Ranking All Of Director Terrence Malick’s Movies
“What are Terrence Malick’s Best Movies?” We looked at all of Malick’s directed filmography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!
We took all of the movies directed by Terrence Malick and looked at his Rotten Tomato Critic, Rotten Tomato User, Metacritic, Metacritic User, IMDB, and Letterboxd scores, ranking them against one another to see which movies came out on top. The movies are ranked in our list below based on which movies have the highest overall score between all 6 review sites in comparison with all of the other movies by the same director. The process is all very scientific with no flaws at all.
The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page. We will update the article if/when a new movie by Terrence Malick is released. Although it probably won’t be immediate so the scores on each site have time to settle and aren’t overly influenced by the early, usually much more opinionated, users.
Happy Viewing!
The Top Film’s Of Terrence Malick
9 ) Song to Song (2017)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 9
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 7
- Metacritc Critic Score: 8
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 8
- Letterboxd User Score: 9
In this modern love story set against the Austin, Texas music scene, two entangled couples — struggling songwriters Faye and BV, and music mogul Cook and the waitress whom he ensnares — chase success through a rock ‘n’ roll landscape of seduction and betrayal.
8 ) Knight of Cups (2015)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 8
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 7
- Metacritc Critic Score: 9
- Metacritic User Score: 8
- IMDB User Review Score: 9
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
Rick is a screenwriter living in Los Angeles. While successful in his career, his life feels empty. Haunted and confused, he finds temporary solace in the decadent Hollywood excess that defines his existence. Women provide a distraction to his daily pain, and every encounter brings him closer to finding his place in the world.
7 ) To the Wonder (2012)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 7
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 7
- Metacritc Critic Score: 7
- Metacritic User Score: 5
- IMDB User Review Score: 7
- Letterboxd User Score: 7
After falling in love in Paris, Marina and Neil come to Oklahoma, where problems arise. Their church’s Spanish-born pastor struggles with his faith, while Neil encounters a woman from his childhood.
6 ) The New World (2005)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 6
- Metacritc Critic Score: 6
- Metacritic User Score: 7
- IMDB User Review Score: 6
- Letterboxd User Score: 5
A drama about explorer John Smith and the clash between Native Americans and English settlers in the 17th century.
5 ) The Tree of Life (2011)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 4
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 5
- Metacritc Critic Score: 3
- Metacritic User Score: 6
- IMDB User Review Score: 5
- Letterboxd User Score: 4
The impressionistic story of a Texas family in the 1950s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father. Jack finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.
4 ) The Thin Red Line (1998)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 5
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 3
- Metacritc Critic Score: 4
- Metacritic User Score: 4
- IMDB User Review Score: 4
- Letterboxd User Score: 3
Based on the graphic novel by James Jones, The Thin Red Line tells the story of a group of men, an Army Rifle company called C-for-Charlie, who change, suffer, and ultimately make essential discoveries about themselves during the fierce World War II battle of Guadalcanal. It follows their journey, from the surprise of an unopposed landing, through the bloody and exhausting battles that follow, to the ultimate departure of those who survived. A powerful frontline cast – including Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Woody Harrelson and George Clooney – explodes into action in this hauntingly realistic view of military and moral chaos in the Pacific during World War II.
3 ) Voyage of Time (2016)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 3
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 4
- Metacritc Critic Score: 5
- Metacritic User Score: 1
- IMDB User Review Score: 1
- Letterboxd User Score: 6
A celebration of the universe, displaying the whole of time, from its start to its final collapse. This film examines all that occurred to prepare the world that stands before us now: science and spirit, birth and death, the grand cosmos and the minute life systems of our planet.
2 ) Days of Heaven (1978)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 2
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 2
- Metacritc Critic Score: 1
- Metacritic User Score: 2
- IMDB User Review Score: 1
- Letterboxd User Score: 1
In 1910, a Chicago steel worker accidentally kills his supervisor and flees to the Texas panhandle with his girlfriend and little sister to work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer. A love triangle, a swarm of locusts, a hellish fire—Malick captures it all with dreamlike authenticity, creating at once a timeless American idyll and a gritty evocation of turn-of-the-century labor.
1 ) Badlands (1973)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 1
- Metacritc Critic Score: 2
- Metacritic User Score: 2
- IMDB User Review Score: 1
- Letterboxd User Score: 1
Dramatization of the Starkweather-Fugate killing spree of the 1950s, in which a teenage girl and her twenty-something boyfriend slaughtered her entire family and several others in the Dakota badlands.
Terrence Malick’s Best Movies
Terrence Malick Review Website Filmography Rankings
| Film | RT Critic | RT User | MC Critic | MC User | IMDB | Letterboxd | Overal Rank |
| Badlands | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Days of Heaven | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Voyage of Time | 3 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 3 |
| The Thin Red Line | 5 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 |
| The Tree of Life | 4 | 5 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 5 |
| The New World | 6 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 6 |
| To the Wonder | 7 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| Knight of Cups | 8 | 7 | 9 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 8 |
| Song to Song | 9 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 9 | 9 |
