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Terrence Malick's Favorite Films
Films Terrence Malick has named as personal favorites or key influences in rare interviews — not films he directed.
Terrence Malick
Ask a director as private as Malick what he loves, and the list tells you more than any interview would. His picks skip the expected canon of austere art cinema and land instead on screwball con artists, silent melodrama, one gloriously deranged Ben Stiller comedy, and a nearly forgotten French axe-murder short that Pauline Kael herself once called her favorite film ever made. What connects them isn't solemnity — it's an eye for the moment when a face, a gesture, or a field of wheat says more than the plot around it.
A waitress from Chicago falls in love with a man from rural Minnesota and marries him, with the intent of living a better life - but life on the farm has its own challenges.
A pair of sisters leave the country for the city after their parents are slaughtered in a mysterious axe murder.
It's no accident when wealthy Charles falls for Jean. Jean is a con artist with her sights set on Charles' fortune. Matters complicate when Jean starts falling for her mark. When Charles suspects Jean is a gold digger, he dumps her. Jean, fixated on revenge and still pining for the millionaire, devises a plan to get back in Charles' life. With love and payback on her mind, she re-introduces herself to Charles, this time as an aristocrat named Lady Eve Sidwich.
A group of con artists stake their claim on a bogus uranium mine.
In Italy, small-town newlyweds Wanda and Ivan Cavalli embark on their honeymoon in the big city of Rome. Ivan dutifully wants to keep appointments with family and church, but Wanda is only interested in meeting her favorite photo-strip star known as "The White Sheik". While Wanda impetuously sneaks away to locate the object of her affections, disconsolate Ivan tries his hardest to keep up appearances with the couple's relatives.
Five young men dream of success as they drift lazily through life in a small Italian village. Fausto, the group's leader, is a womanizer; Riccardo craves fame; Alberto is a hopeless dreamer; Moraldo fantasizes about life in the city; and Leopoldo is an aspiring playwright. As Fausto chases a string of women, to the horror of his pregnant wife, the other four blunder their way from one uneventful experience to the next.
Married for eight years with no children, Brits Katherine and Alex Joyce are driving to Italy, their ultimate destination just outside of Naples to sell the villa they have just inherited from his uncle, the villa where they will be staying during their time there. On the drive, they come to the realization that this trip marks the first time that they have truly been alone together, and as such don't really know one another in the true sense.
A former comic is on the run from the mob.
Clear the runway for Derek Zoolander, VH1's three-time male model of the year. His face falls when hippie-chic Hansel scooters in to steal this year's award. The evil fashion guru Mugatu seizes the opportunity to turn Derek into a killing machine. It's a well-designed conspiracy and only with the help of Hansel and a few well-chosen accessories like Matilda can Derek make the world safe for male models everywhere.
When a Las Vegas performer-turned-snitch named Buddy Israel decides to turn state's evidence and testify against the mob, it seems that a whole lot of people would like to make sure he's no longer breathing.
No films in this genre.
