There Will Be Blood (2007)

The first I heard of this movie was when the trailer ran before the feature Juno. I leaned over to Gary and said "that'll win best picture." I think I've got a decent shot of having that early prediction come true.

Though it spans decades, my attention was glued to the screen throughout, mainly because of Daniel Day-Lewis's extraordinary performance. The guy might be method-y enough to make me roll my eyes when I read an article about his character immersion, but there's no denying it gets results. The only thing that took me out of the moment were the times when I could see, in close-up, the holes in his pierced ears. With all that can be done with special effects, why does no one ever bother to mask those glaring anachronisms in period pieces?

Really, the only thing that the movie does wrong is to let it go on a bit long. The entire last act could've been edited down to about 5 minutes -- just let us check in with everyone and see how their choices have paid off. I'm actually surprised at the way the final points were hammered since the rest of the film seemed to trust the intelligence of the viewers.

A-