Interestingly on Yahoo this movie has exactly the opposite ratings by critics and users of Glory Road.  In the case of this movie the critics is better than the users, which is totally understandable.  The New World is an artistic masterpiece, but is almost a disaster as a movie that is fun to watch.  [Glory Road is not very artistic, but fun to watch] The movie drags on terribly slowly, half the material being more suited to an Outdoor Channel documentary.  Now according to Roger Ebert: "Malick's "The New World" places nature in the foreground, instead of using it as a picturesque backdrop as other stories might."   Perhaps a little too much.  Narration of their thoughts by the main characters adds to this documentary feeling.   That aside, I really enjoyed the performance of Q'Orianka Kilcher in the role of  Pocahontas.   I give the movie a happy face in respect for it's artistic value and the fact the story was well portrayed, and again I quote Ebert.  "Terrence Malick's The New World strips away all the fancy and lore from the story of Pocahontas and her tribe and the English settlers at Jamestown, and imagines how new and strange these people must have seemed to one another."   I also liked the way her new relationship developed with the settler John Rolfe later in the movie.   Having said all that, if you decide to go and see this movie, be sure you are wide awake.  If it hadn't been so slow it might have easily been a 2 happy face movie.  Suitable for the whole family.

Lutz's Rating Judy's Rating

Storyline From Yahoo:  In the early years of the 17th century, North America is much as it has been for the previous five thousand years--a vast land of seemingly endless primeval wilderness populated by an intricate network of tribal cultures. Although these nations live in graceful harmony with their environment, their relations with each other are a bit more uneasy. All it will take to upset the balance is an intrusion from the outside. On a spring day in April of 1607, three diminutive ships bearing 103 men sail into this world from their distant home, the island kingdom of England, three thousand miles to the east across a vast ocean. On behalf of their sponsor, the royally chartered Virginia Company, they are seeking to establish a cultural, religious, and economic foothold on the coast of what they regard as the New World. The lead ship of the tiny flotilla is called the Susan Constant. Shackled below decks in her brig is a rebellious 27-year-old named John Smith, destined to be hanged for insubordination as soon as the ship reaches land. A veteran of countless European wars, Smith is a soldier of fortune. He is too talented and popular to have his neck stretched by his own people, and is freed by Captain Christopher Newport soon after the Susan Constant drops anchor. As Captain Newport knows--and the colonists will soon discover--surviving in this unknown wilderness will require the services of every able-bodied man--particularly one of Smith's abilities. Though they don't realize it at the time, Newport and his band of British settlers have landed in the midst of a sophisticated Native American empire ruled by the powerful chieftain Powhatan. To the colonists, it may be a new world. But to Powhatan and his people, it's an ancient world--and the only one they have ever known. The English struggle from the beginning, unable--or, in some cases, stubbornly unwilling--to fend for themselves. Smith, searching for assistance from the local tribesmen, chances upon a young woman who at first seems to be more woodland sprite than human being. A willful and impetuous young woman whose family and friends affectionately call her "Pocahontas"--or "playful one"--she is the favorite of Powhatan's children. Before long a bond develops between Smith and Pocahontas, a bond so powerful that it transcends friendship or even romance. Ratings: Critics  B+    Users B-