When people decry the state of modern filmmaking, I think they must consider the case of Terrence Malick. The famously private writer-director made his debut with Badlands in 1973, an indie film financed mostly by people outside the industry. Five years later, he followed that up with the gorgeous Days of Heaven, which had a difficult production and lengthy post-production. That was enough to leave him struggling to get a picture off the ground for two decades, until he finally released The Thin Red Line in 1998. It took him another eight years to do The New World, then six more for The Tree of Life. So five movies in nearly 40 years.

But something changed in the 2010s: To the Wonder came out just a year after The Tree of Life and Malick managed to make three more movies (plus an IMAX experience) before the end of the decade. Back in the day, his films were huge events for cinephiles like me, now sometimes I don’t even hear about them at all when they come out (the fuck was Song to Song?). For whatever reason, one of our least bankable directors became his most prolific during perhaps the most commercial era in cinema’s history. I leave it to you to decide if giving Malick access to so many ways to make and distribute movies enabled an auteur to finally thrive or took some of the shine off of him.

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I should watch more Jim Jarmusch movies. That’s it, that’s my big takeaway from finally watching Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai after owning the DVD for probably something like 15 years. I’ve only seen a few of his movies, but I’ve liked them all (especially the beloved Patterson) which has locked a few of them perpetually on my queue (especially Only Lovers Left Alive). My only explanation for why is that he makes weird movies that don’t exactly go the way you’d expect them to, so it’s hard to put yourself in the right mood. And that’s pretty weak sauce, but was definitely true for Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.

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