In his latest movie, Knight of Cups, Terrence Malick asks us to join him, for the third time in a row, on a journey through the meandering thoughts of people lost in life, confessing their innermost moral quandaries to the cosmos as they stumble and crawl across god’s green earth and bask in heavenly sunlight. This time, the setting is Los Angeles, photographed in all its concrete, Art-Deco grandeur by trusted Malick collaborator (and Oscar darling) Emmanuel Lubezki. We follow and listen in on the thoughts of fading movie star Rick (Christian Bale) and, occasionally, his famous friends, as Malick lays out another unbearably thin narrative that’s as deviously frustrating as a 500-piece puzzle with 450 pieces missing. The eminently respected auteur clearly has a firm grip on the art of filmmaking—at his best, he’s one of the greats—but with his work becoming increasingly nebulous and less inviting to audiences, it’s come to the point where patience for his vagaries grows dangerously thin.

In an almost wordless onscreen performance (we hear his voice, but mostly in the form of narration), Bale drifts down the streets of L.A., occasionally jumping in thought to memories from Las Vegas, Century City and Santa Monica. Rick is in a perpetual state of punch-drunk spiritual crisis, surrounded by gorgeous women who glom onto his status, wealth and handsome looks until his emotional ineptness becomes too much to bear, at which point they make way for the next batch of girls to grab at his pants.

Rick’s fleeting romantic partners are played by a dizzying crowd of famous faces: Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Imogen Poots, Teresa Palmer, Freida Pinto, Isabel Lucas and more can now add a Malick film to their resume. The roles are thin—Blanchett plays his ex-wife, Portman plays a fling—but isn’t every role thin in a Malick movie these days? Antonio Banderas makes an appearance a Hollywood playboy who throws a swanky house party littered with real-life celebrities playing themselves (“Look! It’s Joe Manganiello! Nick Kroll! Danny Strong! Wait…Danny Strong? Huh?”). Banderas takes over narration duties for a bit, spouting twisted, misogynist philosophy. “Women are like flavors,” he says in his sumptuous Spanish accent. “Sometimes you want raspberry, but then you get tired of it and you want strawberry.”

Malick does a good job of laying out the monstrous, indulgent allure of showbiz that pulled Rick in and broke him down into the wandering, pulp of a man he is. He’s become a phony, just like all the other soul-sapped leeches overpopulating the trashy town that bred them (to be clear, Angelenos, I mean Tinseltown, or the idea of it, not L.A.). Similarly swallowed by the city is Rick’s brother (Wes Bently), a non-famous drifter whose short temper is inherited from his and Rick’s late father. The particulars of the family drama (and, in fact, most of the particulars of Ricks life) are left for us to imagine on our own, but the quality of Bale and Bentley’s performances helps to form some semblance of an emotional arc.

Some (this writer included) would consider it a duty of a true movie lover to meet the filmmaker halfway when a film’s concepts or ideas are challenging or obscure. But with Malick’s recent work, it feels like he’s not meeting us halfway. We can only give so much of ourselves over to him before his movies start to feel like tedious chores. What’s so tragic about this is that, on a cinematic level, he’s phenomenal: he and Lubezki’s imagery is sweeping, evocative and immaculately conceived. Some moments—like a ground-level shot of Bale taking a knee on the concrete as an earthquake shakes the buildings and people around him—are so exquisite you could cry. But without a deeper sense of cohesion, these cinematic feats start to feel hollow as they pile on top of each other for two hours straight. As with Malick’s last movie, To The Wonder, Knight of Cups topples over, leaving us to sift through a mess of pretty pictures in a desperate search of some morsel of meaning. Like his characters, maybe it’s time for us to wake the hell up.

Chronicling the true story of Iranian artist Afshin Ghaffarian, Desert Dancer is defined by its highs and lows. The stuff you’d expect from a movie called Desert Dancer—that is, dancing…in the desert—is delivered in full by first-time director Richard Raymond, and it’s really good. Though they don’t all take place on sand dunes, the film’s dance scenes are things of beauty, sweeping, wordless tributes to the human body in motion that express the characters’ emotional state better than any words could. Problem is, the rest of the film in between the dance scenes is chock-full of words: hokey, uninspired dialogue, Hollywood clichés, and a superfluous love story sabotage a film that should have been about art’s power to make change, but instead winds up being a formulaic ensemble drama.

