Paul Thomas Anderson has never been one to play it safe. Whereas plenty of indie directors
gladly cede to a bit of formula for the security of financing,
Anderson’s films have almost gotten progressively more idiosyncratic
and left-of-center. That trend continues with his fifth feature film, the bold oil-boom epic There Will Be Blood.

Whatever one thinks of it, there isn’t any apt way to characterize There Will Be Blood except as a striking work, and almost inarguably by someone of great
virtuosity. Even for a filmmaker who has reveled in the heyday of the
San Fernando Valley porn boom (Boogie Nights), made it rain frogs (Magnolia) and centered a story of emotional constipation and romantic bloom partially around pudding rebates (Punch-Drunk Love),
this is an audacious film. It’s also a polarizing, punishing work, sure
to alienate a decent portion of whatever small band of mainstream
moviegoers it may woo to theaters, even as it carves out a loyal group
of defenders amongst the intelligentsia.

Using the basic narrative template of Upton Sinclair’s muckraking novel “Oil!” as a jumping-off point, There Will Be Blood
unfolds over the course of a couple decades, against the provocative
and combustible frontier of California’s turn-of-the-20th-century
petroleum boom. The story chronicles the life and times of Daniel
Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis),
a straight-talking but slightly amoral would-be businessman who
transforms himself from a down-and-out silver miner into a self-made,
independent oil tycoon raising his son by himself.

A brutal mineshaft accident busts open his nose and fractures
his leg, but gives Plainview a small stake from which to start. When he
taps an underground vein, more money follows. Then Plainview gets a mysterious tip
from a strange passerby, Paul Sunday (Little Miss Sunshine‘s Paul Dano), that there’s a little town out west where oil is literally oozing right
up out of the ground. Sensing opportunity, Plainview sets out with his
right-hand man, Fletcher Hamilton (Ciaran Hinds), and young son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier, above right),
to take their chances in dusty Little Boston, a hardscrabble community
where the main excitement comes from the holy-roller church of
charismatic preacher Eli (Dano again), Paul’s pious twin brother.

Plainview has a knack for saying the things that he knows people
like to hear, talking about the schools, fresh bread and milk, and
other goods and services that Little Boston will accrue as a result of
their collective acquiescence for his development. An opportunist
himself, meanwhile, Eli wants assurances that his church will see its
proper share of the profits from the drilling. The rest of the film finds Plainview growing his business and grappling
with three major personal conundrums and crises — the sudden arrival of
a long-lost half-brother, Henry (Kevin J. O’Connor),
an oil well accident that costs his son H.W. a loss of his hearing, and
a continued, quiet clash of wills with Eli. As the oil wells raise
Plainview’s fortunes along with those of all around him, these
conflicts and others escalate, and the values of faith, community, hard
work and ambition are imperiled by the corruption and deception born of
“black gold.”

From its purposefully threatening title on down to the gleeful nastiness with which Plainview is imbued, There Will Be Blood
feels like the first work in which Anderson has come fully to peace
with the notion of evil in the world, or at least human wickedness and
wanton destruction. Plainview is, to put it politely, a real
son-of-a-bitch, and a man whose heart hardens further with each dollar
he earns. Anderson’s screenplay easily, and deservedly, draws comparisons to The Treasure of Sierra Madre and Citizen Kane,
by way of its setting and themes — the wild, every-man-for-himself
western edge of the early 20th century, and the manner in which the
movie assays masculinized competition and cresting paranoia. What
Anderson expertly conveys is a deceptive sense of epic scope. We
scarcely leave Planeview’s side, but, thanks to some economically
condensed head-butting with peers, paradoxically have a keen sense of
his place in the oil industry, and the industry’s burgeoning importance
to the country at large.

Similarly, There Will Be Blood’s engaging and effective
evocation of early film history, and silent film in particular, is
purposeful, willful — from the emphasis placed on cinematographer
Robert Elswit’s gorgeous, justly lauded images to the focus on an
isolated, increasingly paranoid central figure. Meanwhile, besting even Michael Mann’s Ali — which opened under the pleading, almost
mournful strains of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me,” for seven
wordless minutes — Anderson’s movie opens with a 14-minute passage in
which no dialogue is spoken.

And yet, for all its superlative production design and just-so sense of order and construction, There Will Be Blood also suffers somewhat from a feeling of stifling self-consciousness. The
film holds one’s attention, it keeps an audience interested, at least,
but it also feels both airless and maybe just a little self-satisfied,
never more so than in its finale, which (over)reaches for profundity
via an act of arbitrary violence. To call the movie an intellectual sham would be an overstatement, and too harsh a critical rendering, but there is a same-note, single-dimensionality to There Will Be Blood,
an anemia aped by Radiohead guitarist’s Jonny Greenwood’s memorable score for the
film — a THX test of nervous string work (particularly the track “Henry
Plainview”) that, somewhat like the story as a whole, comes across as
an elongated act of precious deception.

