As with the two other great films of 2007--David Fincher's Zodiac and Todd Hayne's I'm Not There--Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (which may very well be the most accomplished of the three) is a work so dense that I simply am not prepared to write about it after a single viewing. Needless to say, I was overwhelmed by Daniel Day-Lewis' towering performance--to say nothing of Johnny Greenwood's score or Anderson's utterly-perfect mise en scene. I agree with much of what critics are saying about it, except maybe the idea that it is that huge a step forward from the director's previous works, as if Magnolia (1999) and Punch-Drunk Love (2002) were not the intense breakthroughs that they are. Maybe I'll come around upon a second viewing, but, in any case, There Will Be Blood is certainly worth watching and a film that I will be wrestling with (in a good way) for many years to come.
