Ebert's final review published

Roger Ebert's final review – of Terrence Malick's 'To The Wonder' – has been posted on his website.

The film, which was released in the UK in February and is due out in the US next week, stars Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem.

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Ebert was lyrical and enthusiastic about the film, while understanding that others might not share auteur Malick's vision.

In general, the film has received mixed reviews.

“Malick, who is surely one of the most romantic and spiritual of filmmakers, appears almost naked here before his audience, a man not able to conceal the depth of his vision,” he wrote.

“'Well,' I asked myself, 'why not?' Why must a film explain everything? Why must every motivation be spelled out? Aren't many films fundamentally the same film, with only the specifics changed? Aren't many of them telling the same story?

“Seeking perfection, we see what our dreams and hopes might look like. We realize they come as a gift through no power of our own, and if we lose them, isn't that almost worse than never having had them in the first place?

“There will be many who find 'To the Wonder' elusive and too effervescent. They'll be dissatisfied by a film that would rather evoke than supply. I understand that, and I think Terrence Malick does, too.

“But here he has attempted to reach more deeply than that: to reach beneath the surface, and find the soul in need.”

The prolific writer penned as many as 300 reviews in a year over his career, which began in 1967 at the Chicago Sun-TImes, a paper he wrote for up to his death last week.

He died aged 70 following a long battle with cancer.