After a 20-year hiatus, Badlands and Days of Heaven director Terrence Malick emerged from premature retirement with this unexpected but searching adaptation of James Jones’s autobiographical novel about the WWII battle of Guadalcanal. The Thin Red Line is a lyrical, meditative war movie, a philosophical discourse on war itself which doesn’t have a central heroic arc, but rather like one of Wim Wenders’s Berlin angels, leans in and eavesdrops on the thoughts of combatants on both sides of the battle lines. That sense of an omniscience is reflected in images of breathtaking beauty (DP: John Toll) and one of Hans Zimmer’s most spiritual scores.
Staff Pick: Alan & Ingrid
There has truly never been a film about modern war quite like this one: a kind of lyric epic poem about the way men are transformed for good by the experience of war, carefully balancing romanticism and dispassion, action and introspection.
Gavin Smith, Film Comment
A haunting, scattered reminiscence piece, where the mind is allowed to drift through its memories, and retrieve impressions of the beautiful and the hideous, the serene and the hysterical, the banal and the profound.
Jack Matthews, LA Times
It wrestles with complexity, speaks to us in poetry, weaves multiple narrative strands into a tapestry, opens the festering wounds of war and gazes inside without blinking.
Norman Green, Film.com
Media Partner
Terrence Malick
Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Ben Chaplin, George Clooney, Elias Koteas, John Cusack
USA
1998
English
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
Robert Michael Geisler, John Roberdeau, Grant Hill
Screenwriter
Terrence Malick
Cinematography
John Toll
Editor
Billy Weber, Leslie Jones, Saar Klein
Original Music
Hans Zimmer
Production Design
Jack Fisk
90s, Baby!
Ten years. 11 weeks. 90 films from the 1990s. This summer, 90’s Baby! takes a deep dive into a defining decade of cinema.
Lessons of Darkness
Werner Herzog's unforgettable documentary reveals the unfolding disaster of the Kuwaitian oil fields in flames in 1991 as a sweeping inferno of mesmerizing power.
Beau Travail
Inspired by Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Claire Denis' transfixing Beau Travail is set in East Africa. Sgt Galoup (Denis Lavant) reflects on his time in the French Foreign Legion, and the impact of the handsome Sentain (Gregoire Colin).
Three Kings
George Clooney headlines David O Russell's bold, brazen attempt to get to grips with the immediate aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, as 4 US soldiers try to liberate a missing shipment of gold amidst the chaos and carnage.
But I'm a Cheerleader
Megan (Natasha Lyonne) is the perfect All-American Girl, or so she thinks. That is until she’s shipped off to conversion therapy. This pitch black comedy is wrapped in a saccharine bow, featuring the icon herself, RuPaul, as a conversion counsellor.
Magnolia
This deeply personal 1999 California opus is ripe for rediscovery. Mapping the emotional traumas of half-a-dozen major characters as they crisscross the San Fernando Valley in search of either recognition or reconciliation, it's PTA's riskiest gamble.
Election
Tracy Flick (Reece Witherspoon) is running for Student President, but Mr. McAllister (Matthew Broderick) has other ideas... This remarkably sour millennial comedy from Alexander Payne (The Holdovers; Sideways; The Descendents) hits twice as hard today.
Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai
Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) is an assassin, but he's also an existential loner who adheres to his personal code. Despite the thriller trappings, this is really a lampoon of that genre, and a melancholy reverie for the cultural melting pot we call home.
The Straight Story
David Lynch goes a different direction in this linear Midwestern about a septuagenarian (Richard Farnsworth) who drives nearly 400km on a lawnmower to visit his ailing brother (Harry Dean Stanton).
90s Surprise Film
The 90s movie we have all been missing... Join us for a celebratory wake for this year's 90s, Baby series! What you will be seeing is top secret (no, not Top Secret!, that was 1984) but it will be at least 26 years old and it will be new to this series.
The Wind Will Carry Us
Kiarostami's dry comic masterpiece follows a Tehrani film team's thwarted attempts to document a traditional Kurdish funeral... Trouble being, there's no one to bury, and, worse, virtually no cell service...
Fight Club
1999 was a very good year for movies, but nothing captured millennial angst quite so vividly as David Fincher's bruising black comedy about what it means to be a man today. This modern classic does everything short of rattling your seat to get a reaction.