Badlands

In the fall of 1973, one could see signposts of cinema's future in Mean Streets and The Exorcist, yet with this youthful pair of proto-indie dreamers, Malick was paving a whole new road. It turned out to be the path most traveled.

Days of Heaven put Terrence Malick's intuitions into cogent form, but this is where his art begins.

This first, magnificent, outpouring of the sporadic genius of cinema's equivalent to JD Salinger, Terrence Malick, still seems terrifically modern.

Written, produced and directed by Terrence Malick, pic is his first feature and it's an impressive debut.

Among the great American crime movies, 1973's Badlands stands alone.

[VIDEO ESSAY] Terrence Malick's self-penned feature debut is a haunting road movie pitched in '50s Americana. The film's razor-sharp tone of poetic irony is unique.

The movie is just as free, experimental, and unsure of itself as its main characters are, and thus fits like a glove.

This tender treatment does nothing to alleviate the horror of the atrocities committed.

It's a testament to Bruce Greenwood's acting that Adan never becomes entirely as insufferable as the words that come out of his mouth.

One of Malick's most resonant notions in Badlands is that everyone confronts mortality in his or her own way.

Malick has come to be known and revered as a cinematic poet and philosopher, as a filmmaker who explores big ideas, but in Badlands in particular he also shows a knack for off-kilter humor.

In his debut, Terrence Malick is an uncanny creator of pearlescent forms, a very stark balladeer, Mark Twain's coolly ferocious heir