Just watched: There Will Be Blood (2007), written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. In an epic cage match between capitalist rapacity and religious charlatanry, who wins? Duh. Do we need to ask?
As much a pleasure it is to watch Daniel Day-Lewis do anything, including his all-time-great villain work here, I found myself unable to fully get over his impersonation of Hugo Weaving doing an American accent. And the sheer relentlessness of his character’s misanthropy, with neither origin story nor heroic counterweight, left me with no one to root for and thus no love for this movie. Plus, Jonny Greenwood’s score is distracting.
Like Kane in the last century, surely we’ve been misled to regard this film as one of the greatest of the 21st. It’s not even one of the greatest films I’ve seen about greed this century. (No Country for Old Men rightly beat it at the 2008 Academy Awards.) Give me Rian Johnson for savvier filmic critique of avarice or religion.
I don’t normally write negative reviews—what’s the point?—but the overpraise for this one almost demands it. I think maybe people just love them a good, scenery-chewing milkshake monologue. (Please do count me among them.)