An impressionist painting of war come to life...and lingering for three hours

Rating: 4/10 (18 June 2017)

The title of my review pretty much says it all. I read in a movie newsgroup what a genius Terrence Malick is. So this weekend I got Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life from the library and watched both. In both cases, it was largely like watching paint dry.
In Tree of Life's favor, at least it wasn't three hours long. Both movies are incredibly pretentious, overly artsy, and feature a seemingly random jumble of short scenes. Both are full of shots that look like beautiful paintings come to life. Both feature characters doing poetic, half-whispered voiceovers to explain the philosophy behind the images we're seeing. Neither movie has what you could call a coherent story, or is particularly entertaining enough to justify their bloated lengths.
I think these two films are enough to prove that Terrence Malick movies aren't for me. And that film critics and movie buffs will praise anything that seems too "artsy" for the unwashed masses.