To The Wonder Reviews
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Terrence Malick is to light as Orson Welles was to shadow: the master.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Creative Loafing
Indisputably comes off as a minor work on the heels of Malick's The Tree of Life but still holds enough of interest for the initiated.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Denton Record Chronicle (TX)
Malick succeeds in creating his a separate reality, one drenched with longing and fear.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
What the Flick?!
It looks great, the sound is interesting, the actors are doing what they are asked to do, but it didn't hit me the way The Tree of Life did. For fans only.
Full Review
| Original Score: 7/10
Oregonian
Any half-serious filmgoers need to see "To the Wonder" for themselves; it remains the product of a fascinating mind.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
MetroActive
If you have the ability to ignore Affleck, To the Wonder is a visual stunner, with a surprising transcendental enthusiasm for everything.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Kaplan vs. Kaplan
Malick, who is obviously unconcerned with his film's commercial success, continues to work with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and together they have grown immensely fond of long, lovely shots of nature.
Canada.com
This latest Terrence Malick piece will make you wonder about a lot of things as your mind wanders through the nooks and crannies of his spinning labyrinth of textures and fragmented narrative.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Jam! Movies
To The Wonder is a meditation on love -- physical, spiritual, emotional -- and regret, and the story seems to belong to the past and to sorrow.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Does it deserve to be seen? Absolutely. Just be aware of what you're getting into.
Top Critic"To the Wonder" finds Malick pursuing a form of visual storytelling that is closer to chamber music, or symphonic rapture, than conventional film narrative.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
To the Wonder suggests the creep of doubt and possibly even despair into Malick's cosmic questing. This may not be as profound as he intends - to be human is to forever question - but it makes for stimulating viewing.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
Must all our choices be connected to a larger cosmic ideal? Is every leaf on Earth so gloriously sun-dappled? There is a point where profundity can cross into parody and To the Wonder skates awfully close to that line.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
Q Network Film Desk
an experiment in fragmented, impressionistic storytelling that keeps its characters just a bit too far out of reach, their symbolic qualities trumping their flesh-and-blood passions
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
San Francisco Examiner
It's a movie to be purely explored, felt and intuited. "To the Wonder" is an example of filmmaking of the highest degree, placing Malick alongside Bresson, Kubrick and Antonioni.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
East Bay Express
If it were anyone else rather than Malick we would forget to care.
Patheos
A profound and mystical exploration of love that juxtaposes marriage between humans with a priest's marriage to God but gives few answers.
Looking Closer
You can climb [Mont St. Michel] through tradition and religion ... and almost touch the heavens. Or walk the other way, into the the gray, where everything loses definition...
Full Review
| Original Score: B
EntertainmentTell
If "Tree of Life" was Terrence Malick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," then "To the Wonder" is his "Blue Valentine." Or possibly his "American Beauty"...
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
TV Guide's Movie Guide
This approach to the material is so quintessentially late-period Malick that naysayers will accuse the man of parodying himself. In truth, he's come up with his purest vision -- and his most streamlined work since Badlands.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
