15 Most Over-Rated Movies Of The 21st Century

Notoriously reclusive and media-shy director Terrence Malick’s films have evolved a lot since his early forays into cinema. Badlands, released in 1973, and 1978’s Days of Heaven, while critically acclaimed and indicative of his bent for stunning cinematography, were relatively straightforward affairs but following a 20-year hiatus from filmmaking – during which he moved to Paris and rumours abounded that he was either dead or teaching philosophy at the Sorbonne – he seems to have done a lot of soul-searching and pondering of life’s big questions, returning in the late 1990s with a style of film that veers ever more towards the metaphysical and artsy-intellectual.

Of course, this style of filmmaking isn’t for everyone – some might even say it borders on the pretentious and self-indulgent – and that’s one reason Malick’s films are often so polarizing and The Tree of Life, his 2011 rumination on the origin and meaning of existence, is one of his most divisive to date, receiving a chorus of boos at its Cannes Festival premiere but also winning the prestigious Palme d’Or.

While visually stunning at almost every turn, it’s sort of like a less linear Boyhood contrasting a micro story of a family in small town 1950s America with scenes depicting the evolution of the universe and existential dilemmas of life that tries to be more meaningful than it really is.