jones, Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Antonio Banderas, Lucy Punch, Freida Pinto

Director: Woody Allen

Genre: Drama/comedy

There are no single, lonely people at the beginning of Woody Allen's You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger-- just married and lonely people--ready and ripe to fall under someone else's spell and rekindle the fire of romance that all too quickly peters out in the day to day reality of monogamous "bliss."

Helena (Gemma Jones) is a ditzy old gal who has been divorced by Alfie, (Anthony Hopkins) and now she's seeing a "fortune teller" who tells her just what she wants to hear. Alfie falls for a young opportunistic prostitute named Charmaine, (Lucy Punch) who likes the finer things in life that he can provide her--as long as his money holds out! Alfie and Helena's daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) is married to once promising--but now frustrated--writer Roy, (Josh Brolin) who has an eye for the exotic young guitar player in the window across the way, Dia (Freida Pinto from Slumdog Millionaire). Sally, who works at a high-profile art gallery, develops a thing for her boss, Greg (Antonio Banderas).

But are they all delusional?

In You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, Woody Allen is exploring the idea of faith, or more accurately, the tendency that many of us have to want to believe in something--often another person--to the point where we are willing to believe only what we want to believe, and don't confuse us with the facts.

Woody's endearing (at least to me) brand of cynicism tinged with irony is all over this one--his fourth in a row set in London--but the sense that he is literally speaking through his characters, so apparent in some previous films, (I could close my eyes and hear his voice, even through his female characters, which was freaky) isn't present here--perhaps refreshingly so.

Quite an impressive cast he's assembled--and Gemma Jones is a hoot as Helena, who goes on ad nauseam about reincarnation as if she'd never heard of the concept before... happy as a clam because her psychic has told her she has lived before and will live again. (Not everyone--the Buddhists for example--are pleased about that wheel turning round and round and going back, Jack, and doing it again!)

But it's Lucy Punch as Charmaine--the happy hooker supposedly gone straight who is now Alfie's wife-- still playing him for all he's worth while maintaining an air of bewildered innocence, even when he catches her in the act with some young buck, who upstages them all.

Anthony Hopkins, who I never thought was very scary as Hannibal Lecter, is more believably cast as a guy who's extending his mid-life crisis--and all the delusional flamboyance that goes along with that-- into his golden years.

And there's a delicious twist at the end of You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger that reinforces Woody Allen's philosophical bent that oft-times you can't win for losing.

GRADE: B