You're right. I am pretty follower-ish.

Hey, did I ever mention that MATCH POINT KINDA SUCKS!?!?!?

My lengthy review:


http://www.worldofkj.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19279



A-

I agree. I rewatched it tonight and would say the exact same thing. My brother watched it with me too. Said he had no complaints (which is rare for him), but he also only watched up to when Smith leaves the settlement.

My review was so long ago, I forgot about it - so I'm going to repost it to remind myself:



This is surely to be the central debate amongst viewers of this verdant perspective of the world.

There's no doubt that the director, Terrence Mallick, is some kind of maniac artistic genius - but whether the faithful are willing to follow him on his twisted journey of truth - aye, there's the rub.

Even, for someone like me, who has a very high tolerance for artistic vision, this movie began testing my resolve by the two-thirds point. I kept wondering when Christian Bale was going to enter the storyline... Imagining the intimacy/communications issues between Pocohontas and John Smith... why they kept letting him loose in the wilds...

But to ask these kind of questions, is to miss the point of Mallick's ode to being human at the primary intersection of very foreign cultures. And, man, dig those natural cut-scenes such as the planet coming out of eclipse of the slivered moon!

The exquisite set design of pre-invasion North America was stunningly authentic, the accurate detail given over to daily life as is so rarely portrayed in mainstream film was unprecedented.

So, in inconclusive conclusion, I have to agree - No! It's just the director...

5 out of 5.

I still don't quite get the ending.

My friend sort of looked over at me and was like "ok..."

He did like the movie though.

I am not a great fan of the film, but the artistic undertaking deserves admirement.

I contend, however, that only true fans of cinema can appreciate this film. Which does not say that all true fans of cinema have to appreciate it, but those who are not movie fans to begin with, won't like it much.

I liked it a lot.

Malick's artisty is tedious, but the visuals and score are so lyrical (not to mention unconventional) that I became interested to the point that I wasn't bored by shots of brooks and swaying grain.

I also completely believed the relationship between Smith and Pocohontas.

Was I enthralled by it all and the film in general, though? Not completely. And I think that has something to do with the fact that I wasn't sure where Malick was going with his story. The final frames of the film leave the impression that Malick is commenting on the loss of culture and spirit, yet the first two-thirds of the film are so heavily John Smith-related that I couldn't really accept this as its parting message.

This is one that I'll be re-watching someday, though. It's challenging.

B+

Well I guess I was disappointed that I wasn't completely enamored with it.

But I did like it a lot.

So... wrong!

More than a week without a new post, are we really going to let this thread die at 17 pages?

Currently watching this a second time, will probably boost my grade higher than the B+ I gave it previously. The closed captioning is helpful for me for this film.

It is on my list of immediate purchases in the next month as soon as I get settled in to my new place.

Haha, yes. I totally watched it with CC

Finally saw it. I found the beginning to be quite interesting and compelling. Then the movie just starts to beat me over the head again and again and again. It felt like I was watching the same thing happen, by the 10th time I just didnt really care anymore, it didnt go anywhere, it never got incredibly interesting, it just stalled and felt like the actors were said hey just improvise and will edit it, yet they forgot to even edit it. Solid acting, nice scenery, and it starts out intriguing but then just keeps on falling.

Grade - C

You said the same thing about The Crying Game. For shame.

Crying Game actually goes somewhere with the story, I just thought the beginning was so immensley good that I just couldnt get into it after Whitaker dies.

You are dead to me.

I so completely disagree. But I find the movie to be flawless, so I am biased. At least you somewhat redeemed yourself by praising the first act with that "immensely good" bit.

Still so great.

One more page of posts before it can surpass King Kong's thread length...

I've recommended it to two people who say that they will rent it. 1 of them, I'm sure will like it, the other not so.. but who knows lets see, maybe the power of the new world will take them both.

B

The New World could have been something really amazing, but it gets hurt by the fact that it tries to be artsy. The first hour or so is Oscar-quality, and the movie seems sure of itself. But once Colin Farrell disappears for a while, the movie becomes looser and harder to keep up with. Still, it comes around at the end. Even so, it's a tough movie to keep up with, and it's only for more intellectual moviegoers.

Hmm interesting movie. The New World is the kind of movie that Kubrick used to make where it is flawed but has a lot of interesting aspects. Like Barry Lyndon, only better.

The first half is by far the best part of the movie because it is a collection of sights and sounds and it has a solid point of view with a real story to tell. You can practically smell the Viriginia forest and feel Smith's fear. Many scenes of people just being curious about each other, that seemed pretty close to real and real or not it was fascinating to watch it dramatized. That is the part of the film that works best for me, the sensations as the men discover the world and the "naturals" discover the new arrivals. The film had great sights and sounds, great cinematography and Kilcher is a real find, she's made for the movies. She reminded me of Olivia Hussey's debut in Romeo and Juliet in the 60s, the same kind of wide eyed sensuality and maturity but with a more open, more accepting face.

