"Knight of Cups" Review

Terrence Malick's long-gestating feature, Knight of Cups, has finally been released theatrically in the United States. Though nobody can ever fault the visual splendor of Malick's work, some of his late stuff can be hit-or-miss from a narrative standpoint. That's essentially the case here. 3-time Oscar winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki shoots the hell out of this thing, but Malick's script makes it unclear exactly how our protagonist evolves or the precise message we're supposed to take away from his journey.

The film chronicles a period of several years in the life of a Hollywood screenwriter (Christian Bale) as he undergoes an existential crisis alongside his decrepit father (Brian Dennehy), deadbeat brother (Wes Bentley) and six different women. With abundant voiceover and striking visual language, Knight of Cups is likely as close as we'll ever get to Malick's 8 1/2.

That's not a bad thing, per se. Malick is arguably as distinctive a cinematic voice as America has today, but patrons unversed in his style may find themselves in too far over their heads to make sense of what he's trying to say here. For those willing to let visual poetry wash over them, however, Knight of Cups offers a veritable Roman bath of experimental imagery wrapped inside a non-linear dramatic structure. For this reviewer, Knight of Cups falls somewhere in the middle. Malick's storytelling style is hard not to admire, especially in today's corporate blockbuster culture. But it's equally difficult to reconcile that the emotions we're supposed to feel as an audience go largely unrewarded as Rick (Bale) careens across L.A. from one adventure to another. In the end, he still feels like the same disconnected prick he was at the beginning. Should we really buy the idea that he's ready to start his life over? Is that not what he's been trying and failing to do for the entire film? Perhaps Malick's real message is the folly in all of this and, in turn, offers a critique of the Hollywood "reboot" itself in the sense that nothing really changes no matter how many times you start over. After all, at one point Rick is tapped to write a screenplay for "the next big Hollywood smash." Can it really be as cynical as all that?


B-

"Hail, Caesar!" Review

At one point in the Coen Brothers' new film, studio production chief Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) gathers a boardroom full of clergymen and heralds the fictional Hail, Caesar! as "a prestige picture featuring one of the biggest stars in the world." The Coen's Hail, Caesar!, despite also featuring one of the biggest stars in the world - George Clooney, falls far short of being a "prestige picture" in its own right. The film really amounts to nothing more than incomplete character arcs and a series of only marginally funny excuses to feature stars like Scarlett Johansson, Jonah Hill, and Frances McDormand.

The story follows Mannix as he juggles production duties on several films shooting on his Capitol Pictures backlot. When the star of his biggest blockbuster is kidnapped, Mannix tries to contain the situation by quietly enlisting the help of some of the studio's other contracted actors to find out what happened.

The marketing made this out to be a classic Coen caper more in line with The Big Lebowski than middle-of-the-road fare like Burn After Reading. Though Hail, Caesar! features many classic hallmarks of the Coens' work, including strong neo-noir elements and undertones of political paranoia, the simple narrative becomes lost in the tangled web it tries to weave. As a result, the whole endeavor ends up feeling loosely plotted and unfocused. An unnecessary subplot with Mannix fielding a job offer from Boeing is meant to add another dimension to the story (the threat of obsolescence) but instead leads the film to meander in more places than it needs to.

All the same, Hail, Caesar! taught me a valuable lesson that I should've learned by now - when it comes to the Coen Brothers, throw all expectations and pretensions out the window. I would like to see the film at least one more time to pick up any nuances I may have missed.

 For all its narrative flaws, Hail, Caesar! features lush production design that almost perfectly captures the spirit of "Old Hollywood." Film buffs will also love the allusions to the works and personas of industry legends such as William Wyler, Cecil B. DeMille, Gene Kelly, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Esther Williams.

C+