Terrence Malick once took two decades to release his next film: the twenty year gap between 1978's Days of Heaven and 1998's The Thin Red Line was quite the sabbatical, even by his standards of longevity. Today however the cinematic legend is producing films with abandon, with two movies in the last four years and another three set to hit our screens by 2016 - including Knight of Cups, slated for a release date later this year. Malick is not alone in taking prolonged absences from the silver screen: many directors go missing from behind the camera, leaving expectant fans and audiences waiting in earnest for their return. Others are cast aside by Hollywood, after one multi-million dollar flop too many. Some, meanwhile, are just lazy, or consciously resist making too many films. And while Michael Bay continues to make films faster than most people make dinners, there remains a community of more talented (or at least more notorious) director hermits who need to give poor Michael a break. It is time for some of those filmmakers to dust off their director's chairs and return to the big screen after way too long spent inactive.
