After a 20-year hiatus, Badlands and Days of Heaven director Terrence Malick emerged from premature retirement with this unexpected but searching adaptation of James Jones’s autobiographical novel about the WWII battle of Guadalcanal. The Thin Red Line is a lyrical, meditative war movie, a philosophical discourse on war itself which doesn’t have a central heroic arc, but rather like one of Wim Wenders’s Berlin angels, leans in and eavesdrops on the thoughts of combatants on both sides of the battle lines. That sense of an omniscience is reflected in images of breathtaking beauty (DP: John Toll) and one of Hans Zimmer’s most spiritual scores.
Staff Pick: Alan & Ingrid
There has truly never been a film about modern war quite like this one: a kind of lyric epic poem about the way men are transformed for good by the experience of war, carefully balancing romanticism and dispassion, action and introspection.
Gavin Smith, Film Comment
A haunting, scattered reminiscence piece, where the mind is allowed to drift through its memories, and retrieve impressions of the beautiful and the hideous, the serene and the hysterical, the banal and the profound.
Jack Matthews, LA Times
It wrestles with complexity, speaks to us in poetry, weaves multiple narrative strands into a tapestry, opens the festering wounds of war and gazes inside without blinking.
Norman Green, Film.com
Media Partner
Terrence Malick
Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Ben Chaplin, George Clooney, Elias Koteas, John Cusack
USA
1998
English
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Credits
Producer
Robert Michael Geisler, John Roberdeau, Grant Hill
Screenwriter
Terrence Malick
Cinematography
John Toll
Editor
Billy Weber, Leslie Jones, Saar Klein
Original Music
Hans Zimmer
Production Design
Jack Fisk
90s, Baby!
Ten years. 11 weeks. 90 films from the 1990s. This summer, 90’s Baby! takes a deep dive into a defining decade of cinema.
Unforgiven
Bill Munny (Clint Eastwood) is face down in pig shit when we first see him. He's a bad farmer, but has a natural facility for killing people – a vocation to which he returns in a quest that combines both profit and justice. Or so he chooses to believe.
Malcolm X
In an indelible role, Denzel Washington give us a layered, compassionate, conflicted man who finds the strength in Islam to transcend his demons and confront the inequity and racism in America head-on. Along with Do the Right Thing, this is Spike Lee's greatest film.
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
A bona fide classic and arguably the greatest Canadian film of the 90s, Girard's dazzling deconstruction of the biopic gives us the mercurial pianist Glenn Gould as Picasso might have rendered him, a cubist portrait combining multimedia vignettes.
Dazed and Confused
The last day of high school in May, 1976: seniors debate party politics while next term's freshmen run the gauntlet of brutal initiation rites, barely comforted by the knowledge that they'll wield the stick one day.
Short Cuts
Altman's adaptation of Raymond Carver short stories, Short Cuts weaves between 8 or 9 overlapping storylines and 22 characters. it's a teeming, caustic and compassionate human comedy; a singularly astringent, often cynical view of America and Americana.
Three Colours: Blue
The first of Kieslowski's acclaimed Three Colours Trilogy, inspired by the French Revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity and the French flag, the Tricolour. Blue stars Juliette Binoche as a young woman grieving her husband and child.
Schindler's List
One of the most acclaimed films of the 90s, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark is the story of a German industrialist whose conscience is stirred to save his Jewish workers from the camps.
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Three Colours: Red
Irène Jacob plays Valentine, a runway model living in Geneva, who crosses paths with a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who's a bit of an eavesdropper. Initially repelled, she becomes intrigued by this man, as do we... Kieslowski's sublime adieu.
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Four Weddings begins with an onslaught of fucks. It's the first signal that this rom-com will break from tradition, despite the ritualized structural conceit described in the title. The witty screenplay is by Richard Curtis — it's still his best.
The Lion King
With its beautifully drawn East African setting, its humour, pathos, and engaging characters, as well as its stirring songs, The Lion King stands as the pinnacle of traditional Disney family entertainment.
Image: © Disney, 1994
To Die For
Buck Henry (The Graduate) wrote this acidic black comedy about a ruthless weather girl on the make (Nicole Kidman in her breakout role). A young Joaquin Phoenix is the dim teen she seduces on her way to achieving stardom.