Thanks for recommending that film, I hadn't heard of it actually but I have heard of the man who directed it, Terrence Malick, having watched another film of his, The New World, and finding it visually arresting and memorable and yet very, very slow at times, even for my tastes and I love 2001 A Space Odyssey, which is a slow, slow, sllloooowwww film. Anyway thanks for giving me the heads up, I'll definitely be checking it out when it comes around to the UK.
Oh and as for your whole article, it's all opinion mannnn and whilst films and any other creative media can be superior or inferior objectively, relatively our tastes and preferences will determine our views, and those 'preferences' also determine, ultimately, whether we prefer to sometimes look at them objectively as critics do, or, just go along with our gut instinct and leave the thinking to others.
For instance, I just watched a Clint Eastwood film, "A perfect world", and my gut is "telling me" I loved it. Now if I step back from that initial experience, evaluate what was good (in short) that is the emotional connection created between the characters and the audience, the heart-warming energy and poignancy of the film, the fact we care for a 'bad man' who is yet also much more, and the fact all the technical aspects, the acting, cinematography, direction etc was top notch and much more then I'm obviously still going to love it. However it had it's warts: the climax was too drawn out, the "sub-plot" didn't feel as integral to the main storyline and some of the scenes perhaps could have been better paced, and yet these flaws are minimal compared to what is an excellent, emotionally moving film.
Now I love this film, not just because of how objectively good it is, but because I also like character films, films that aren't all about action and mind-blowing special effects (though I enjoy these just as much, when done right). Now to someone else who has less patience than me or whose more interested (or thinks there more interested) in spectacle or story etc then this film might not be for them and they might find it 'boring' or 'tedious' even though it is objectively none of these things. They'd be wrong objectively but right relatively according to their own preferences and experiences which shape those views. After all I'd say human feelings are all relative in their meaning and individual understanding and yet our definitions for them are all objective.
For example if I said I was bored we have a clear, definitive, universally held view of what a feeling of 'boredom' entails and yet people become bored for different reasons; what one might find rivetingly exciting the other mind-numbingly tiresome. It's all very confusing and difficult to reconcile and I'm running out of steam here so let me just end with a quote that I think sums it all up nicely and yet at the same time provokes more questions then it answers (isn't that the best kind of philosophical quote).
"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."- Nietzsche.