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Knight of Cups

  • 2015
  • R
  • 1h 58m
IMDb RATING
5.6/10
31K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
4,425
369
Christian Bale in Knight of Cups (2015)
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.
Play trailer2:17
38 Videos
99+ Photos
Psychological DramaDramaFantasyRomance

A writer indulging in all that Los Angeles and Las Vegas have to offer, undertakes a search for love and self via a series of adventures with six different women.A writer indulging in all that Los Angeles and Las Vegas have to offer, undertakes a search for love and self via a series of adventures with six different women.A writer indulging in all that Los Angeles and Las Vegas have to offer, undertakes a search for love and self via a series of adventures with six different women.

  • Director
    • Terrence Malick
  • Writer
    • Terrence Malick
  • Stars
    • Christian Bale
    • Cate Blanchett
    • Natalie Portman
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    5.6/10
    31K
    YOUR RATING
    POPULARITY
    4,425
    369
    • Director
      • Terrence Malick
    • Writer
      • Terrence Malick
    • Stars
      • Christian Bale
      • Cate Blanchett
      • Natalie Portman
    • 212User reviews
    • 232Critic reviews
    • 53Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 3 wins & 9 nominations total

    Videos38

    Trailer #1
    Trailer 2:17
    Trailer #1
    Official US Trailer
    Trailer 2:22
    Official US Trailer
    Official US Trailer
    Trailer 2:22
    Official US Trailer
    A Guide to the Films of Terrence Malick
    Clip 2:31
    A Guide to the Films of Terrence Malick
    Clip
    Clip 1:07
    Clip
    Clip
    Clip 0:33
    Clip
    Clip
    Clip 0:44
    Clip

    Photos142

    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    + 138
    View Poster

    Top cast99+

    Edit
    Christian Bale
    Christian Bale
    • Rick
    Cate Blanchett
    Cate Blanchett
    • Nancy
    Natalie Portman
    Natalie Portman
    • Elizabeth
    Brian Dennehy
    Brian Dennehy
    • Joseph
    Antonio Banderas
    Antonio Banderas
    • Tonio
    Freida Pinto
    Freida Pinto
    • Helen
    Wes Bentley
    Wes Bentley
    • Barry
    Isabel Lucas
    Isabel Lucas
    • Isabel
    Teresa Palmer
    Teresa Palmer
    • Karen
    Imogen Poots
    Imogen Poots
    • Della
    Peter Matthiessen
    • Christopher
    Armin Mueller-Stahl
    Armin Mueller-Stahl
    • Fr. Zeitlinger
    Cherry Jones
    Cherry Jones
    • Ruth
    Patrick Whitesell
    Patrick Whitesell
    • Agent #1
    Rick Hess
    • Agent #2
    Michael Wincott
    Michael Wincott
    • Herb
    Kevin Corrigan
    Kevin Corrigan
    • Gus
    Jason Clarke
    Jason Clarke
    • Johnny
    • Director
      • Terrence Malick
    • Writer
      • Terrence Malick
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews212

    5.631.1K
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    10

    Featured reviews

    5The_Nostromo87

    Truly Upsetting

    When we go into a Terrence Malick film, we generally know what we're in for: a spiritual journey into Man's soul through unconventional, yet beautiful cinematic means. Malick's films are mostly unscripted and plot less, instead using nature to assist them iin creating a narrative by use of both visceral and symbolic imagery. And like Werner Herzog, there seems to be an almost divine force on their side.

    Then there's Knight of Cups: A cinematic farce masquerading as profundity; an excruciating exercise in self indulgent banality. I couldn't believe what was unfolding before me. It was just empty--Lubezki's cinematography, the voice over, the character's-- just empty. A borderline Malick parody. It was almost as if the film was made by a machine, or perhaps some sort of alien being attempting to recreate human emotion. I literally felt nothing while watching it.

