Mrs. Movie Reviews: The New World

My dear husband is being incredibly generous with his review. Ponderous would have been a gift compared to what Mr. Malick presented with his new film The New World. This film is filled with long shots of the sky, fields of grass and of course the soaring forest, which are indeed often beautiful but really how many tree tops do you want to see over a two and a half hour period. The attempted poetic dialog (if you can call it that, since 90% of it is thoughts as opposed to characters actually speaking to one another) is trite, repetitive and often just slurred. And to make matters worse the score is one of the all time most annoying streams of music ever put to a film – possibly second to the lovely single notes from Eyes Wide Shut. I was so aggravated by the end of the film that I had to apologize to friends afterwards for my current state of irritation. When all is said in done you are better off simply staring at a postcard of the redwoods while someone scratches their nails against a chalkboard.