When Smith reaches the Indian town, there was to some degree a paternalistic and condescending view of the native americans. It was all very "they are pure, they are of nature, they shit rainbows". Not just in Smith's thoughts which could be written off as understandable impressions of an outsider, but in what the movie showed us of the natives and their village. I'd love to see a movie take on this subject with a more realistic approach. But that's to be expected to some extent, that's the way movies are. At least the film at that point seemed to be all about Smith's impressions so one could write it off as being for that reason.

At one point, where Pocahontas is told that Smith is dead, I was disappointed that they went that route. That is such an old overused device. Not just death but where one person is told misinformation about the other in order for the plot to send the wrongly informed person into someone else's arms. It just made the movie seem less real, once that happened it no longer felt like a series of fascinating sensations, it felt like a Hollywood movie and lost the almost-a-documentary flavor.

The winter at the dying fort was a great subject, I just wish it had been fleshed out better and clearer about who people are, what ranks some of the settlers have, why things are happening and how much time is passing between scenes. Somewhere along the line Pocahontas went from speaking a word or two of English to talking in complete sentences, leaving the viewer to wonder whether months had passed.

Pocahontas arriving with supplies was handled well, one of the highpoints, you could really see through the Europeans' eyes that the Indians at the moment looked like wealthy people being kind to the poor, quite the switch from how they used to view the relationship. I was really impressed with Kilcher in that series of scenes, she was poised and just right. But shortly after, the film lost a lot of steam on Plummer's return. While the winter at the dying fort wasn't as well dramatized as it could have been, it was still a lot more interesting than after Plummer's arrival with men and supplies. Some of the mystery of the new world evaporated for the settlers after that but also some of the mystery of the New World dissipated for me.

I rarely like the work of Colin Farell but he was right for this role, and he held the movie together for the first half with his presence and subtle reactions. Once he stopped being the focus of the story and the movie switched gears and made Pocahontas the main character, it just didn't hold up as well, the story lost the strong point of view that it had started with. Up till then the movie was working well as a sort of memoir of Smith's experiences and impressions, like we were reading his journal and it was brought to life, if only it had kept that going it would have been a classic.

Could John Rolfe been more bland and boring? He brought with him a long lull, after Smith left Kilcher until she found out he was alive again, it all seemed to wander not knowing what to do to fill the screentime. Her developing relationshiop with Rolfe was completely unconvincing from the start and straight through to the end.

While most of the technical aspects of The New World are top quality, it is let down by a very pedestrian score that borders on the annoying at certain scenes, such as the first arrival of the ships near the beginning. Yes I'm aware these are the work of famous composers but it was still not the right music for those scenes. Later the tinkling piano score just felt like random filler.

Overall I'd have to say that it's about a B-

The terror and fascination and beauty of the first contact, the travelling deeper into the new world, that was what the movie should have been about. Rolfe, England and all that wrecked it.

A technically good film with an interesting concept and game actors that runs off the rails halfway through. It could have been great, it has many interesting scenes in the first half that just needed more work, they didn't feel fully realized and the less said about the second half the better. The whole script felt undercooked. If it were up to me they would have elaborated more on the events in the first half, gone into more detail of everything, ending the film with either her arrival at the fort in winter or shortly after.

Hey reading back on some posts in this thread, Killuminati had a similar reaction as me only he was more concise in explaining himself. I kind of got carried away.

I also agree with his take on The Crying Game. I thought Whittaker was by far the best thing in that movie and lost interest after he was gone.

We need to form a little sub section of the forum...

The Cult of the New Worlders...

Has a nice ring...no?

You can get one of those invisible private forums devoted to it if you ask maybe. For you and the other New Worldies.

The strange thing about this thread is after I saw the movie I thought ok 18 pages of discussion here about it to read. But nope, it's like 2 pages of discussion and 16 pages of people telling other people they should see it.

You're like my long lost twin? I guess you were the crazy demented one though, because our parents kept me and made you live with the lions.

Whittaker gave the best performance in the movie, he made me care so much about the character that when he died the movie died along with him, it's a travesty he wasnt nominated.

You're completely right on all counts of New World, the movie tries to be a form of art moreso then a form of entertainment and gets lost by doing so. How about that ending, you have scenes of practically nothing happening for a long period of tiem yet when it comes to the death of Pocahontas, it spends about 30secs on it. The movie could've been truely great if they decided to have more depth and cut out alot of the unnecessary wannabe art silent scenes, im not a fan of that.