And two choices in '74, with Thieves Like Us and California Split. I've been meaning to see the latter. I confess I'm not a huge fan of the former. But even if you're not fully caught up in The Films of 1974 (and I'm certainly weaker on movies from years before I was born than after), there's plenty to choose from: God…

I caught up with The Motion Picture DEAD LAST among Trek movies and it's one of my favorites of the whole series. Slow and a little boring but pretty smart and often beautiful-looking in a way that many of the sequels are not.

I'd never heard that term associated with that technique before. Is that really a thing? Are there a lot of older musicals where songs serve as score that isn't part of on-screen performance?

Gwen, you are the best, but your championing of the '74 Gatsby is IN-SANE.

By using the term "classically styled," are you referring to how weak the songs are, or how there are only four of them?

All you have to do is type "butthurt" a couple dozen times and you can start to pull the average down!

Hmmmmm.

"Him." (Pronounced like Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge!: "Hem.") ;)

The Kilmer moments are That Kind of Scene, albeit too brief.

I think in a lot of ways that's because commercials have actually been knocking off the Malick style for years.

I don't know that you have to actually submit to the Oscars for performances, per se. But maybe he campaigned more for Thin Red Line? I remember Civil Action got at least kind of a push.

EXCELLENT IDEA HERE'S ONE

No apology necessary — I think you're right, that "little point" would be to mischaracterize and/or ignore what Malick is actually trying to do ("minor," though, I'd still probably agree with). And I love your reading of To the Wonder. I think the sentiment behind "what is this love that loves us?" is wonderful, but…

I think even beyond critics, people do kind of fetishize scarcity. A lot of folks, I think, would prefer a "perfect" (or at least, extremely good) filmography that has four or five movies on it, versus a less consistently satisfying one that has 10 or 12. Same goes for albums, too. And I get it, but I also get why…

I don't think To The Wonder lacks a thesis — if anything, it has perhaps too much of one? In that the characters don't breathe there as they sometimes get to in Tree or even this new one. At his worst, Malick gets at his theme early and often, and then twirls around in it for a while. Although, on the balance, I liked …

MacGruber's Val Kilmer, yes.

Agreed! I don't love these three recent ones as much as his best work, but I'm disappointed to see that they elicit such anger, even from other critics — as if the film market has been saturated with semi-improvised tone poems.

In which direction?

Dieter von Cunth himself.

It may just not be as definitive as a lot of people are assuming, which would be fine by me, because I really don't want the show to end with a bunch of initial couples drifting back together.