In 1959, Kit (Martin Sheen), who has killed several people, and his new girlfriend Holly (Sissy Spacek), who watched him do it, are adrift in a double fantasy of crime and punishment across South Dakota and Montana. They’re playing make-believe but the bullets and bloodshed are very real. The film was inspired by a real-life 1958 Midwestern killing spree. Writer/director Terrence Malick imaginatively transforms their story into a provocative study of people alienated from everyday life – but fascinating to us. Beautifully shot and memorably acted, Badlands is a spellbinding journey. —Warner Bros.
Terrence Malick is one of the great enigmas of contemporary filmmaking, a shadowy figure whose towering reputation rests almost entirely on a pair of near-perfect features released a generation ago. A visual stylist beyond compare, Malick emerged during the golden era of 1970s American movie-making, bringing to the screen a dreamlike, ethereal beauty countered by elliptical, ironic storytelling; resonant and mythic, his films illuminated themes of love and death with rare mastery, their indelible images distinguished by economy and precision. Born in Waco, TX, on November 30, 1943, Malick spent many of his formative summers working as a farmhand, an experience upon which he would draw extensively in his films. Upon graduating from Harvard with a degree in philosophy, he entered Magdalen College in Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, but exited prior to completing his final thesis. On returning to the U.S., he became a freelance journalist, with his byline appearing in such publications as Life… read more
An odd little film. There's an absolutely beautiful moment when Martin Sheen pours liquid on a piano and the keys play a clattering little tune. My favourite moment in the film.
Among many other things, it's an interesting exercise on the theme of "lack of control". From one point of their lives, things just build up out of control, deaths are left behind them as a sign of their current lack of choices. Starting from one "bad" decision, everything just comes and they seem to have no other way of dealing with life if not by the rules they wrote themselves long before, without even knowing it.
For such an excellent performer, Sheen's film career has never reached the heights his talent deserves. This is undoubtedly the stand-out film on his CV. Hailed as one of the most impressive directorial debuts ever, Malick's serene collision of beauty and violence drew up the blueprint for the rest of his enigmatic career. Two lovers go on a killing spree after the girl's father objects to their union. Spellbinding..
Mania (1918) rediscovered, restored and on tour. A rare Malick interview. Casting news and more.
Updated through 6/26. In yesterday's Los Angeles Times, John Horn and Steven Zeitchik report on the uphill battle Fox Searchlight will be
Updated through 5/24. "Each Terrence Malick film concerns a lost or squandered Eden," writes Michael Joshua Rowin in the LA Weekly: "the
Cheap to fund, digitally shot portraits of everyday life compose the heart and soul of contemporary American independent film. But when a director
For a directorial debut, Badlands is quite an achievement. In this crime story, Martin Sheen plays Kit, a twenty-something garbage man in small-town South Dakota. Sissy Spacek plays the waifish and… read review
Oh for the love of Terrence Malick. You can tell he really just wanted to cut together a montage of egrets, cormorants, doves and pheasants. Just doing nothing. Just sitting in the sun. And then a… read review
“Opera Primas” usually falls in two categories: failed exercises (“fear and desired” as kubrick´s own s remarks) or artistic gems (“Un chien andalou”, “Citizen Kane”; this movie)
Terrence Malick… read review
A character at the end of Terrence Malick’s debut feature film Badlands tells antihero Kit that he is “quite the individual”. That could be the understatement of 1973. Based on the 1950s Starkweather… read review