There Will Be Blood

Everything the critics have written and said about this film is true. They may even have been a little harsh in giving it only 10 out of 10. This film is immense.

Daniel Day-Lewis is mesmerising as Daniel Plainview; maniacal, menacing and just plain mean, but also every now and again flashing a glimpse of a heart. He loves his son, that's for sure, the dismissing of him towards the end of the film with the revelation that they're not biologically related rings hollow, the flailing of a desperate man.

Equally compelling is Paul Dano as Eli Sunday, a preacher convinced of his healing powers. His utter creepiness and apparent certainty of belief crash against Plainview's pure greed in episodes of physical and emotional violence. A fantastic scene sees Plainview pinning Sunday to the ground and filling his mouth with oil after the preacher's attempt to extract money from the oil man. "You're a healer are you?" screams Daniel, "then when are you going to come and heal my son" (who has been deafened by an oil well explosion.

The third star of the film has to be Jonny Greenwood's score. It and Day-Lewis's performance seem cut from the same cloth, or I suppose drilled from the same well. The screaching violas, the clicky heart-like percussion, all rolling to enormous crescendos heighten the film's subject matter from the personal to the universal. This is not just a character study of greed or belief, it is the battle between capitalism and religion, the story of the gold of the 20th century. I've read about the operatic-ness of the film, and yes that's an apt description, but this is opera that is relevant and believable, not some snicker-worthy grand dame. Between them, Day-Lewis, Dano and Greenwood, all guided by the considerable wisdom and dare I say it - genius - of Paul Thomas Anderson have crafted something that, in the words of Peter Bradshaw, "all directors, and all moviegoers, will want to measure themselves. Paul Thomas Anderson is doing something new with cinema, and you can hardly ask for more than that."

See it, see it, see it, see it, see it, see it, see it, see it, see it......