Herewith are four reviews of four Terrence Malick films that opened between 2012 and 2019 — To The Wonder, Knight of Cups, Song to Song and A Hidden Life. Plus a July 2012 essay about how Malick’s enablers have done him no favors. It’s quite a saga.

1. “Malick Enablers Doing Him No Favors,” posted on 7.14.12:

According to a 7.10 posting by terrencemalick.org’s Paul Maher. Jr., Terrence Malick‘s To The Wonder — an Oklahoma-set romantic drama he shot in late 2010 with Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel Weisz, Jessica Chastain and Javier Bardem — has scared away distributors, who have presumedly been shown the film in its entirety or in portions.

In other words, the same buyers who were going “what the eff is this?” after seeing The Tree of Life are again throwing up their hands and muttering to themselves in the general vein of “here we go again,” “life is too short,” “Jesus H. Christ” and “not me, babe.”

As Maher puts it, “Possibly the difficulties of The Tree of Life and its polarizing effect on the box office may be an underlying issue.”

Maher’s source is either closely affiliated with or working for Film Nation, and of the female persuasion. I’m listening to Maher because he’s a Malick fan, and like any webmaster running a kiss-ass website his default tendency is to praise Malick and otherwise shine favorable lights upon his accomplishments.

Not only is To The Wonder not being released in this country any time soon (although it may open in Europe a few months hence), but “the possibility of any trailer or publicity-related material coming out in the fall of 2012 is still vague, possibly unlikely,” Maher writes. He also reports that “when asked for any kind of teaser image or information, I was told [by my FilmNation source] that there still is nothing in the public domain that they could release.”

What the eff does that mean?

Malick taking two years to cut a film together is SOP (Days of Heaven was in the editing room from ’76 to ’78) but he can’t be moved to even issue a selection of still images from To The Wonder? Or allow a one-sheet to be created? Or put together an appetite-whetting teaser of some kind?

I’ve been saying for years that Malick needs a tough ballsy producer who isn’t afraid to get in his face and read him the riot act and goad him into adhering to a semi-reasonable editing deadline (i.e., between a year and eighteen months, let’s say) and perhaps even influence the shaping of his films in a way that won’t flagrantly agitate the thick-fingered vulgarians in the distribution business, at least to the point that they’ll make semi-serious bids on his finished films, which has not apparently happened on To The Wonder, per Maher.

The fact that To The Wonder is allegedly homeless nearly two years after principal photography is the proof in the pudding. Terrence Malick needs an intervention. He needs a strong partner and counsel who can save him from himself.

More to the point, the indications are overwhelming that Sarah Green and Nick Gonda, Malick’s producers on (a) To The Wonder, (b) the film formerly known as Lawless and (c) Knight of Cups, do not believe in the tough-love approach used by Bert Schneider, Malick’s producer on Days of Heaven. Malick’s endless dithering and dilly-dallying indicates that Green and Gonda are not forcing the issue and have decided to serve him in a passive, whatever-Terry-wants sort of way. They appear to be hand-holders, friends, toadies, facilitators, go-alongers, enablers.

In a 5.18.12 interview with The Hollywood Reporter‘s Pamela McClintock, FilmNation’s Glen Basner said he “hit it off with Sarah Green and Nick Gonda, two of the producers of [To The Wonder]. We were very like-minded people and maintained a friendly relationship. They were looking to make his next movie more outside the system, allowing Terry to have a process that works best for him, and we devised a way to finance the movie that met all of those needs.”

In other words, Malick says “jump” and Green and Gonda say “how high?”

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Cary Joji Fukunaga‘s No Time To Die (UA Releasing, 10.8.21), allegedly the most progressive, anti-sexist, #MeToo-supporting, diverse-minded Bond film in the 59-year history of the franchise, runs 163 minutes. That’s two hours plus 43 minutes. That’s long, man.

The next Bond film needs to run at least three hours, and it needs to include an overture, an intermission and exit music. And it needs to open with reserved seat engagements in New York, Los Angeles and London. Seriously — this would make it into something more than just another Bond flick.

The lengthiest Bond film before Die was Spectre (’15) at 2 hours and 28 minutes — 17 minutes shorter. Casino Royale (’06) was four minutes shorter than Spectre — 144 minutes. Skyfall (’12) was one minute shorter at 2 hours and 23 minutes. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (’69) was one minute shorter than Skyfall, and License to Kill (’89) was a whopping 2 hours and 13 minutes — ten minutes shorter than Skyfall.

