There will be even more rave reviews, but for the meantime here's yet another one.

Rating: 8/10 (26 January 2008)

Released to immediate critical and audience acclaim, There Will Be Blood has quickly affixed itself to be the film of the year. Viewing this movie leaves no doubt in my mind that it will pretty much sweep the Oscars (though I prefer No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood has some of those key topics that Hollywood just lo-o-oves to care about), and personal feelings aside it certainly deserves it. In fact, running as it is alongside such fare as Cloverfield, it's nice to actually have an event movie that's worth something, much less so dramatically compelling.
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is the star and, as pretty much every review of this movie in the world mentions, eats up his role and picks his teeth gleefully afterward. But there are other people in this movie, too, and they are likewise amazing. Paul Dano plays Eli Sunday, a priest who at first sets contrast to Plainview's greed, but who eventually comes to become Day-Lewis' strongest doppelganger (in a weird way), and major props should be given to him for his role. Sunday's somewhat caricature aspect (he's pretty much the forerunner of a televangelist) can be controversial for what it says about religion, but of course Anderson writes and directs with more subtlety than that, and the brilliance of There Will Be Blood is not only the fascination behind the character of Daniel Plainview, but the equal-and-opposite (but not quite really opposite if you think about it) character of Eli Sunday. Even keeping in mind that a) Upton Sinclair was a raging muckraker who wrote books pretty much to condemn his characters, and b) current sympathies are very cynical and touchy around subjects of oil barons and priests, Plainview and Sunday come across as some of the strongest characters written for the screen in decades.
And, of course, what review of excellence would this be without mentioning the skill of PT Anderson? Sure, he's mostly known for his assembly dramas, which is somewhat unfair because Magnolia and Boogie Nights are only 2 of his 5 widely-released movies. A lot of people are talking about There Will Be Blood as surprising because Anderson was capable of focusing so much attention and detail to a single character. If those people had paid more attention to Magnolia and Boogie Nights, they'd notice that their success depends upon him being able to attend and express characters fully with as much detail as possible. This is why I think other assembly dramas such as Crash and 21 Grams, no matter how popular, still suck. PT Anderson is an almost old-school director: one whose attention to detail goes over every aspect of the character's presentation from the actor as much as it's singularly aware of everything that is going on visually. Yes, the Anderson long take is featured in There Will Be Blood. Often, in fact! And yes, they're amazing takes in the way that they block and choreograph imagery, as well as create dramatic tension, while not calling much attention to the fact that they are single takes except to people like me who tend to ruin my own movie experiences to paying wayyy too much attention to that.
I do think the ending was slightly a let down not because of the actions that took place, but because the mood changed a lot and suddenly the movie was comedic. However, I can't think of a better way to end it myself, so who am I to speak on the matter? At any rate, this movie is great, and hopefully if you're not convinced to see it by all the other millions of rave reviews from people even more and even less technically credible than me, then this review may put even more weight onto the "Oh, I might need to see this, and soon," side of the scale.
--PolarisDiB