    The only justifiable reasoning I can fathom on how Malick directed this film, is if he was trying to give the audience a hands on experience of the superficiality and mundanity of the protagonist's life. If this is the case, then I suppose the film is technically a success. If you can call that a success. I'd say the filming of paint drying would be an equally effective treatment of the subject.
    flimflamfilms

    Not worth seeing even for Malick fans

    I'd seen some negative reviews of this film before I watched it but it's always hard to know whether they're written by people who just didn't get the film or whether they were written by people who are open to something very different who just didn't think the director succeeded in producing something of value.

    Terrence Malick is indeed trying to take his audience in a different direction. He has turned away from the idea of telling a story to focus on the intangible emotional states of his characters, but I don't think many viewers will be able to relate very well to a character who is searching for meaning within an extremely privileged Hollywood social sphere, nor do I think we have much of an opportunity to connect to the film emotionally when it's edited like a music video. The film shifts wildly from one subject to another, the camera continuously in motion, as we tune in and out of incomplete conversations. Laid on top of the soundtrack throughout is slow, ponderous narration from multiple characters, often on subjects that have no immediate relationship to what is on screen at the time.

    It is hard to sit through to the end. I did, though I caught myself daydreaming about other things on several occasions. It's hard to pay attention to something that seems to be making so little effort to hold it, but I was hoping it would go somewhere interesting. Surely the directer of a masterpiece like The Thin Red Line would pull something out of his sleeve to weave the chaos together, but then it ended.

    Unfortunately, I can't tell you which group of reviewers I'm in. I might be the kind who just didn't get it or who aren't open to what Malick was trying to do, but I was thoroughly bored by it. I appreciate that he is trying something different, and this film is that, but I don't feel like I got anything out of it.

    One group who might appreciate this film though is modern architects who put a lot of glass in their buildings. There is a lot of that.
    lor_

    A is for Alienation; A is for Antonioni

    Some random thoughts while watching this pretentious stinker: Film students correctly screen and study the works of Fellini and Antonioni and so did Malick, but ripping them off is inadvisable.

    I saw "Badlands" at its NYFF world preem in 1973 and was a big fan of TM through his next one "Days of Heaven", but....he ended up a hack as witness here.

    Compare careers to Conrad Rooks -as fiercely independent minded if not more so with 2 interesting features to his credit "Chappaqua", plus Herman Hesse's "Siddhartha". No idiot Malick Kool Aid drinking producers to back further follies for him, however.

    Key ripoff: the great Scandi filmmaker Peter Watkins who invented the "You are There" first-person camera filmmaking technique for fictional, historical subject matter - wildly overdone by Malick with wide angle distortion added.

    Ultimate indie pioneer John Cassavetes used improvisation for rehearsals and prep to invent a unique filming style; Malick uses improvisation as a lazy self-indulgence.

    Film Festival-itis: making movies to be "consumed" on the antiquated, dating back to the '30s and '40s of Venice and Cannnes, international film festival as exhibition venue circuit, pandering to the gatekeepers of same: selection committees and junket-style critics, as witness the empty "eroticism" (not) thrown in as chief fetish of a "festival junkie".

    Brain-dead stars: many a big name attracted to this no-script, no- nothing project in order to boast "I worked with Terrence Malick" and then spout gibberish in the inevitable BTS bonus interviews on DVD.

    Film School Error 101: The Shot: when I first became a film buff over 5 decades ago I was fascinated with the "striking shot", a Bertolucci or for that matter Antonioni composition or moving camera that stuck out - the opposite of crafting a real, functioning feature film where both camera-work and editing (and SPFX especially) are ideally invisible once a filmmaker has matured. It's not the shot (battle) that counts, it's the film (war).

    Antonioni, not Clapton or Kilroy, is God syndrome: not just the ending but the endless expanses of emptiness, as mentioned by loyal production designer Jack Fisk, not symbolic but merely undigested Antonioni imitation, see: "La Notte".

    Elephantiasis: in the '60s I watched hundreds if not thousands of experimental film short subjects, screened at Midnight every Saturday and Sunday night at the local art theaters back in Cleveland, drawn from Ann Arbor and other regional festivals. Very educational and formative for a young film buff, with Stan Brakhage, George Kuchar and Ed Emshwiller raised to a pedestal for me. I'm sure Malick did too, but his big-budget feature-length imitations of same are embarrassing and a slap in the face of the many progenitors of the "underground movement" ranging from Maya Deren to even the '60s future pornographers -the Findlays. But he gets away with it, as current viewers and critics have no grounding in film history.

