Killer Elite Review

Jason Statham’s latest guns-and-muscles film, Killer Elite, based on a book by Ranulph Fiennes and directed by Gary McKendry, was released last week. Is it standard popcorn fodder or is there more going on than in the average action flick?

After killing a father in front of his child on an operation, Danny (Statham) decides that he doesn’t want to be a mercenary anymore and retires to Australia to build a house. A year later, however, he is pulled back in by a sheikh who wants revenge on three SAS operatives who killed his sons. As an incentive, he’s holding Danny’s mentor, Hunter (Robert De Niro), hostage. Not only does he want the deaths to look like accidents, he also wants taped confessions. Former SAS man Spike (Clive Owen) is tasked with stopping Danny.

I cannot in good conscience review this film without first commenting on its obsession with male hirsuteness. This film should have been called Men With Ridiculous Facial Hair. Its actual title is hugely misleading seeing as more or less everyone bar Robert De Niro manages to cock up killing someone at some point during the film’s 116 minutes’ running time. What is in evidence, however, are what must be a record-breaking number of preposterous moustaches and beards for one film. Clive Owen’s moustache looks half-hearted and De Niro’s beard looks scruffy and uncared-for, but credit to Dominic Purcell as Danny’s mate, whom I decided to label “Lemmy’s Brother”, for his incredible mutton chops.

As an action film, Killer Elite ticks all the boxes – there’s guns, explosions, car chases, rooftop chases, fistfights and swearing galore. It’s when it tries to go all political that cracks appear which, with a more experienced writer and director, might have been papered over. Spike’s superiors are an organisation called the Feather Men. We don’t really know who they are or why they’re there – they’re pulling all the strings but we forget about them later on, so they can’t have been that important. They may have had something to do with a war in Oman. Or not. God knows. In addition, one guy, apparently from somewhere unconnected to either Danny or Spike (possibly the Feather Men), turns up during their interrogation scene, talks for a bit and then gets killed almost straightaway. I have no idea who he was or why he was there. I think he may have been knocking around before, but the multitude of Men With Ridiculous Facial Hair and wishy-washy direction means it’s difficult to tell. And did we really need a love interest who adds nothing to the plot apart from complication and pointlessness?

In fact, the script as a whole is pretty atrocious. Matt Sherring, take this as a subtle hint. NEVER write another screenplay. Could you not have come up with an alternative line to “Killing’s easy...the hard part’s living with it”? It’s far too long, with several unnecessary twists. When Statham, tied to a chair, flips over in midair to land on the back of a prostrate Owen with crushing force, it could have ended for me. I was entirely satisfied. But it didn’t. At least Aden Young (playing another of Danny’s mates, Meier), who couldn’t decide if his character was German, American, Dutch or Australian, got killed off relatively early.

Its deep political aspirations are admirable, but I shouldn’t be getting confused during a Jason Statham film. It could have been done better. 

2.5/5

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Review

Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of John le Carré’s novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, starring Gary Oldman as spymaster George Smiley, arrives in cinemas this week fresh from a triumphant world premiere at the recent Venice Film Festival.

The 1970s BBC adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, starring Alec Guinness, was so highly-regarded (in the run-up to this release, it seemed to take on the veneer of legend), that the idea of a slick new film version was predictably met with muted outrage from those who remember and cherish it. They need not have worried. Tomas Alfredson’s fresh take on John le Carré’s novel is every bit as outstanding as we all hoped it would be when it was announced.

Le Carré’s spy world is not one of gadgets, gunfights and girls. It is a grey, seedy world, populated by unromanticised, fiercely patriotic public schoolboys obsessed with gaining the advantage over Smiley’s Kremlin counterpart Karla. Following a failed operation in Budapest which results in the capture of high-ranking agent Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong), George Smiley and Circus head Control (John Hurt) are cast out into the cold. Control is replaced by forward-thinking moderniser Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), who is supported by Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds) and Toby Esterhase (David Dencik). After Control’s death, however, Smiley is contacted by his former right-hand man Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), whose AWOL agent, Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy), has returned with information indicating the presence of a high-ranking mole inside the Circus.