Plainview and Eli circle one another — not really enemies per se,
but barely swallowed discontent bubbling in each of them — yet little
changes for either man. The audience watches, meanwhile, but doesn’t
deeply identify with either man, particularly once the film ducks
forward in time to 1927, when Plainview’s obsessive bitterness and
mistrust has calcified into performance-art-level theatricality, no
matter Day-Lewis’ mesmeric charm. The film could be read partially as an
allegory of false prophets — of preacher-politician-authority figures
who slyly trade in falsehoods, or talk out of one side of their mouth
while lining their coffers with private gain. But the character of Eli,
as well as Plainview’s conflict with him, isn’t really deeply sketched
out enough to support a sustained vindication of this reading.

There Will Be Blood is, it seems — first, foremost and
achingly so — a movie for cineastes, with less of a realized arc than
an ending designed to be written about. There are far greater sins, of
course, but this eminence front rings of false modesty… or perhaps just
a savvy bit of financial capital raising after all. Deftly played, Mr. Anderson, deftly played. For the full, original-source review, from Reelz, click here. (Paramount Vantage, R, 157 minutes)

Aliens vs Predator: Requiem is a quintessential example of modern-day, “because-we-can” studio
filmmaking — greenlit and indeed wholly conceived not to satisfy any particular
creative notions, but just to wring undiscriminating, genre-fan dollars from
characters for which the studio, in this case 20th Century Fox, already owns
the rights.

I perhaps can’t speak expertly to the movie’s placement
within the canon of the extended Alien
vs. Predator brand (e.g., the comics, novelizations and videogames), but as
a big screen hybrid of two touchstone, extraterrestrial-influenced action
franchises — highlights of which include Ridley Scott’s seminal work of science
fiction and horror, Alien; James
Cameron’s adrenalized masterpiece follow-up, Aliens; and John McTiernan’s 1987, thrill-of-the-hunt, tropic-set Predator, about an otherworldly warrior stalking
and getting stalked by the future governor of California — this wan exercise in
homage induces chiefly sighs. The title creatures are trotted out, blood is
spilt, and roughly an hour and a half later one is free to go on their way and
continue their day, unencumbered by anything as novel as a strong reaction to
the movie, one way or another.

The story unfolds over 24 hours in the small-sized, central Colorado
town of Gunnison, where a
Predator’s ship crash lands after an on-board fracas, and several Aliens
scamper away. Receiving a distress beacon, another Predator shows up to aide
his comrade and track down the offending creatures. Naturally, this means very
bad things for pretty much the entire populace of Gunnison.
That includes Sheriff Eddie Morales (John Ortiz) and his old friend Dallas
(Steven Pasquale), back in town from a recent prison stint. Meanwhile, Dallas’
younger brother Ricky (Johnny Lewis, of the forthcoming One Missed Call) is caught up in a love triangle with high school
student Jesse (Kristen Hager) and her jerky jock boyfriend Dale (David Paetkau,
sneering enough to earn points as an honorary Busey). These characters
eventually cross paths with young mother Kelly (24’s Reiko Aylesworth), a returning soldier, and her 9-year-old
daughter Molly (Ariel Gade).

After a Predator/Alien battle blows out Gunnison’s
electricity and leaves the local power station in shambles, a National Guard
battalion is summoned — apparently operating under the Dominos Pizza dictum of
delivery, because they arrive in less than 30 minutes, only to get dutifully
slaughtered and conveniently bequeath their equipment to our main band of
survivors, who then quarrel about the best method of survival and/or escape.

The movie’s screenplay, by Shane Salerno, is full of generic and/or stilted dialogue, and the characters are
fairly thinly sketched. Ortiz is mightily ineffectual as Morales, and while
part of that is in the character (there’s supposed to be a fraternal power
struggle between he and Dallas), neither the film’s script nor direction is
smart enough to make full, interesting use of that, leaving him twisting in the
wind and audiences wondering how this guy came to be sheriff in the first
place. The script is no great shakes in terms of its narrative plotting either;
in lieu of fresh or imaginative staging, it evidences its… umm, “borrowed”
imagination through tangential set-ups to showcase no fewer than four
alien-bursting-through-stomach sequences.

