Knight of Cups
Broad Green Pictures | Release Date: March 4, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
53
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
13
Mixed:
24
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMar 10, 2016
Usually, with movies, you can imagine how they were made — how the idea came, and the process of its creation. But Knight of Cups seems as if it arrived whole. If there’s a better film this year, get ready for a very good year. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzMar 4, 2016
The film seems to be fighting a losing battle to make sense of itself, to coalesce into a statement, to not fade away. This feels right. Knight of Cups is not a young man's movie. It's an old man's movie. A philosophically engaged, beatific, starchild-as-old-man's movie. The end is coming. Read full review
90
Village VoiceBilge EbiriMar 1, 2016
Knight of Cups might be both the most intoxicating film he's ever made—a deluge of gorgeous, kinetic images and sounds—and, in some ways, the most perplexing. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzMar 18, 2016
Already being decried as either self-parody or half-assed nonsense, the drama is in fact just as challenging and rewarding as Malick’s previous work, though with a more modern and caustic edge than one-time acolytes might be used to. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Mar 2, 2016
Malick’s tricks may be aging, but every world still looks new through his eyes. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineCarson LundFeb 29, 2016
It has the uncanny quality of an out-of-body experience, not a torn-from-the-heart confessional. Read full review
75
The PlaylistJessica KiangFeb 8, 2015
Formally, it is even more abstract than previous Malick efforts, with on-camera dialogue kept to the barest minimum and the cast instead contributing poetic, banal or philosophical voiceover to the soundtrack, lines which overlap, fade up and fade down into music and silence, contributing to the sense of the film as a philosophical fugue state. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnFeb 8, 2015
Pretty and discardable in equal measures, the movie illustrates ingredients of the filmmaker's appeal while falling short of assembling them into a coherent whole. Read full review
70
SlateDavid EhrlichMar 3, 2016
Malick has moved from self-discovery to self-affirmation; he knows exactly what he’s looking for, and Knight of Cups, for all its splendor, made me wish that he could take a swig and forget. Read full review
70
ScreenCrushE. Oliver WhitneyMar 2, 2016
It’s both an accomplishment in introspective, transcendent filmmaking, and a puzzle as imbalanced as the knight at its center. We may not quite be able to understand it, but Knight of Cups certainly feels like a work of a great talent who’s still figuring out what he’s trying to say. Read full review
70
VarietyJustin ChangFeb 8, 2015
Those who have had their fill of the director’s impressionistic musings will find his seventh feature as empty as the lifestyle it puts on display; for the rest of us, there’s no denying this star-studded, never-a-dull-moment cinematic oddity represents another flawed but fascinating reframing of man’s place in the modern world. Read full review
67
The Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaFeb 29, 2016
The lack of characterization is Cups‘ biggest flaw.... The constant Malick-ian voice-overs – fragmented, hushed, magniloquent – largely replacing dialogue don’t offer much by way of compensation. Read full review
63
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldMar 10, 2016
You keep waiting for the film to come together, for Rick to emerge as a character rather than a cipher, for the women to seem less interchangeable — in short, for a point to it all. By its end, I was still waiting. Read full review
60
Total FilmJamie GrahamMay 4, 2016
This is Malick turning graceful, ever-decreasing circles, though there’s a thrill to seeing him traverse hotel rooms and studio lots, nightclubs and strip clubs, after a career wrapped up in the period and pastoral. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony LaneMar 7, 2016
There are treasures in Knight of Cups. It’s worth seeing just for the underwater shots of dogs as they plunge, mouths laughingly agape, into a pool to grab a tennis ball. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonDave CalhounFeb 8, 2015
Let’s not kid ourselves: cast-iron interpretations of Malick’s recent filmmaking are risky. It’s also a matter of taste. You either slip into the pretty, dreamlike, wistful groove of his later films or you don’t, and even hardened arthouse film lovers may find Knight of Cups way out of their comfort zone. Read full review
60
The TelegraphTim RobeyFeb 8, 2015
Whatever Muse drives Malick, whose best work feels both found – in the sense of discovered in the shoot and edit – and profound, he could be accused of cheating on her in Knight of Cups, leapfrogging between unsatisfactory short-term conquests. His career is quite a journey, but this episode has an empty tank. Read full review
60
CineVuePatrick GambleFeb 8, 2015
Each scene is presented like a taro card for the viewer to assign his or her own meaning. Occasionally this can lead to a profound and deeply personal connection to the film whilst at others it can feel like Malick is overreaching; with large swaths of the narrative washing over you like an agreeable summer's breeze. Read full review
58
ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerMar 5, 2016
There’s a note of reflexive, self-aware irony to it, but portions of Knight of Cups feels as though they’re indulging in precisely this same kind of early-college navel-gazing. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMar 16, 2016
