There Will Be Blood
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.36 You Save: $10.63 (71%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.87 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of There Will Be Blood
Movie Review: We're not going to give them oil prices. We'll give them quail prices.
Summary: 5 Stars
Paul Thomas Anderson's allegorical update of Upton Sinclair's "Oil" follows Daniel Plainview and Eli Sunday, the two men hell-bent of besting the other as their lives are chronicled in "There Will Be Blood." Daniel Day Lewis' Oscar winning portrayal of Plainview is easily one of the decade's finest, yet little has been said of Paul Dano's job as Paul/Eli Sunday. As Eli, he is the dark side to faith that mirrors Plainview's ruthless competition.
Early in the film, as Plainview conspires to grab the land around Little Boston, Eli asks for 10,000 dollars "for the church." Plainview snorts and sneers "that's a good one." Plainview already sees the Preacher's phoniness, which he continues to exploit as the movie grinds towards its climax. Still, Dano's simple but scheming portrayal of a man who uses God in his ruse much the same as Plainview uses the orphaned HW went unheralded next to Lewis' larger-than-life Oil Baron.
And what an amazing character Plainview is. There is not a spoken word for the movie's first 10 minutes, relying only on Plainview's mannerisms and Johnny Greenwood's grating score. Soon Plainview becomes a rough-hewn but slick-salesman, all too willing to ruthlessly suck the land dry from under them because he can. "I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people," he says to his brother...and then a betrayal soon after codifies Plainview's logic even further.
When the two final betrayals occur at the end of the movie, Daniel Plainview's seething, stored hatred erupts as the final consequence in a life made of cruel ambition from a man who can only see the worst in people. The explosion of violence in a beautiful mansion highlights the contradiction even more, as Eli proves that he's just as willing to sell his soul as Plainview is eager to avenge his lack of one.
Exquisitely filmed and languidly paced, "There Will Be Blood" is a terrific piece of work. Too bad, as many have pointed out, that it comes packaged in a shoddy fold-over cardboard cover that looks like you'd just bought some public domain cheapie from the corner mini-mart. Way to prestige package your best film of the year, Paramount.
Movie Review: The Best Film I've Seen Thus Far This Year
Summary: 5 Stars
"There Will Be Blood" is one of the few films made in recent years that will be long remembered for something more than raking in bucks or featuring the latest flavor of the month topless. That is to say, it's an instant classic. Shot with a lyrical confidence that evokes both Bernardo Bertolucci's "1900" and Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven," it nonetheless firmly establishes its own identity, and if "Boogie Nights" or "Punch-Drunk Love" alone haven't convinced people that Paul Thomas Anderson is the most interesting American director working today, this film certainly should. Loosely based on Upton Sinclair's "Oil" (but really having as much to do with "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," with a little "Chinatown" and "Citizen Kane" thrown in), the tragic drama stars Daniel Day-Lewis, perhaps the greatest British actor of his generation, as Daniel Plainview, an obsessive, sociopathic robber baron who in the first scene literally wills himself back to life and crawls across a desert not so much to safety, but to cash in his haul of silver. Those first five minutes tell us everything we need to know about this character, who will go from bad to worse to worse yet in a depiction of unbridled greed that is refreshing in its brutal honesty. In a country where greed is so often depicted in film as divinely ordained, Plainview will seem a theatrical canard to those who catch glimpses of themselves in him, or in his like-minded foil, the duplicitous Reverend Sunday (played with effete menace by Paul Dano). Though Day-Lewis' portrayal sometimes threatens caricature of actor/director John Huston (whose fine works include "Treasure of the Sierra Madre"), and there seems to be an act missing before the disturbing but inevitable climax of the film, it's tough to find any real flaws in the work, whose raw soundtrack by Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood is often as relentless as Plainview himself. If I have one wish for Paul Thomas Anderson, it's that he resist Hollywood overtures to make the next tinny summer blockbuster or moronic Christmas comedy and instead keep plugging away -- he's on course to go down in history as one of America's truly great filmmakers.Movie Review: A Cain and Abel Show
Summary: 5 Stars
Wow, pretty funny negative reviews.
The packaging was an attempt to be eco-friendly, and I for one liked it. The unnecessary packaging of most DVDs makes them look like, and take up the space of, books, and this is pretentious as well as being a waste of resources. Movies aren't as important as books.
The American west really was a Potemkin village and there were, details at eleven, very few houses especially in California where you could live rough most of the year, and most people didn't have enough money to buy a house. Then as now, as it turns out in the new Depression, most of us scratch to survive. Details at eleven.