Tomas Alfredson, the Swedish director whose star is most definitely on the rise following Tinker Tailor and his triumphant adaptation of horror novel Let The Right One In, makes the transfer from Stockholm to London effortlessly. His direction guides the audience beautifully along the lines of Smiley’s thinking, simultaneously unlocking the densely-plotted novel through the use of flashbacks and voiceover. The film is not unlike Let The Right One In in terms of tone and pace, and Alfredson handles himself well in spite of the apprehension he must have felt as a Swede adapting a renowned British story.

Oldman has never given a more reserved performance than he does here, and subsequently it is probably the best performance he has ever given. Never has an actor conveyed so much by doing so little – always calm, ever watchful, we only see him show any form of emotion twice, and yet he dominates every scene in which he appears. Even at this early stage, with the Academy Awards still five months away, he seems sure to garner what would, astonishingly, be only his first nomination. He is ably supported by one of the strongest British casts not assembled for a Richard Curtis film in years – Firth (of course), Strong and Hardy particularly impress. There is also a welcome return to our screens for Kathy Burke, playing researcher Connie Sachs.

However, for all its undoubted brilliance, the film feels slightly rushed. Ciaran Hinds isn’t given enough to do in comparison to his fellow suspects, and it might have been worth adding another ten minutes or so to the film in order to deepen the suspicion and muddy the waters a little more with regard to the traitor’s identity. A little more time taken to clarify the various plot strands would also have been nice – codewords, events and different game players get entangled slightly in the film’s eagerness to unmask the mole.

This is filmmaking at its very best. Confident, deft and absorbing, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the year’s first truly exceptional film. 

5/5

In The Editing Room Of My Mind

In a concept shamelessly stolen from Chris Petit, former editor of Time Out's film section, I pick out my favourite moments/shots/things from cinema.

Harvey Keitel’s head hitting the pillow as "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes kicks in at the beginning of Mean Streets. James Dean’s leather jacket in Rebel Without A Cause. The railway scene in Stand By Me. “We want the finest cakes and wine available to humanity and we want them now!” Creepy John Huston leading Faye Dunaway’s sister/daughter away from her dead body in Chinatown. The impenetrable fog that gives Al Pacino such problems in Insomnia. The rear-view shot of Scarlett Johansen walking through the Tokyo streets at the end of Lost In Translation. Phil Daniels and the rest of the mods riding their Lambrettas down to Brighton in Quadrophenia. Charles Bronson’s harmonica in Once Upon A Time In The West. “Can I buy any of you cunts a drink?” Barbara Stanwyck’s anklet in Double Indemnity. The opening monologue of the undertaker Bonasera as the camera slowly zooms out over Marlon Brando’s shoulder in The Godfather. Woody Allen taking direction from imaginary Humphrey Bogart in an attempt to woo Diane Keaton in Play It Again, Sam. Liam Neeson’s breakdown as he contemplates how many more lives he could have saved in Schindler’s List. The stark gritty blue colourising Jason Patric’s pursuit of a drug dealer through an inner-city neighbourhood in Narc. The unbroken tracking shot across Dunkirk beach in Atonement. Will Ferrell’s moustache in Anchorman. De Niro raging as Al Capone in The Untouchables. The way Joe Pesci says “Muddafucka” in everything he’s in. “Does Barry Manilow know you raid his wardrobe?” Gaunt Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter. Manic Dennis Hopper in Speed. The heartbreak in Michelle Monaghan’s eyes as Casey Affleck shops Morgan Freeman to the cops in Gone Baby Gone. Christoph Waltz’s friendly menace in the opening scene of Inglourious Basterds. The Statue of Liberty’s head flying through the air in Cloverfield. Kevin Spacey singing American Woman in American Beauty. Anthony Hopkins beating the prison guards to death in The Silence Of The Lambs. Karl Malden’s nose. The mirror scene in Duck Soup. The gap between the apartment buildings in Rear Window. Any shot from Terrence Malick's The Tree Of Life. Cathy Moriarty’s husky voice in Raging Bull. Harrison Ford racing towards the plane while being pursued by the tribesmen in Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Tony Curtis’s leg rising in the background while Marilyn Monroe kisses him in the foreground in Some Like It Hot. ET hiding in the stuffed animals. Orson Welles’s ad-libbed cuckoo clock line in The Third Man. The smoky saxophone in Bernard Herrman’s Taxi Driver theme. Charlie Chaplin’s pathos in Modern Times. Mark Hamill clinging to the antenna underneath the floating city in The Empire Strikes Back. Gollum’s conversation with himself in The Two Towers – the moment CGI became performance. THAT coffee-shop scene between De Niro and Pacino in Heat. The wedding rehearsal sequence in Kill Bill Vol.2. The tree in The Shawshank Redemption. The rain in Se7en. The floating hut in Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...And Spring Again. Mickey Rourke trying to reconnect with Evan Rachel Wood in The Wrestler. Proto-metal Johnny B. Goode performed by Michael J. Fox in Back To The Future. The prison food in Goodfellas. Paris folding in on itself in Inception. Johnny Depp running verbal rings around the two guards in Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl. Jim Carrey stepping through the door of the fake world into the real world at the end of The Truman Show.