Still, I suppose the movie serves as a successful mulligan
for 2004’s Antarctic-set Alien vs.
Predator in a couple important respects. Most notably, of course, is the
film’s rating, in line with the R-rated origins of its source franchises. This,
combined with a generally healthy sense of mayhem (e.g., kids in peril, plus
who dies and when) give the film a few moments of fleeting, pleasant, mild
surprise. The problem remains, however, that there’s nothing at all
nearly exceptional about Alien vs.
Predator: Requiem. It necessarily follows that a good bit of the movie’s
action is of somewhat murky design, given the difficulties of CGI rendering and
to-scale battle, but co-directors Colin and Greg Strause, visual effects
supervisors making their respective feature film directorial debuts, muck up
most of even the cheapest thrills of catharsis. There’s still a residual sheen of affection for the best
moments of each of these franchises that makes the excitement of seeing them in
action again tickle the cortex a bit. But there’s no compelling story here and
no top-shelf, bravura execution, so why shell out extra money for nostalgia’s
sake when your own DVD player can provide the same kick? For the full, slightly expanded original review, from Reelz, click here. (20th Century Fox, R,
92 minutes)

A strong and similarly emotionally resonant follow-up to his
2002 debut behind the camera, Antwone
Fisher, Denzel Washington’s sophomore directorial effort is a familiarly
structured but extremely effective drama. Lacking pretense and guile, The Great Debaters tells the true story
of an African-American college debate team who overcomes racial prejudice to
string together an unprecedented number of victories and eventually compete
against the all-white, reigning national champion squad at Harvard.

Set in the 1930s, The Great Debaters unfolds in rural, small town Texas,
against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South. Melvin Tolson (Washington)
is a passionate rhetoric instructor at Wiley
College, an African-American
Methodist school with around 360 students. Competition for his debate team is
fierce, and a slot the previous year doesn’t guarantee selection for one of the
four coveted positions.

After holding spirited tryouts, Tolson selects a squad that
includes one returning member and three new faces. The first woman on the
debate team, Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett), is an aspiring lawyer. Fourteen-year-old
James Farmer, Jr. (Denzel Whitaker) is the exceedingly well-read and mannered
only son of renowned scholar and namesake father James Farmer, Sr. (Forest Whitaker, no relation), the dean of the Wiley faculty. Older, independent-minded
Henry Lowe (Nate Parker), meanwhile, is a fiercely intelligent playboy who
hasn’t previously had to yield to authority or structure.

Tolson schools his students in the finer points of
parliamentary-style debate, but also moonlights working to unionize migrant
farmers and sharecroppers, both black and white. These actions land him in
trouble with local authorities, who are desperate to keep down the working
class, and view his actions as socialist agitation. As the Wiley squad racks up
victory after victory against other black colleges, local and regional, Tolson
begins quietly soliciting invitations for a grander stage, even as various
fissures in the team threaten to tear them apart.

Washington’s work as a director feels in all the best senses
like an extension of the moral persuasiveness he has an actor — the ability to
convey gravitas or righteousness in affecting shorthand, but also the rationale
that motivates someone who commits bad acts, as in Training Day or American Gangster. Here virtue and uprightness are on the side of Tolson and his
pupils, and Washington pushes all
the right narrative levers with expert pressure and aplomb.

Writer Robert Eisele, a distinguished television scribe with
a long list of award-winning credits, crafts an engaging work with crisp
characterizations, and the movie has a nicely parallel real world application
of Tolson’s principles through his (secret, at first) advocacy work for migrant
farmhands. The script doesn’t shy away from the harsh racial realities of the
time period, but neither does it paint all of its characters in solely broad
strokes — either virtuous or despicable. A brutally corrupt and likely racist
sheriff succumbs to pragmatism, while Nate does things that hurt Samantha. If there’s an easily identifiable problem, it’s that the
screenplay too often gives the Wiley team the benefit of the more naturally persuasive
side of an argument in the debate sequence, a gambit that comes to feel like a
bit of a copout.

The solid performances, though — especially from the film’s
young men — hold one’s attention and certainly help mitigate this hitch. While
Smollett too often slips into a highly affected drawl, 17-year-old Denzel
Whitaker is a highly sympathetic figure, carrying himself with the wry smile of
an ever-curious adolescent. Slightly older, meanwhile, Parker (previously seen
in Pride) has brooding charisma and a
killer matinee smile, but a real emotional range as well; despite several
charged or emotional sequences, he saves natural tears for an interesting
scene, and it serves the movie wonderfully. Washington and the elder Whitaker, meanwhile, each deliver
strong supporting turns as authoritarian types bent on instilling discipline,
confidence and inspiration in a new generation. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here. (The Weinstein Company, PG-13, 125 minutes)