73
Metascore
38 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Los Angeles TimesCarina ChocanoLos Angeles TimesCarina ChocanoA work of breathtaking imagination, less a movie than a mode of transport, and in every sense a masterpiece.
- 88Rolling StonePeter TraversRolling StonePeter TraversMalick and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki -- a grandmaster at blending color and natural light -- craft a tone poem that may throw some audiences through its use of interior monologues.
- 80NewsweekDavid AnsenNewsweekDavid AnsenMalick's magnificent, frustrating epic mixes fact and legend to conjure up a reverie about Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher), her love for Capt. John Smith (Colin Farrell) and her crossing from one culture to another.
- 80TimeRichard CorlissTimeRichard CorlissThis is no breathless film fantasy; its pulse is stately, contemplative. But anyone who has keen eyes and an open heart will surely go soaring and crashing with the lovers lost in Malick's exotic, erotic new world.
- 80The New YorkerAnthony LaneThe New YorkerAnthony LaneWhole passages of non-event stream by, and you half want to scream, and yet--damn it all--by the end of The New World the spell of the images, plus the enigma of Kilcher's expression (she is as sculpted as an idol, and every bit as amenable to worship), somehow breaks you down.
- 75ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliThe New World is beautiful and lyrical and, except for the ill-advised voiceovers, a treat for more than one of the senses.
- 70The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThe Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThis is resolutely a film of the imagination. As with all films in Malick's slim body of work, its imagery, haunting sounds and pastoral mood trump narrative.
- 60Village VoiceJ. HobermanVillage VoiceJ. HobermanMalick's long, moody, diaphanous account of love and loss in 17th-century Jamestown--shot, more or less, on location--rarely achieves the symphonic grandeur it seeks. As an epic, it's monumentally slight.
- 50VarietyTodd McCarthyVarietyTodd McCarthyMalick's exalted visuals and isolated metaphysical epiphanies are ill-supported by a muddled, lurching narrative, resulting in a sprawling, unfocused account of an epochal historical moment.
- 50L.A. WeeklyL.A. WeeklyWell before The New World's two-and-one-half hours are up, Malick's tree-hugging reveries have become suffocating, no matter the unquestionable tastefulness with which they're rendered -- more painterly vistas, more Wagner (and a little Mozart, too), ravishing re-creations of 17th-century London. Surely, only a Philistine could find any fault with this, or believe, perchance, that Malick's famous poetic beauty had turned poetically fatal.