There Will Be Blood (2007)

Paul Thomas Anderson and I have the same agreement that Stanley Kubrick and I used to have: I don't like his movies, but that doesn't stop me from thinking they're brilliant. I think Anderson's directing style is so overbearingly character-focused that it becomes easy to forget there's a bigger picture at work. This is again the case with Blood, in which Daniel Day-Lewis plays an oil baron bringing up a new well in a quiet no-man's land where the closest thing he has to competition is the local preacher. The ensuing 160 minutes study him slowly unraveling as he deals with a populace having to choose between faith, family and finance. Day-Lewis plays his character to the hilt as the ruthless bastard that he is. Every inch of him is appropriately easy to hate, but in delving into the nature of evil within his fanatically capitalist extortion, the larger themes, and indeed the whole picture, become a nuanced portrait of a time, place and people. That might sound like intellectual avoidance, but the ideas at work here are deeply complex and as such difficult to divulge. It's the kind of film that will spark discussion regardless of the viewer's like or dislike of the film. It could be interpreted in a dozen different ways, and though I may personally have had difficulty enjoying the film itself, the onslaught of food for thought here tickles like only the very best of movies do. If you have it in you to be genuinely challenged by what cinema has to offer, then this is an absolute must-see.

10 out of 10.