    The Fellini scenes: TM couldn't resist "throwing a party" just like Fellini, but the maestro's parties have life and invention, while here we see clichéd Hollywood types milling about, over-wrangled by some anonymous assistant director, completely artificial in their groupings and movements.

    Lastly, Bale as empty as the project. He gives new meaning to the derisive term "walk-through". And this is after, like the other hapless cast members, being given free rein by an absentee "director".
    MovieIQTest

    Over Half Century late than Fellini's 8 1/2 and

    more clueless, going-nowhere pretentious. Trying so hard to find some unnecessary answers with a film to play out meaninglessly by a guy who miraculously relocated or misplaced himself in lot of big-deal events or scenes, either looking up to the sky or jumped off from a pier into the sea for no obvious purpose but spur-of-the-moment childish behaviors, or entangled himself with some females in close contact, flesh against flesh, intimate but without profound romantic feelings at all, or woken by a sudden earthquake, moronically and aimlessly roamed around inside his room with bare feet littered with shattered glass, then when the aftershock tremors hit again, escaped downstairs, still without shoes, looked up to the sky, saw chopper passing, sirens....on and on, situated himself in desert, movie shooting locations, swimming pool, bed for no purpose. The old voice narration....then with some white hair guys mingled among younger ones....on and on, without any meaningful purpose. lot of wide angled nice scenes, sunsets.

    The whole movie failed to provide the viewers with any obvious intention but hollow camera works. Trying so hard to look deep but ended up with a big NADA! A pathetic copycat tried so hard to look like the heir of Fellini and his 8 1/2 film but failed miserably except in colors and wide-angle lens. A total clueless waste of resources and viewers' time and eyesight.
    7giggs-32527

    A subtle degree of existentialism which grows on you the longer the movie runs

    It takes a while of watching the movie before starting to appreciate it. However, the longer you get, the more it starts growing on you. Its modernistic style is certainly not for everyone - but the combination of beautiful pictures and captivating music as well as the subtle messages of the flick, is in my opinion brilliant. As with many modernistic pieces it requires that you as a spectator participate, which is very giving, that is, if you actually do it. Then you will experience the emptiness we as human beings have to wrestle with: the apathetic nature of just following the flow: the slumber we experience the moment we stop being active and stop shaping our existence. The movie is a reminder not to fall in slumber, but to wake up and see the pearl.

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    Related interests

    Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
    Psychological Drama
    Mahershala Ali and Alex R. Hibbert in Moonlight (2016)
    Drama
    Elijah Wood in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
    Fantasy
    Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (1942)
    Romance

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Although there was a script reported to be between 400 and 600 pages long, all of the scenes were improvised.
    • Quotes

      Joseph: You think when you reach a certain age things will start making sense, and you find out that you are just as lost as you were before. I suppose that's what damnation is. The pieces of your life never to come together, just splashed out there.

    • Crazy credits
      "For optimal sound reproduction, the producers of this film recommend that you play it loud." (In the opening credits.)
    • Connections
      Featured in Hipertenzija (2017)
    • Soundtracks
      The Pilgrim's Progress
      Composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams

      Performed by John Gielgud (as Sir John Gielgud), City of London Sinfonia

      Conducted by Matthew Best

      Courtesy of Hyperion Records LTD, London

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    FAQ19

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • March 4, 2016 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Official sites
      • Official Facebook
      • Official site (Japan)
    • Languages
      • English
      • German
      • Spanish
      • Serbian
    • Also known as
      • Caballero de Copas
    • Filming locations
      • Death Valley National Park, California, USA
    • Production companies
      • Dogwood Films
      • Waypoint Entertainment
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $566,006
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $60,551
      • Mar 6, 2016
    • Gross worldwide
      • $1,026,311
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      • 1h 58m(118 min)
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.35 : 1

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