Opening Up A Lead And Coming Home Free: The Big Sleep at 65

There was a time in the 1940s when noir crime films were a dime-a-dozen in Hollywood. Very few stand out from the crowd, and at the head of that short line is The Big Sleep. 65 years old this week, it remains as powerful as ever.

Perhaps The Big Sleep’s status as one of the best film noirs ever made comes from the way it follows almost none of the usual noir filming rules. Filmed conventionally in bright sunlight rather than darkest night and incorporating no voiceover or flashbacks, the film nevertheless depicts a world where the good and bad of society frequently overlap in a way many noirs could only dream of.

Adapted from legendary hard-boiled fiction writer Raymond Chandler’s novel of the same name, the film introduces Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) as he visits General Sternwood, an man incapable of controlling his two wild daughters, Vivian (Lauren Bacall) and Carmen. He wants Marlowe to take care of Carmen’s gambling debts. Typically for film noirs, things are not as simple as they seem, and Marlowe is plunged into a world of blackmail, pornography and murder (those things always seem to go hand-in-hand, don’t they?).

The passage of time has not diluted the film’s notoriously convoluted plot, with two separate yet interlocking murders, a multitude of femme fatales, lowlifes and policeman and a host of surprises and double-crosses packed into its 115 minutes. Even the writers were confused – director Howard Hawks sent Chandler a telegram asking if Owen Taylor, the Sternwoods’ chauffeur, had been murdered or if he had committed suicide. Chandler later recalled “Dammit, I didn’t know either!” By the film’s end, though, we couldn’t care less how we got there, as long as all the villains have met bloody or handcuffed ends – what is more interesting to us is the relationship between Marlowe and Vivian.

Bogart, never bettered as the coolest of actors, is at his best here, while his scenes with his real-life wife Bacall sizzle. He was used to leading his female co-stars through films, and evident throughout is his pleasure that twenty-year-old Bacall matches him in every scene they share. Their scenes enable The Big Sleep to be funny and warm, contrasting the bleak and pessimistic mood of the standard noir. In addition to a mass of one-liners (General Sternwood: “How do you like your brandy, sir?” Marlowe: “In a glass.”), there are numerous knowing double-entendres, culminating in the dirtiest conversation anyone has ever had about horses. Ever. Sexy talk has never been done better – who needs Judd Apatow when you’ve got Humph and Loz?

What’s surprising when re-watching the film is how appropriate it feels, especially in the wake of the recent phone-hacking scandal. The society portrayed in The Big Sleep is one preoccupied with façade: showing the right cover story to the public. In the film the media are misled and manipulated, with the DA ripping up some notes which refer to aspects of Marlowe’s tale he wishes to cover up, though today it seems to be the media misinforming the police. Likewise, the legal system is presented as deeply flawed and generally useless, mirroring the less-than-perfect system we have seen struggling to deal with the riots around the country. Though the idea of a corrupt and morally ambiguous society is by no means limited to The Big Sleep, it’s striking how prevalent that culture is within the film.

Like one of Marlowe’s whiskies, The Big Sleep has aged exceedingly well. The script still crackles with wit and the guns still pop like crisp packets. Still relevant 65 years on, don’t worry about following the film – close the Venetian blinds and let Humphrey Bogart guide you into LA’s seedy, sun-drenched underbelly.

Super 8 Review

Super 8 is Lost co-creator JJ Abrams’s third feature film as a director, a film about friendship friendship and the trials of growing-up. With added aliens.

Before we begin, be warned that there will be no banging on about Spielberg and his influence on Super 8 and JJ Abrams. It’s been done by everyone else already. We know that Super 8 is hugely influenced by ET, Close Encounters, Jaws, The Terminal, Schindler’s List (OK, maybe not the last two). This is a Spielberg-free review and there will be no mention of his name starting...now!

The concept for the film is nothing particularly new. In Lillian, Ohio in 1979, a group of classic high-school misfits including Joe (Joel Courteney) and Alice (Elle Fanning) are making a zombie film on a handheld camera (the Super 8 of the title), when a train crash releases an alien into the town. This ain’t no cuddly extra-terrestrial though – like ET, this alien wants to go home but it doesn’t mind cracking some skulls to get there.

The kids are very much the stars of this film, never taking a back-seat to the alien in the way the adults of the Abram’s produced Cloverfield did. Every time we leave to follow the alien we yearn to be back with their wisecracks and the budding relationship between Alice and Joe. Courteney and Fanning stand out here, with a performance of great maturity from Fanning in particular. While this shouldn’t be surprising given her turn in Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere and her sister Dakota’s achievements, it is difficult to believe she is only 13. In the rehearsal for the scene shot at the train station, she easily outshines her stuttering co-star, mesmerising the boys and the audience.

Abrams’s direction throughout the film is hit-and-miss. He intersperses emotion with humour and smatters the film with delicate touches like the water-tower visible through the hole the cube creates in Joe’s bedroom wall. The stand-out sequence features the Air Force train carrying the alien crashing while the kids are filming a scene at the town’s railway station in the dead of night. It’s one hell of a crash, and scenes like this are the reason you go to the cinema. It would lose its power on a television screen, and conversely I suspect it would be even better viewed on an IMAX screen.

However, the back-story involving Alice and Joe’s relationships with their fathers feels forced and underdeveloped, though it undoubtedly aids the effect of their budding relationship on us as they find solace in each other. I would also have ordered a redesign on the white Rubik’s Cubes that comprise the alien’s spacecraft – it’s difficult to take a film whose alien flies a spaceship basically made out of Lego seriously. We feel nothing for the alien when it is eventually introduced during a final third that feels rushed and pandering to the studio’s demands of explosions and action in what is classified as a summer blockbuster. The ending packs an emotional punch but little else, and you can’t help feeling that other directors (still mentioning no names) would have done a more accomplished job with what is undoubtedly a fantastic screenplay.

It was so nearly a perfect film, but a weak final third and an overreliance on the work of past masters lets Super 8 down.

4/5

Stand By Me At 25

Over the course of his long and glittering career, Stephen King has approved numerous adaptations of his novels. Stand By Me, which he cites as the best adaptation of one of his works, was released 25 years ago this week.

The story of four pre-teen friends, Gordie (Wil Wheaton), Chris (River Phoenix), Teddy (Corey Feldman) and Vern (Jerry O’Connell), who hike into the woods near their town in search of a dead body is not the kind of fare you’d expect from Stephen King, best known for writing supernatural novels like Carrie and The Shining. The film was adapted from King’s novella The Body, which was published in a collection with Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, itself a successful adaptation. It is interesting to note that the two best-regarded adaptations of King’s books are not focussed on horror, but on friendship, and the emotions great friendships evoke – perhaps he should give up the ghost stories and explore other genres.

Throughout the boys’ journey, they joke around, get  scared, and flirt with death in the film’s most memorable  scene when they are chased across a high railway bridge by a train. They also open up to each other, and it is this  last that resonates with so many people. It is rare for a  film with such young actors to have such emotional  depth – films like The Breakfast Club may be set in  high school but feature actors in their 20s – and the fact  that the actors are playing their own ages, and dealing  with the same issues, provides added resonance. By  casting boys whose personalities closely matched those  of the characters, director Rob Reiner coaxes  extraordinary performances from his young cast, all of  whom had had little acting experience prior to the film. The scenes between Gordie and Chris, both struggling  with issues of self-worth, effortlessly evoke the loyal and supportive relationship all boys have with each other through their formative years.

Though the central character is Gordie, it is Phoenix’s Chris who makes the biggest impression as a boy trying to break away from a seemingly inevitable life of alcoholism and worthlessness. His performance is especially poignant given his tragic death at the age of 23, mirroring the death of Chris later on in life, which inspires an adult Gordie (Richard Dreyfuss), now a writer, to pay tribute to his friends with an account of their adventure.

“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?” The question Gordie types into his computer in the film’s final scene seems surprising, but it rings true. 12-year-olds are uncorrupted by the world and society’s expectations. They do what they feel. They’re young enough to be scared, but old enough to swear and smoke. Stand By Me, 25 years on, continues to serve as an elegy to the innocence of childhood before adulthood snatches it away forever.

As long as boys have friends, Stand By Me will remain a nostalgic, evocative film that harks back to an age when all you needed to have a good time was a long summer’s day and a couple of buddies. Stand By Me: 25^th Anniversary Edition is released on Blu-Ray on August 8.

Horrible Bosses Review

This week sees the release of Horrible Bosses, a comedy starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis as three down-trodden employees who hatch a plan to kill their bosses, played by Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston and Colin Farrell. The premise is original and the actors are big names – so why doesn’t it quite work?

The concept, in its most basic form, is ingenious, though it does owe a debt to Hitchcock’s Strangers On A Train. Three friends decide to kill their bosses. That’s a good start. There’s potential for a few laughs, some fun to be had, the bosses die and everyone goes home happy. It’s when the details are added that things get bogged down. Characters like Jamie Foxx’s murder consultant Motherfucker Jones (an unnecessary and unfunny joke in itself) are completely expendable – as a murder consultant who doesn’t tell the three leads anything they couldn’t have worked out for themselves, what’s the point in him being there? Why bother having Donald Sutherland pop in for five minutes and then killing him off so Colin Farrell can take over the company? And would it have killed the writers to come up with a clever ending to go with their clever idea?

Horrible Bosses is supported mainly by its characters. It’s refreshing to see Spacey playing a real villain again, something we haven’t seen since his portrayal of Lex Luthor in 2006’s Superman Returns. His transition from slimy to downright evil ensures that he stands out as the most horrible boss, but Aniston also deserves a mention for leaving her comfort zone of inoffensive-but-generally-awful rom-coms to play filthy-mouthed nymphomaniac dentist Julia Harris. If there was ever an actress who needed to play a different role, it’s Aniston, and this could be a turning-point for her career. Farrell as the third boss, Bobby Pellit, is a safe pair of hands, despite being out-acted throughout the film by his outrageously awful comb-over.

Charlie Day may prove to be the breakout star of this film, having previously been known for sitcom It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. His charisma and comic timing, combining the squeaky panic of Steve Carell with the manic idiocy of Zach Galifianakis, ensures that he steals every scene he features in, though at times he is given a run for his money by Sudeikis.

Unfortunately, the film suffers overall from the relative inexperience of its writers and director. The script is funny and has a couple of moments you don’t see coming, but the convenient ending lets it down badly, highlighting the fact that the three writers come from a television background. The jokes also run the risk of going too far on occasion, such as the scene where the three leads continuously mispronounce the name of the foreign man acting as their in-car guide, but are just kept inside the lines of comedy instead of straying into racism. Seth Gordon’s direction lacks flair (TWO montages?! No film needs two montages!) and fails to make the most of its opportunities.

Despite the strength of its acting and its original idea, Horrible Bosses is let down by its ending and its direction. What we are left with is a forgettable comedy that nevertheless hits more than it misses. 

3/5

Is The Gloss Coming Off Pixar's Animations?

With the less-than-positive reviews that have greeted the release of Cars 2, is Pixar losing its touch after 12 universally acclaimed films?

It was perhaps inevitable that Cars 2 would be the film on which Pixar dropped the ball, given that it was a sequel that nobody was really calling for. On a purely critical basis, you would be hard-pushed to find anyone that considers Cars to be in the same class as Toy Story, Wall-E or Up. However, a sequel was commissioned, and Pixar are now having to learn how to deal with the critical backlash that has accompanied it.

Most of the complaints are based around the characters, who are not as likeable or emotionally complex as Finding Nemo’s marine creatures or Toy Story’s toys, a complicated plot considering that the movie is aimed primarily at children and an over-reliance on action sequences at the expense of the pathos of Pixar’s earlier efforts.