Nevertheless, the dancing is great, and a lot of that is due to the context by which it’s framed: for dancing, these people could be killed. Reece Ritchie plays Ghaffarian, a student at the University of Tehran who starts an underground dance troupe with a handful of brave, plucky activist friends, played by Bamshad Abedi-Amin, Tom Cullen, and Marama Corlett. Joining the group later is Elaheh (Freida Pinto), a talented interpretive dancer who quickly emerges as the star player. The troupe must stay underground because dancing is forbidden by the Iranian government, and dancing in public could get you arrested, or worse, murdered by fundamentalist goons on the streets.

Excluding Elaheh, the dancers are all beginners, learning all their moves from YouTube (before Elaheh takes the reins, that is) and practicing in an abandoned warehouse. As their act begins to come together, Ghaffarian convinces the group that they should perform in public. Problem is, the Iranian regime and its followers are ubiquitous as hell, so they’ll have to find somewhere secluded. They decide on putting on their modern dance masterpiece in the desert, inviting a small group of select, progressive young folks to be their audience. If word gets out about the show, it could spell their doom, but the feeling of freedom, to them, would be worth every drop of blood.

On a grand scale, Ghaffarian’s story of putting his life on the line to create art is poignant and inspirational. It’s a stirring reminder of art’s true vitality. But the film loses focus constantly, throwing in protracted subplots that sap the gravity out of the story. The most egregious of these detours is Ghaffarian’s romance with Elaheh, who happens to be a heroin addict as well as a gifted dancer. Watching him nurse her back to health adds little to the overarching story, and in hindsight, after seeing how the film ends, this chapter feels completely unnecessary. Pinto and Ritchie’s performances are good, though, so it’s not a total loss.

There are some strange decisions made throughout the film that make it feel somewhat impure. The threat of death doesn’t feel as menacing as you’d think it would, and when violence is shown, Raymond seems to hold back. The characters also speak to each other exclusively in English, which feels odd, especially when they’re discussing things like policies of the Iranian government. This was clearly a film made for Westerners, and as a result it feels less earnest at times. When the characters stop speaking with their mouths and start speaking with their bodies is when things click.

What’ll stick in your mind the most after watching Desert Dancer are the gorgeous dance sequences, each of which is memorable. When Elaheh auditions to be in the dance company, she busts out into an interpretive routine full of undulating motions and delicate swoops of the arm. The music is minimal, accentuating the haunting quality of the performance. The climactic dance in the desert, a three-way routine between Ritchie, Pinto, and Cullen, is a breathtaking display of physical storytelling, as is Ritchie’s solo performance in the film’s final act, which takes place on a theater stage in Paris.

Desert Dancer‘s finale is where it really comes together, Ghaffarian spilling his heart out about the horrific oppression he and his friends have been subjected to back in Iran. What makes it so good (aside from how outstanding Ritchie is), is that the movie finally gets straight to the point: Ghaffarian lived in a world where he wasn’t allowed to be himself, not allowed to be human, a reality he refuses to accept. It’s his ambition and relentless drive to express his true feelings that make his story so extraordinary, and though Raymond takes the long road to get there, he eventually gets it across.

Shortly after the announcement that Knight of Cups would have its World Premiere in competition at the upcoming Berlin Film Festival, the latest project written and directed by Terrence Malick has followed up with a first-look trailer. Full of strangely framed shots from renowned cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (who last worked with Malick on The Tree of Life, make sure to watch our video essay on the Screen Poetry of Terrence Malick), several of them upside down, the Knights of Cup trailer gives brief glimpses at the infidelity and celebrity status that the film might ultimately be about.

Starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and Natalie Portman, the well-known cast extends well beyond its three leads including names like Brian Dennehy, Antonio Banderas, Freida Pinto, Wes Bentley, Isabel Lucas, Teresa Palmer, Imogen Poots, Armin Mueller-Stahl, the voice of Ben Kingsley and others who may or may not survive the final edit. Knight of Cups’ official synopsis is about as cryptic as the trailer:

Once there was a young prince whose father, the king of the East, sent him down into Egypt to find a pearl. But when the prince arrived, the people poured him a cup. Drinking it, he forgot he was the son of a king, forgot about the pearl and fell into a deep sleep.

Rick’s (Christian Bale) father used to read this story to him as a boy.

The road to the East stretches out before him. Will he set forth?

The Knight of Cups trailer is available online through FilmNation, watch it below: