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Voyage of Time: Life's Journey

Voyage of Time: Life's Journey (2017)

March. 10,2017
|
6.5
|
PG-13
| Drama Documentary

A celebration of the universe, displaying the whole of time, from its start to its final collapse. This film examines all that occurred to prepare the world that stands before us now: science and spirit, birth and death, the grand cosmos and the minute life systems of our planet. (Wide release version with narration by Cate Blanchett.)

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Actuakers
2017/03/10

One of my all time favorites.

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Odelecol
2017/03/11

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

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Jonah Abbott
2017/03/12

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

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Juana
2017/03/13

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

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Johan Malmsten
2017/03/14

I knew mostly what I was in for. I've seen a few of Malicks other work. So I expected basically another glorified cinematography showreel. And for the most part that is what I got. And yes, it is stunningly beautiful. Also, a couple of my favourite films of all time are the works of Ron Fricke. Beautiful imagery set to music and sound effects. So I'm no stranger to these "documentary" films. When they are left to their own devices they can be the closest thing to a transcendent experience that a stonehearted heathen like myself is ever going to achieve (hyperbolae, but I guess you get waht I'm getting at). This isn't the usual educational Macgivilray Freeman Docu short that usually has screentime at natural museums. So let's not expect that either.What really holds this film (I have only been able to see the feature length Cate Blanchett version) back is essentially the narration. If Malick could just let the images speak for themselves it would not feel nearly as vapid and navel-gazing. Imagine if we had a chance to take in what we are seeing instead of hearing the interruptions of the rambling infantile questions directed at a anthropomosised mother earth. Just imagine then what kind of conclusions we could get to if not hindered by a director that, I'm starting to suspect, have some serious parental issues. And on a smaller note I'd say that the random miniDV footage may have its place in the story that is being told. But I've seen quite a few IMAX documentaries and I suspect that in the giant screen 40 min version the miniDV is either not present at all, or if present the size of non IMAX footage is usually reduced to only a small part of the screen. This is done for two reasons, first, it lessens the dramatically pixelized and almost no dynamic range nature of the cheap miniDV. But mostly it helps contrast the grandure of the 15/65 footage. Having it as tall as the imax sourced parts does neither part any favor. Also. It may be just me. But I feel that the character cgi wasn't as jawdroppingly seamless as the dinosaurs in Tree of Life (where we first got a real peak at this long gestating project). I see in the featurette that Douglas Trumbul wasn't the VFX supervisor, so that may be it? The space stuff is flawless but the cgi animals were surprisingly lacking in simulated weight and realism. So yeah. Mostly jawdroppingly stunning visuals. Sound design will give a good home system a nice workout, the music is mostly christian church choirs which isn't really my thing but the main complaint is that darned nothingness of a narration. Some films are released with separate music and effects tracks... This one would greatly benefit from a bonus feature like that!

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alexandercradcliffe
2017/03/15

Based on how it was promoted I walk into this expecting a short documentary providing a quick tour of the history of the universe, while this is obviously a large topic there are meaningful things that can be said about it in 45 minutes. (e.g. the sort of content that you'd see in the first lecture of an intro pale course, with very brief coverage of big bang, first gen starts and stellar formation at the beginning).What the movie actually turned out to be was a lot of mysticism wrapped up in a scientific veneer. It repeated asked questions and then invited people to wonder at the open-question rather than attempting to answer the question (or even get the audience to answer the question it was clear that it really wanted to be about spirituality but also wanted to look like a legitimate documentary). This was even the case with questions that many first or second year students would have little trouble answering.It also routinely miss placed images in the chronology it was covering (e.g. talking about pre-Permian cephalopods but showing pictures of cuddlefish, showing iron enriched sedimentary deposits before talking about oxygenation etc...) Still gave it two starts at the photography and CGI was good even if it was sub-par in most other ways.

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Jugu Abraham
2017/03/16

Disappointing work from Malick, who I admired so much in "The Thin Red Line", "Days of Heaven" and "The tree of life." The only saving grace in this work -- great choice of music as in all Malick films, mostly Arvo Part and Beethoven. I prefer Godfrey Reggio's "Qatsi trilogy" to this Malick venture. Even Kubrick surpassed Malick in the early man depictions in "2001--A space odyssey" compared to Malick in this film. The editing in this film and in "Song to Song" is incredibly pedestrian.

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dromasca
2017/03/17

One of the previous films of Terrence Malick , The Tree of Life included a long segment about the origins of the Universe. When I saw that movie it was not at all clear to me how that part was related to the rest of the story - a family saga developing around a complicated father - son relationship. Director Malick was so much in love with that part that he decided to abandon any fiction in his latest movie and focus on the cosmology story. The result is Voyage of Time: Life's Journey which is listed as a documentary, although I have a hard time sticking it into that category either. Documentaries have as goal educating, or making statements about history or society or nature. Here we seem to be closer to poetry or sophisticated video art. What counts eventually is not the category but the result.The film starts with CGI images of the birth of the Universe combined with cosmic video art based on images of the most remote (thus the earliest) galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. It continues with images that describe or reconstruct the birth of Earth, the appearance of water and life, the evolution of plants and animals, the cosmic events (like the asteroid that almost eradicated life on Earth and put an end to the dominance and very existence of the dinosaurs), the emergence of mankind and its evolution towards the mega-cities of today, with their human mosaic and social problems. Most of the images combine fabulous nature filming with computerized effects and they are great, the story telling is visually astounding and has its own logic. I would have loved the film to be only visuals. I would have even accepted the soundtrack although I am not great fan of the world music or Gregorian chants, not when used in New Age messaging. Unfortunately Malick decided to add a spoken commentary and I simply could not make any sense of it. Some incantations and frightened kid questions directed to an over-present Mother (Nature? a feminine God?) were repeated over and over. To be clear, I like and I understand poetry, I respect religious feelings and texts, but the spoken commentary was nothing of these. The fact that Cate Blanchett , an actress that I deeply admired borrowed her voice to read this text, did not help, it just made me mad because I feel that her huge talent was wasted here. The result is just boring, and I surprised myself almost napping despite the beauty on screen.OK. So Terrence Malick wanted hardly to make a film about the history of the Universe. A Film about Everything. The Film about Everything. Now that you made it, please, Mr. Malick , come back to making the films we loved you for, films like Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line.

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