hyped garbage

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I was excited when we found this movie available free to stream, good cast, great reviews. I don't usually turn movies off after 10-15 minutes or write reviews of movies I haven't finished, but here I will make an exception. The narrator's voice had some weird, fake accent and was grating, no one said or did a thing to make the characters interesting, just couldn't do it, I checked out with significant other's total agreement.

I can't believe the high scores for this movie. It was on my cable channel and had high 90's on two review scores so I recorded it. The narrator has the most annoying voice and accent and her voice does not project to the audience at all. The old man who worked for the farmer was the best actor. The photography was beautiful. Everything else was mediocre at best. It just dragged along to an abysmal ending. I cannot believe people are comparing this to movies like Casa Blanca. This is just average. The whole premise could have been developed into a great movie. I guess I don't like this director's style.

Days of Heaven is one of those strange movies that could a masterpiece of cinema if only it knew what to do. Don't get me wrong, it is a good film, but there are a lot of problems with the storytelling.Let's talk about the pros first:This movie is beautiful. It is hard to imagine this film was shot in the 70s, because it looks absolutely gorgeous. There were a lot of smart decisions on how to shoot this film, and almost all of the shots help drive the story and what is happening. This movie could be told quite easily without any dialogue or noise. This is all good, if it weren't for the voice-overs...The voice-overs in this movie are bad... not quite Thief and the Cobbler bad, but getting there. For a movie that is so obviously supposed to be told almost completely through visuals and without much dialogue, it is rather painful whenever there is a voice-over explaining to us what is happening. This movie forgets that the audience isn't "dumb".However, then this brings up some issues with the cinematography and storytelling. There were a couple of noticeable scenes where the cinematography got bad and it was always during dialogue. In one scene, our two protagonists are walking down a river together, but the camera switches from long shots, to close-ups, to mid-shots, the 180 rule gets broken multiple times, the actors start looking directly into the camera, the lighting changes, and sometimes in one shot they will start an action but then in the next shot they will be doing something completely different.For a movie with such great cinematography, it also has some really bad moments as well. Then there is the storytelling: This movie is... unique... to say the least, in how it is told. Most people find this to be the biggest flaw of this film, and I agree. The story isn't very interesting and we never really connect with the characters. In all honesty, by the end of the film I did not know the names of a single character in the film. This could have been intentional, but I thought it was most likely due to the poor audio quality whenever people are talking. Days of Heaven is strange in how it goes about because its pacing gets crazy at times and feels disjointed. Just when you think the film is about to end, you realize it has 30 more minutes left.All in all, Days of Heaven is beautiful to look at and I'm glad I watched it. For a movie released in 1978, it has aged very well (except for audio). The look of the film is the only real reason why you should be watching it. Is there a story here? Yes, but that is the film's weakest point.On a super nit-picky note, the movie frequently uses an excerpt from Saint Saens' Carnival of the animals: Aquarium, and it never really fits. Maybe to people who don't know this piece, but the piece is describing fish swimming around in an aquarium; which never really matches the scenery of open plains with romantic drama :P

It's 1916. Bill (Richard Gere) is a hothead. He accidentally kills his supervisor in a Chicago steel mill. He runs away with his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams) and her sister Linda who narrates the movie. They find work harvesting a vast land for a farmer (Sam Shepard). Bill and Abby pretends to be siblings to avoid scrutiny. The farmer falls for Abby. Bill convinces Abby to marry the terminally ill farmer for his money. However, his death doesn't come and Bill becomes concern.Terrence Malick knows how to make a beautiful looking film. His collaboration with cinematographer Nestor Almendros is absolutely brilliant. The scored by Ennio Morricone invokes an ethereal quality. It's a movie that should be shown in museums. I'm not as taken with a young Richard Gere in the role. He's way too pretty. His wavy hair is too lovely. He has that playboy swagger. He doesn't fit the steel mill worker and farm worker character. He looks more like a hustler. I do love Brooke Adams in the role. The little girl Linda is another matter. She is stiff and I hate the narration. It keeps the movie devoid of emotions. If Malick insists on making Linda the protagonist, he could at least make her interesting.