Knight of Cups is a ponderous affair, never taking 30 seconds to make a point when four minutes is available. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMar 10, 2016
I'm all for directors making audiences think, but ultimately, those thoughts need to lead us somewhere. "To the Wonder" didn't, to my mind. I'm not sure Knight of Cups does, either. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy BurrMar 10, 2016
Lubezki is arguably this movie’s secret star, and he invests the movie’s Los Angeles settings with the strangeness and newness of a NASA rover traveling across Mars. Read full review
50
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonMar 10, 2016
This is the kind of film that makes moviegoers long for good, old-fashioned storytelling. Read full review
50
The VergeBryan BishopMar 9, 2016
Filled with flashes of visual beauty and a fistful of interesting ideas, Knight of Cups is — like much of Malick’s most recent work — something that asks to be experienced rather than understood, but by pushing his experimental inclinations further than ever before, he’s ended up with something that’s strangely bereft of poetry or emotional resonance, resulting in a movie that may be off-putting to all but the most ardent Malick die-hards. Read full review
50
TimeStephanie ZacharekMar 5, 2016
For loyal Malick fans, the woozy dream-logic visuals here may be enough. But this director is hardly the perceptive student of human nature he’s cracked up to be. He understands so little about women – and even less about our shoes. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerMar 4, 2016
Knight of Cups isn’t quite as fancy-flimsy as “To the Wonder,” which, as I remember it, consisted mostly of Ben Affleck gazing dazedly at wave formations, but it’s close enough. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMar 3, 2016
In Knight of Cups, as in “To the Wonder,” the deployment of beauty strikes me as more evasive than evocative. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter TraversMar 3, 2016
Must all films about alienation be themselves alienating? Take a walk on the beach and ponder that one. There's a line between artful and arty, and Malick has crossed it. Read full review
50
TheWrapRobert AbeleMar 2, 2016
It’s the movie equivalent of a multi-course banquet of colorful foams: wisps of flavor emerge here and there, and admiration reigns, but in the end you’re unlikely to believe you’ve actually had a meal. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyFeb 8, 2015
Malick's most distinctive ambition here is his attempt to create an almost pointilistic portrait of a man by evoking acute moments of his past and present, and this sustains real interest for a while, as you wait to see how it all might come together. But as the film just keeps offering more of the same...it doesn't build or pay off with what it seems designed to do, which is to provide either a dramatic or philosophical apotheosis. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyKevin P. SullivanMar 2, 2016
Essentially shapeless and paced like the tide rolling in, Knight of Cups should be reserved for hardcore Malick fans only, those who have the patience to metaphorically wade through the literal wading, which there happens to be a lot of in this movie. Read full review
40
EmpirePhil de SemlyenMay 4, 2016
Terrence Malick’s Hollywood tale is a frustratingly fleeting experience, a sleepwalk through Tinseltown that beguiles you with its visual artistry but leaves only the faintest of impressions when the curtain falls. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenMar 16, 2016
There’s no denying the poetry at work in his film, but so much of it is inchoate and fundamentally sexualized that it becomes more of a turn-off than a turn-on. Malick’s Cups is ultimately half-full. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinMar 4, 2016
He has told the story of humanity’s fall from grace so many times that you wonder if his wand is starting to sputter. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranMar 3, 2016
The only thing that keeps Knight of Cups from terminal artistic overreach as it follows Rick around town is the knockout cinematography of three-time Oscar winner Emmanuel Lubezki, who does superb work showing us contemporary Los Angeles in a most magical way. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe DziemianowiczMar 2, 2016
It’s visually sumptuous but laborious. Worse, it’s pretty humorless. Knight of Cups takes itself very seriously. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawFeb 8, 2015
There are moments of visual brilliance here, moments of reverence and even grandeur. He is always distinctive, and anything he does must be of interest. But his style is stagnating into mannerism, cliche and self-parody. Read full review
38
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaMay 4, 2016
Sitting in the theater, watching Knight of Cups, you hear an incredible amount of thought-balloon babble, but you don't hear anything approaching the sublime. Read full review
38
New York PostKyle SmithMar 2, 2016
Chop up the film’s segments, replay them in any order, and things would make no more or less sense. Read full review
37
Washington PostAnn HornadayMar 10, 2016
Knight of Cups may want to be understood as the portrait of a man plunging beneath the veneer of modern life, but it can just as easily be perceived as the self-portrait of a filmmaker in his own Versailles, letting himself eat cake and having it, too. Read full review
0
ObserverRex ReedMar 3, 2016
With the corpse of a nightmare called Knight of Cups, I have finally given up on Terrence Malick. This dog of a film is as riveting and fascinating as a walk-in bathtub. Read full review
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