Dr. No (’62), the first Bond film, ran 109 minutes, or 54 minutes shorter than No Time To Die. From Russia With Love (’63) ran six minutes longer — 115 minutes. Goldfinger (’64) ran 110 minutes. What were they thinking?

No Time To Die will have its grand Swiss premiere on Tuesday, 9.28 at the 17th Zurich Film Festival, concurrent with the Löndon premiere. The screening will begin on 9 pm at the Zurich Convention Center (1200 seats).

Liz Cheney calls Trump’s deal w/ Taliban a “surrender.”
“We completely undercut the Afghan nat’l gov., we absolutely emboldened the Taliban … and that led us to the catastrophe today.”

Here’s a copy of the agreement….Trump gave it all away.https://t.co/SiZNNB1wRJ

— QuoteDigger (@QuoteDigging) August 27, 2021

Michael Moore/Substack on “The Miracle of Kabul”: “What’s happening in Kabul right now is a miracle. President Biden has saved the lives of over 100,000 Americans and Afghans after the Taliban won the war and Kabul fell. Yet he has been pilloried by pundits and armchair generals, and his approval rating has fallen.

“On this day of chaos, misery and suicide bombings, I want you to hear why President Biden has made a bold, courageous and smart move and why he deserves our thanks.”

It doesn’t really start until the 16-minute mark, and really the 23-minute mark. I have to say that Moore is way too generous in his descriptions of the Taliban. These guys are medieval hillbillies who will make life miserable for Afghan women.

Moore: “Everybody saying this is a bad idea to withdraw. Biden said ‘no, we’re leaving and that’s that.’ And he would not walk it back.”

Yesterday afternoon I passed along an old story about my cat, Mouse, crapping on the back of my neck, and I don’t mean the usual squeeze-outs but a warm stinky milkshake — an anxiety discharge. She was freaked out by the movement of the car, and leapt onto my shoulder and dumped the chocolate malted onto my neck and onto my blue workshirt.

The boys were with me, and we were driving east along Franklin Avenue. (It was sometime around ’03.) Jett was sitting shotgun and saw what was happening and began howling with laughter, and then the smell hit all of us…”aaagghhh!” My first instinct was to stop the car and leap out. I hurriedly tore my shirt off and used it to wipe the brown ooze off my neck and upper back as I arched my back. I was outside my mind as I went “eewwgghh, eewwgghh” like Humphrey Bogart when Katharine Hepburn is trying to burn the leeches off his back in The African Queen. I was searching for a garden hose or a sprinkler system of some kind but couldn’t find one. I threw the shirt away — I didn’t want it near me. It was awful.

Mouse had done this as a deliberate “fuck you” for subjecting her to the trauma of car travel. When cats don’t like something or more particularly when they don’t like you, they really let you know it.

The monsters behind Thursday’s suicide bombing adjacent to Kabul airport — an attack which killed 72 people including 12 U.S. servicepersons — was reportedly perpetrated by ISIS–K. (The K stands for Khorasan, the name of an ancient province that encompassed parts of modern-day Iran and Afghanistan.) The U.S. command is going to hunt these guys down…what, over the next three or four days?

President Biden: “To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.”

I’m imagining myself as an Afghan native who has worked for U.S. forces over the last several years, and has known for many months that the end is coming, and that I have to somehow arrange to get myself and my family out of the country as soon as possible. What practical minded native wouldn’t have tried to leave many months or certainly weeks ago?

Plus there are reportedly 1500 Americans remaining in Afghanistan as we speak. What were they thinking? What are they doing?

George Roy Hill‘s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Jeymes Samuel‘s The Harder They Fall (Netflix, 10.22) are exercises in presentism — i.e., recreating the past according to present-day beliefs and standards.

Hill’s film, released in the summer of ’69, portrayed Butch and Sundance as cool-cat, anti-establishment heroes — i.e., flawed but lovable rogues who were into bank-robbing as a kind of irreverent hooliganism. Samuel’s film, an all-Black western, is, to go by the trailer, an ultra-violent attitude flick…a hardcore shoot-em-up that deals in ruthless blam-blam as an assertion of POC power and a general indifference to drilling anyone who stands in their way.

Hill and Samuel’s westerns are joined at the hip in the sense that they both depict train hold-ups.

