Combining auteur filmmaking Terence Malick with powerhouse performers Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and Natalie Portman should, in theory, have resulted in cinematic fireworks. Instead, Knight of Cups is a damp squib, its arresting visuals an artistic smokescreen for a barely-there narrative that is unoriginal, insipid and downright alarming in its treatment of women.
With his jaw-dropping version of Rudyard Kipling’s beloved anthology The Jungle Book, which tells the story of young, abandoned orphan Mowgli who has been raised by wolves, director Jon Favreau has achieved the near impossible, managing to stay true to both Kipling’s tales and Disney’s revered 1967 animation, while offering something entirely new.
Unravelling in the familiar, close quarters of a Victorian London conversion, the directorial debut of writer David Farr (Hanna, TV’s The Night Manager) aims for the claustrophobic chills of Rosemary’s Baby, but comes closer to the outlandish bunny boiler camp of Fatal Attraction.
