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Hopefully, I wont have to bring my pillow.

I understand that I'm in the minority, but I think Malick is overrated. I saw the The Thin Red Line in theatre and wasn't impressed. Maybe because it came out around the same time as Saving Private Ryan. Also, The New World was underwhelming. Again, I know I am in the minority, but I don't see what the big deal is about his style. It's different and it's unique, but that doesn't automatically tranlsate to good.

^ No it won't. I've seen all 4 of his films and I still think he needs to focus more on narrative than cinematography. #4 - jjboldt Just because it doesn't fit your tastes, doesn't make it overrated. Malick isn't for everyone. His films have great cinematography and are visually stunning but his narratives are uninvolving and his characters are distant. I don't like his films apart from their visual quality, but they're still worth watching.

#6 You are right about the cinematography. There's no argument there. I just feel like the flow of his movies (the 2 I've seen) are too dreary. I don't feel engaged at any point. Though The Thin Red LIne did have it's moments.

Whether jjboldt is in a minority or not is irrelevant. Aesthetics is not a popularity contest. His comments about Malick, however are simply wrong. To compare 'The Thin Red Line' unfavourably to 'Saving Private Ryan' is like comparing Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture to unfavourably to the Barry Maguire anti-war song 'Eve of Destruction'. That is not to say that Maguire's popular song isn't valuable and 'good' song-writing, but it is not music in the way that Tchaikovsky's work is. And this is the point. Malicks films - almost every sequence of every Malick film is CINEMA writ large. They express through imagery, montage, music, camera angle, and dazzlingly complex combinations of all of these. There is no other film-maker in the world today who works at that level. Such a style, even though it primarily works at a subconscious level on the spectator, is 'un-nerving' to 'ordinary viewers' because is is making quasi-intellectual demands that common naturalism - the de facto standard for commercial cinema - almost never does. ('Common naturalism' can yield great masterpieces as well, look at the works of Howard Hawks.) The only two other film-makers in my view who have ever worked with such dense expression are Welles and Renoir, and, of them, only Welles was able to give the kind of grandeur to his films that make the 'War and Peace' syndrome. Interestingly, along with Murnau, Renoir seems to be an influence on Malick - see 'Une Partie de Campagne', for example. This is not to say that Hitchcock, Chaplin, Griffith, Kurosawa, Bresson and other great film-makers have not made immense contributions to the cinema, but each art form has its own poetics and the apogee of each art always evidences its own poetics. Having worked as a humble artisan in the vineyard of the cinema for almost forty years, I will say with every certainty and conviction that I can that Malick will be take his place as the greatest film-maker of his generation. The only contemporary who even comes close, in my estimation is Hou Hsaio Hsien, but his works are 'difficult' in the way that, happily, Malick's are much less so. Some time ago, an American critic - maybe it was Jonathan Rosenbaum - wrote in reference to the films of Robert Bresson that, if you don't 'get' - understand/appreciate - Bresson then you have 'missed the train' - the train of the cinema - a reference to the 'Arrival of a Train' sequence in one of the Lumiere Brothers' earliest and most celebrated films. Bresson's films can be difficult but are transcendentally wonderful. Malick's films are less difficult but no less transcendentally wonderful. The final minutes of 'The New World' from the arrival of John Smith on the horse to the last shot of the film is as close to perfection as any part of any film that I can remember. One can think of sections of each of Malick's films that come close to that perfection. Malick's poetic style is creatively very risky. There is a very fine line between wonder and ridicule. With each new Malick film I am scared that it will fall to bits, but amazingly, it turns to gold each time. It took me four (cinema) viewings of 'Citizen Kane' to recognise its genius, three of 'La Regle du Jeu'. I am willing, pleading that 'Tree of Life' will transport me to that special place before I am forced to see it on a screen that diminishes its splendour.