To The Wonder
I really enjoyed it, I wasn't sure if I was for the first half, I think it's a little too formless until Marina returns from Paris, and in fact, retrospectively I still think there's plenty in that first half I'm not crazy about, I'd have preferred she never leave, and we never see the Jane sequence. I think just having Marina's daughter go to live with her father would have been more than sufficient, and have tightened up the first half quite a bit. Regardless, the second half was stunning, I was surprised how dramatic it became, it has been this slow, meditative thing for an hour, and I felt like it'd set an expectation which it shattered from her doctor's appointment onward.
I do think it's a little too dream-like though. All of Malick's films (post Badlands anyway) have this free-form, organic editing that gives everything this disconnection from how we gauge time in films. There's never a sense of days or weeks, which is usually made up for by whatever story related dialogue is in place, for example in The New World you're constantly being told how long ships will be absent so when they return, you know how long it's been, I don't know if this film takes place over six months, or six years.
I think it's a great film, but it's not up to the caliber of his last two for me, at least, not based on first viewing, I tend to enjoy all his films more the more I see them. I'll watch it again once the bluray hits.
I want to have sex with Olga Kurylenko on a train/10