There Will Be Blood
November 29th, 2007
There will be puns, there will be awards, there will be awesome. Based on Upton Sinclair’s Oil!, Paul Thomas Anderson (whose movies I often failed to appreciate in the past) has made a magnificent epic about the price of the precious resources, liquid and otherwise, that we extract from the ground — and from other people. Daniel Day-Lewis is reliably fantastic as Daniel Plainview, a prospector turned wealthy oilman and all-around American monster, but the real stunner here is Paul Dano as his nemesis, the pimply-faced fire-and-brimstone preacher Eli Sunday.
This one’s got “movie of the year” written all over it, and I’m already itching to see it again as soon as possible. We’ll have much more on this before the December 26 release. I drink YOUR milkshake!
UPDATED: My gushing review is now up at About Worldfilm.
There Will Be Blood. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007. *****
- Karina Longworth found two tacks from the terrific score, and here’s the latest trailer:
Night on Earth
September 22nd, 2007
How do we relax from the New York Film Festival’s two-movies-a-day schedule? With an old classic, of course, courtesy of the Criterion Collection. Jim Jarmusch’s episodic 1991 taxi cab confidential moves around the globe while Tom Waits growls and hasn’t lost a bit of its spirit and charm. Especially after seeing a film as cynical as Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, I was struck by how good-natured and kind Jarmusch’s vision was.
In the confined spaces of cabs in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki, strangers are meeting strangers and, with the exception of the “bishop” who has the ill fate of running into Roberto Benigni, good things happen. I was especially pleased to note connections between the episodes and to other movies that I’d previously missed. Since this is a Criterion DVD, I shouldn’t have to mention that the quality of the transfer is first rate. Jarmusch won’t watch his own movies after they are completed, so there is no director’s commentary, but he does answer fan questions. Other extras include commentary by the DP and location sound mixer, a Belgian TV interview with Jarmusch, and essays by Paul Auster and others.
Night on Earth. Jim Jarmusch, 1991. *****
