When Terrence Malick returned to filmmaking in 1998 after a 20-year hiatus, no critic wanted to point out that the genius director’s re-entry had landed with a thud. So The Thin Red Line, his adaptation of James Jones’s Guadalcanal novel, received glowing reviews and was nominated for seven Academy Awards, and everybody pretended not to notice that the film was a gorgeous, plotless bore.
When Malick came out with The New World seven years later, though, the novelty of having him back had worn off, and the knives came out instead. His John Smith–and–Pocahontas epic wasn’t just a better movie than …
