Friday, January 11, 2008

So I saw There Will Be Blood

I wanted to like it. I really did. Maybe that was the problem. I went in with giant expectations and it didn't totally pay off for me. Daniel Day Lewis was very good. Well deserving of all the accolades coming his way. Not to mention that this was over a two and a half hour movie and he was in every single scene. I get that it was a grand character piece and I'm normally on board for these type of films but there really wasn't that much drama. No surprises. Just a long slow decent fueled by greed and power.

The movie was scored very well. If I was ranking this movie on a 5 star scale, it might be worth one star on it's own. It was sporadic, haunting and intense if that makes any sense. My only issue with it was that when the music started, it seemed to allude to something dramatic happening that never came.

There are probably going to be some arguments on which film is the year's Best Picture between this and No Country for Old Men. For me it's a no contest. No Country for Old Men was the better movie. Anybody who feels the same way will be combated by movie elitists who tell you that you "didn't get it" or "had to have a great deal of patience to enjoy a movie like this" and I say fuck that. I would have sat in that theatre for 6 hours as long as it's entertaining me.

Maybe I will rate it on a 5 star scale:
3 stars. As much as it seemed like I hated it, I didn't. I just didn't love it. I went in expecting to see the next great American film and I did not. Great performance, beautifully shot and wonderfully scored and still worth seeing.

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