People in America then as now really do say howdy and punch or shoot each other. Some do it with their fists some do it with a gun some do it with fine print. Details at eleven.
And we need only read, not only the book on which the film is based (by Upton Sinclair, who ran on a socialist platform for governor of California and was destroyed by a careful media campaign designed by the oil and railroad interests) but also Ida Tarbell's life of John D. Rockefeller to confirm that the early oil business was pretty rough.
Then as now. Then, oil men used force and fraud. Today they take over the US government and invade Iraq as it suits them.
The film, like Jack London, presents the reality as does Tarantino. But the filmgoer, in my view, has a choice. Precisely as he realizes that the choice is between kill or be killed in a Cain and Abel show, he can become Lilith or Obama and refuse the terms of the binarism, and high-tail it out of town on the next train.
At any price, precisely because THEN AS NOW there ain't no way to have any dignity let alone legal tender in this American dream we got going here.
"My days of forgettin' are over. My days of rememberin' are begun."
And we tend to forget, owing to the last scene in the bowling alley, the key scene, the penultimate scene: the dumb Son walks away and becomes the Jack of Hearts,
"Maybe down in Mexico or a picture upon somebody's shelf."
Movie Review: I've never been into Hollywood hype...
Summary: 5 Stars
...and I don't think I had read even one critic's review before going to see this movie. I had high hopes for the movie (for $10, we all would like to enjoy what we see when we go to the cinema, right?), but not exaggerated ones. I too am prone to walking out of films I find unenjoyable, but There Will Be Blood captured me for its entirety. I've read all of the 1 and 2 star reviews, and many people have said character development was poor, or have mentioned the lack of dialogue in the first 10 minutes. I had a completely different experience of this film. The cinematography of Marfa, TX (a place I think most of us would rarely give a passing glance if we drove by) was exceptionally stunning, the musical score disturbingly well-done, and the character development engaging. The focus of this movie is Daniel Plainview (DDL's character). If you don't like 3-hour-long character studies, perhaps this movie isn't for you, but in my view the development of the supporting characters and their relationship to Plainview made his madness and greed all the more believable. Many reviewers said they were "waiting for something to happen" (which never did). With the Hollywood hype, did people expect explosions, strange plot twists, and unforeseen drama? Apparently. TWBB tracks the course of one man's life; it isn't guided by scintillating plot details or shocking moments--although Plainview is, in many ways, quite shocking. And remember, this is (loosely) based on a Sinclair novel, so how much "action" are you looking for in turn-of-the-(19th)-century scripts? I don't want to be one of those people who tells others they "missed the point" if they did not see the value or beauty of this film, because it feels unfair. What I will say, however, is that it is very literary (if not "intellectual"...though not in a high brow way), and takes some investment from the viewer to be properly enjoyed. My best experience watching this film was in a theatre all by myself--no lines, no smacking of popcorn. And it was perfect.Movie Review: One of the best films of the last decade
Summary: 5 Stars
When I first saw "There Will Be Blood," I was disappointed. While I enjoyed the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis and I appreciated the gorgeous cinematography, the film did not do much for me. For one thing, it felt pretentious and overlong, the work of a talented, but self-indulgent director.
What a difference a second viewing makes. One of my favorite film critics, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune, picked the film as his favorite of the last decade, so I decided to revisit it. After that re-viewing, I watched it a third time. This is the rare film that grows on repeated viewings.
The second time around, I did not find the pacing of the film to be slow, but patient. The film, to me, really penetrates to the heart of the American tradition of rugged individualism and the good and bad of capitalism (put roughly, the first half of the film shows the good of capitalism and the second half shows the bad). Daniel Day-Lewis is just mesmerizing as Daniel Plainview, a character so mysterious, he makes Kevin Spacey in "The Usual Suspects" look like Mary Poppins. The lack of any backstory or context provided for him and his son, H.W., will no doubt frustrate some filmgoers, and this film is certainly not for everyone, but for me, it's really excellent stuff.
Every time I come back to this film, I find something new in it; the more I see it, the stranger and sadder and more ambiguous the film seems to me. Many critics have taken issue with the last forty five minutes or so of the film, which takes place much later than the earlier part of the film, but for me, that is what really makes the film great. I would compare the ending of the film to the ending of "Apocalypse Now"; frustratingly eccentric for some filmgoers, but for me, absolutely great.
If you haven't seen this, see it, and if you have, see it again. Whether you loved or hated it the first time, seeing this film once is not enough.
Five stars.