Terrence Malick’s fifth film as director is perhaps his most ambitious and unorthodox while paradoxically also being his most beautifully, intimate and intensely personal. For the Malick enthusiast, the arrival of The Tree of Life, delayed for over a year in the editing process, is the event of the cinematic calendar, if at the beginning of the 2011 I’d been told I could only watch one film, I would have chosen The Tree of Life without hesitation.

With the release of his fifth feature film as director, The Tree of Life, earlier this year, and the success said film enjoyed at Cannes Film Festival; plus the announcement that Malick will be directing a further two films (filming has already been completed on the first), Malickmania seems to be at an all time high.

In 1998, coming only months apart, two American films centred on Second World War were released in the USA. The first is Steven Speilberg’s Saving Private Ryan, a patriotic celebration of America’s involvement in the European conflict; it famously opens with what is now considered a classic war movie set-piece, a blisteringly violent and frenetic action sequence which recreates the Normandy Landings using hand-held camera work, high shutter speeds and muted colours.

Part Three of Three of this extended edition of Left Field Cinema examining Terrence Malick's masterpiece of the war movie genre - The Thin Red Line (1998). In this episode we examine the films themes, meaning and interpretive possibilities.

Written and presented by Mike Dawson. Quotations read by Gloria Lindh.

Part Two of Three of this extended edition of Left Field Cinema examining Terrence Malick's masterpiece of the war movie genre - The Thin Red Line (1998). Part Two examines what makes the film so unique within the width and breadth of cinema.

Written and presented by Mike Dawson. Quotations read by Will Tristram.

Part One of Three of this special extended edition of Left Field Cinema examining Terrence Malick's masterpiece of the war movie genre - The Thin Red Line (1998). Part one will examine the film extra-textually in relation to Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, Malick's other films, James Jones' original novel and Andrew Marton's 1964 film adaptation.

Written and presented by Mike Dawson. Quotations read by Gloria Lindh.

“The Magic Hour” also known as “The Golden Hour” are the two hours of the day when the sun is setting and rising; painting the sky, ground, objects and people with a sort of golden yellow hue, pronouncing shadows as the light hits everything at an angle rather than the blanket of light we usually witness throughout an average day. Softening light and enhancing colours through mother natures own form of diffusion.

The second installment of the Left Field Cinema series examining the films of America's greatest living film maker, this time his Richard Gere staring sophomore subversion of the Western genre.

Something of an enigma within the breadth of excellent directors across the globe, even Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, and Krzysztof Kieslowski made a few lacklustre features, where as Malick has made four films, and in my personal opinion, four masterpieces.

The first in a series of episodes examining all of Terrence Malick's films, starting here with his 1973 debut which features Martin Sheen in a career best performance as Kit, the cold blooded killer.