EIMER NOTE: My good buddy Mac wrote the following review for There Will Be Blood, a movie which I wrote about previously and is currently winning a ton of 2007 awards. In addition, it's neck-and-neck with No Country For Old Men in Academy Award nominations with eight each. Enjoy: I'm going to start writing reviews for the movies that I believe that Americans should watch. Paul Thomas Anderson has made one of those movies.
For two hours and thirty eight minutes, I learned about the early origins of the American Oil industry and the sickness of greed that plagued great men. And it's all played vicariously through Daniel Day Lewis, who is in a small league of actors that takes the art to a different level. He gives a frankenstein of a performance as Daniel Plainview, an oilman who starts off the movie mining for silver in the last years of the nineteenth century.
There's no dialogue in what felt like the first fifteen minutes of the movie. And yet you're transfixed by these images of this man digging underground. Plainview eventually backs into oil and the rest of the movie is Lewis pretty much showing off why he is the world's best actor.
Lord Daniel has earned every award he's recieved this year and this movie might steal this years Oscar for best picture.
If I had one critizism at all, it would be the character arc, or lack thereof, of Daniel Plainview. He's an asshole the whole way through, from start to finish and that may be the point of the movie. The whole point of greed. Once it's in your blood, you can't get it out.
All Americans should go see this movie and think about oil and the men that are involved in the oil business and then think about how oil plays a part in our world today and how it has evolved in the last hundred or so years.
This is what you call an important movie. A must see. Plus it has a fuckin' killer soundtrack from Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead. Killer.
EIMER NOTE: Thanks Mac. Great review. Keep 'em coming. This week, I do have a get out of jail free card this Saturday. But, I may blow that on seeing No Country For Old Men. That said, since Mac gets to the movie theater more than myself, I'm going to be posting more of his reviews.
So what did you think of THERE WILL BE BLOOD?
1 comment:
The one criticism of the film is intriguing.
A not-so-perfect example would be the character study of Willy Wonka in the two films. Tim Burton delved deep into Willy Wonka's past childhood history to explore why he became the man he was, while the original had Gene Wilder as this crazy, kooky, sarcastic asshole that loved to make candy without giving too many reasons why. Although I prefer the original, I think they both work depending on what type of character study you're looking to acheive.
And we are talking Willy Wonka here. Which is no Daniel Plainview by any stretch.
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