The Butch Cassidy robberies (there are two) are about character-driven humor, especially in the playful relationship between Butch and Woodcock, an employee of E.H. Harriman, and casual slapstick foolery.

Not so much with the trailer for The Harder They Fall. The first significant activity is Regina King‘s “Trudy Smith” stopping a train and then casually murdering the train engineer (played by David Hight) because he’s an ornery cuss, and also, one gathers, because he’s white and has to pay for the historic toxicity of Anglo-Saxon behavior.

Fair question: The engineer is just mouthing off at Trudy — did he really need to die for this? The answer is “she felt like plugging him and that’s that…don’t you bother yourself whether it was necessary or not…our Black desperados get to drill holes in anyone they feel like drilling, and if you don’t like it, that’s too damn bad.”

Imagine if Woodcock had gotten mouthy with Butch and told him he was an immoral, train-robbing fiend, and Butch had taken offense, pulled out his six-shooter and shot Woodcock right between the eyes. The audience-comfort factor would’ve flown right out the window. Therein lies the difference between George Roy Hill and Jeymes Samuel slash Boaz Yakin.

The first 25 seconds of the new Spencer teaser is pure British royalty porn — immense wealth, bucks-up brands, perfect luggage, servants with heads bowed, perfect servings of soup or dessert or whatever.

Cut to poor, pint-sized Diana (the 5’5″ Kristen Stewart**) and the anguish she’s going through, knowing that her marriage to the snooty Prince Charles (Jack Farthing) is a total sham. Worse than that, when they finally get divorced she’ll only have a lousy $22 million settlement to fall back upon. Plus an extra $600,000 per year plus free Kensington Palace office space plus life-long access to the private royal jets, etc.

Will someone out there please comprehend and share in this woman’s terrible pain?

All this said, HE approves of Lou Reed‘s “A Perfect Day.”

Spencer will debut at the Venice Film Festival on 9.3.21. Neon will open it theatrically on 11.5.21.

** 10 inches shorter than Elizabeth Debicki.

I don’t care what these Cinemacon guys are saying — Robert Eggers‘ The Northman (out in the spring of ’22) is a 10th Century Viking revenge saga, and is sure to be intense in the usual Eggers way. But as far as I can discern it’s not some bloody-ass, tons-of-blood, piles-of-bodies Braveheart deal. It’s about a Nordic prince looking to avenge his father’s death, yes, okay, but calm down, will ya?

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Last night or early today critic Guy Lodge posted a dry little remark on Twitter, which is that he’s “scared to have an opinion on Ted Lasso so safest just to keep not watching it.”

What caught my attention had nothing to do with Ted Lasso but what Lodge was unintentionally alluding to. By casually confessing in a subdued offhand way that he was scared to post a potentially unpopular opinion, Lodge was acknowledging in a roundabout fashion that “scared” is a slight thing.

He wasn’t saying that he’s scared of the woke-terror mob or that this is something he contends with from time to time, but that it might be, heh-heh.

So yes, Guy was “joking”, but there’s nothing more revealing about human nature than a joke.

Jokes are never just about “hah-hah” — deep down they’re always about fear, poking exposed nerves, humiliation and rage. They’re about “uh-oh” or “I actually despise myself at times” or “this is rather terrifying” or “dear God, save me from the firing squad.”

Being a serious critic and top-tier Variety stringer, Lodge would never admit that there are times when he’s afraid to post a dicey or nervy opinion. “Scared” is not a word that critics are allowed to have in their vocabulary or their psyche. But the fact that Lodge faintly chuckled about it tells you everything.

Critics are all about craft and personal cred — their writing skills, seasoned insights, industry knowledge and straight-from-the-shoulder judgments.

It follows that no serious critic will ever admit to being afraid to convey the “wrong” viewpoint, or to vaguely allude to something that they shouldn’t vaguely allude to. At the same time they all know what not to say, and they’re very, very careful not to trip any wires or step on any land mines.

The bottom line is that they’re all vaguely terrified these days of the woke comintern. Just look at what happened to poor Dennis Harvey — say the wrong thing or say it the wrong way, and your employer might throw you under the bus in order to curry favor with this or that big-name actress who was unhappy with a sentence or two.

Critics aren’t stupid. Every time they write a review it’s like walking on a tightwire and knowing full well that all it takes is one wrong phrase or one inelegant clause or parenthetical and they’ll soon be dodging sniper fire and even possibly be out of a job.