A q & a transcript between Screen Junkies‘ Fred Topol and the relentlessly feisty director Uwe Boll was posted four days ago (i.e., Thursday, 6.30). Early on Topol mentioned Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life; Boll said he hates it and explained his thinking.

Boll: “I totally hated that movie because I feel as a filmmaker that besides the fact that Terrence Malick did some great visuals on some movies, also on The New World, like the opening of that movie was really good but then he completely lost it. I think The Tree of Life is a piece of shit. Totally, and I think Sean Penn is ridiculous in it, like walking around in the elevator. It’s nothing.

“This is the thing. It’s so overrated because it’s Terrence Malick. Same as Lars von Trier‘s movies. I like Breaking the Waves. After that [his output] was all crap. The thing is, he gets all the Hollywood stars. ‘Oh, I want to work with him’ and they don’t know what kind of [a] retard he is. I think the same with Terrence Malick. I think Terrence Malick is one of the overrated directors of all time.”

Topol: “Is that just because it doesn’t have a story and it’s more impressionistic?”

Boll: “Absolutely. You have to tell a story that you get a connection to something. When he starts doing after 25 minutes a National Geographic break where you see volcanoes and planets coming together. Then his dinosaur episode with Jurassic Park. You think well, what’s going on with him? What is wrong with the guy?

“I was not engaged [enough] to keep watching. If I would have known how this ends, I would have walked out. But I watched the whole movie because I wanted to see how it ends also. The end was I think the most pathetic thing, when they’re all at the beach hugging each other. It was fucking disastrous. It was a complete disaster and it shows also that a lot of stars have no taste. Like Sean Penn, Brad Pitt has no taste what a good movie is. They trusted the director but you have to have your own brain.

“I’m very mad right now because I want to do a bail-out movie about the financial crisis where a guy is losing everything and then he starts killing the investment bankers. I did various offers to stars and they passed on it. So CAA gave it a good reader’s review, so they’re supporting us but William Morris gave it a bad reader review.

“Like I also watch Matt Damon in The Adjustment Bureau, also a piece-of-shit movie. It was a disaster. It was a complete disaster and a guy like Matt Damon should feel that, that this story is nothing. It’s like a mini-Matrix in the normal world but it makes no sense because that agency who’s changing it all, who is that? What was the plan of these guys? Who pays them? It’s totally absurd because that agency is doing everything but not doing anything basically. Also it’s a very flat movie and I think with The Tree of Life, this was for me an embarrassment and it gets hyped up because of Terrence Malick and I didn’t like it.

Topol: “Well, I knew from his other movies that he was experimental.”

Boll: “Right, because his other movies you get the feeling he tries to tell a story and cannot do it. But this was poor experimental. You cannot tell me you were not bored to death while you watched The Tree of Life.”