Pixar obviously had confidence in the film – having previously scrapped work on Toy Story 2 and Ratatouille because they were not convinced that the material was any good, they would surely have done the same to Cars 2 if they had had any doubts about it. It has been implied that the Cars series is a sentimental project for Pixar co-founder John Lasseter, and it may have been his influence that secured a sequel for a film that was well-received but never considered a Pixar masterpiece.

There have been suggestions, however, that Pixar’s motivation for making this sequel were cash-based, and for this reason the film was rushed through as quickly as possible. Cars made $5 billion through merchandising, but while it took 6 years to be completed in line with Pixar’s other productions, its sequel was completed in less than 3 years from its initial announcement. If this is true, it makes Pixar’s failure less forgivable – a failure is fair enough if everything is put into it, but when a poor product is released purely to make money, there will be repercussions. Whatever the critical consensus, the merchandising alone from Cars 2 will no doubt be enough to see Pixar through this mini-crisis.

It is possible, of course, that Pixar have simply begun to fall into the trap of making poorly thought-out and executed sequels – after all, animators are no less immune to the pitfalls of filmmaking than filmmakers dealing in live-action. Although the Toy Story sequels each seemed to be better than the last, they are the only sequels that Pixar has previously made. It will be interesting to gauge the reception to Monsters University which, though it is a prequel rather than a sequel, will have to be phenomenally good to match Monsters, Inc. The only other film expected in the near future is Brave, an original, darker story featuring a female protagonist for the first time in Pixar’s history. As they once again venture into pastures new, will their risk-taking come back to haunt them?

Cars 2 appears to be nothing more than a sequel which was ill-thought-out and rushed. Whatever the reason for its poor quality when stacked up against other Pixar films, it is premature to be writing the studio off. Monsters University and Brave are now under a lot of pressure to repair Pixar’s reputation and convince its fans that Cars 2 was simply a blip.

The Return Of Maverick Malick

This week sees the UK release of The Tree of Life, the fifth film in five decades from maverick auteur Terrence Malick. But why are his films’ releases such hugely anticipated events?

When The Tree of Life won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes, you might have been forgiven for assuming that its director, Terrence Malick, would attend the awards ceremony to collect his prize. After all, this was probably the greatest achievement of his five-film career so far. However, the director was not seen on the red carpet or at the acceptance podium at all during the festival, in keeping with his legendary privacy – he refuses to do interviews and stipulates in his contracts that no current photos of him may be used for publicity.

Malick’s reclusiveness feeds his legend. Due to his refusal to explain himself and his intentions, his films remain open to speculation and theorising, as has been shown with The Tree of Life: it is so abstract that a convincing explanation as to what exactly it is about is yet to be published. Despite the fact that none of his films have taken more than $35 million at the box office, the esteem with which he is held in his industry could not be higher. Actors queue up to work with him – his 1998 effort The Thin Red Line featured Sean Penn, George Clooney, John Travolta and Woody Harrelson among others, with the performances of Martin Sheen, Gary Oldman, Billy Bob Thornton and Mickey Rourke ending up on the cutting-room floor. The small number of films he has made means that there has been little opportunity to criticise him, with all of them so far considered to be masterpieces.

In keeping with his public persona, Malick resists flashy direction: his acclaim comes from the images he captures with his camera, rather than the way he manipulates it, in direct contrast to more commercially successful directors like Spielberg and Nolan. He rarely uses dialogue, preferring to use voiceover, and since his debut feature, Badlands, he has had a preoccupation with the presentation of nature onscreen, frequently lavishing such attention on it that it almost becomes another character in the story. The flat, emotionless plains of Montana in Badlands come to embody the relationship between Kit and Holly, while the framing of farmhouses looming against clear blue skies and lengthy shots of wheat blowing in the breeze underline the fragile relationship man has with nature. The Tree of Life goes even further, exploring the dynamics in the 1950s Texas-dwelling O’Brien family and then shifting back to the creation of the universe, where we see planets forming, volcanoes erupting and even CGI dinosaurs. The film has much more of a “what is the meaning of life” feeling about it than Malick’s previous work, and its ambiguity has polarised critics and fans, with some labelling it genius and others as pretentious trash.

Due to the perceived genius of his limited output combined with his maverick style, any new release by Terrence Malick will inevitably garner a great deal of attention, especially given the controversy of his latest film. The Tree of Life will be like nothing you have ever seen before. You may love it, you may hate it, but you cannot deny that behind the camera sits a true master of his art.