SONG TO SONG (2017) **

I always find Terrence Malick’s movies fascinating, even if they do have a tendency to leave me cold.  He has always had an eye for capturing beautiful landscapes, but his best films, Badlands, The Tree of Life, and The Thin Red Line, work because we can connect emotionally to the characters too.  Song to Song is for me, his worst film because not only are none of the characters likeable, the world they inhabit is kind of drab.

That’s not entirely correct.  The film is set against the backdrop of the music industry and several musicians (from Johnny Rotten to Iggy Pop to Patti Smith) cameo playing themselves.  A great movie could have been made set in this world, but it’s clear from the outset that Malick isn’t very interested in the cameos, or the various love triangles, or much of anything.

The plot follows a handful of characters (Ryan Gosling, Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman, etc.) who fall in and out of love while attending industry parties and hanging out backstage at concerts.  Malick uses the same kind of set-up he used for To the Wonder.  Most scenes are fragmented, contain dialogue that often feels improvised, and it hops around quite a bit.  This worked well in To the Wonder because it felt like memories of a loved one looking back to a simpler time.  This just feels like snippets of what people do before they hook up/cheat on/break up with their partners.

You know you’re getting bored by a movie when you start counting how many Batmans its director has worked with.  As dull as much of the film is, Val Kilmer has a great cameo as an erratic musician that goes nuts on stage.  Since Malick has worked with George Clooney in The Thin Red Line, Christian Bale in The New World, and Ben Affleck in To the Wonder, all he has to do is find a role for Michael Keaton in his next flick and he'll be five-for-five as far as Batmans go.

Overall, Song to Song isn’t very good, but if you ever wanted to see Magneto bone Thor’s girlfriend, I guess you might want to see it.