10 Movies That Made Things Complicated To Hide Their Flaws

3. The Tree Of Life

Terrence Malick will forever be proclaimed an auteur film-maker, but there's a very real possibility that he wouldn't be even half as fondly remembered if he'd actually made as many films as he's been linked to over the years. Because aside from Badlands, Days Of Heaven and The Thin Red Line (which is far from perfect), he's made little of real success. The New World has some fans, but they tend to have the zeal of a cult and the size too. Beyond that, he's made a lot of pretty-looking but empty films postulating on the nature of existence.

So it is with The Tree Of Life, a film so brazenly in love with its own philosophical agenda that you half expect it to go dancing over the sun-soaked horizon with it. Though critics somewhat inevitably loved it, it is a film that makes the grand gesture of attempting to answer absolutely everything - life, existence, being - mostly because it has no idea about answering something specific. In aiming so high, it cannot fail, because it means nothing and everything at the same time and because it looks typically beautiful, that gave critics licence to proclaim it a masterpiece.

Watch it without seeking to tune yourself into the landscape of Malick's imagination as if it is profound rather than merely ponderous and it's both dull and at times ludicrous.