Bad news: I just saw There Will Be Blood. Good news: the ticket was student-discounted and the popcorn was fantastic! Best popcorn of 2008. Pretty good Fanta, too.
Here are some snide remarks I made about the movie (in my head or sometimes out loud), with movie lines italicized and my lines not:
“I’m your brother from another mother.”
“I just got out of my coma after having battled my evil twin because we were both in love with the same amnesiac woman, but that love story ended when we found out we were sex-altered clones. Do you believe me? We only have so many… Days of Our Lives.”
“You’re just a bastard in a basket. A bastard in a basket. A BASTARD IN A BASKET! A BASTARD IN A BASKET!”
“You’re a basket-CASE! And in case you haven’t figured it out after more than a decade, your son is deaf! As dramatic as your yelling may be, even a drunkard with cirrhosis to your degree might save his voice.”
Later…
“Who edited this? Did they accidentally release all the bad parts?”
“Interest…. waning……”
“Who the hell would let their kid work on an oil derrick?”
“I feel like I have mud shoved up my nose… the mud of inhumanity.”
I wrote a more intelligent description of my reasons for my intense dislike of this movie and posted it with a 3 (or 2? I don’t remember) on metacritic.com. I had to, because I kept ranting to my innocent bystander roommate who hadn’t even heard of the movie about how awful it was. I had to let my irritation, frustration, nauseation out somewhere. And yes, part of me wants to prove to the indifferent world that it’s not that I can’t handle art films. I can handle weirdness. I can handle movies that require long attention spans. I don’t need a constant tap-dance-ragtime-piano act of entertainment. But I had to work really hard to stay with this movie, and I got nothing out of it, except don’t piss off or even associate with Daniel Plainview. Luckily for me, I didn’t answer that personal ad from Oily Dan P. Could’ve been the mistake of my life. Bullet dodged. Phew!
Having spewed on metacritic, I am calming down as I write this. But I think I want to get out the last of my rage. I wish I could remember what I had written. Hmmm…. I thought I made some valid points. Well, of course I did. I agree with me.
A great many of the journal and newspaper critics gave it a 10. There was much citing of the performances within the movie. THE PERFORMANCES DID NOT REDEEM THE ENTIRE EXPERIENCE. If the film as a whole isn’t sound, I chalk it up as a list of well-done elements when dissected but a clunky machine when the parts are together.
Maybe I’ve just never dealt well with horror.
Am I closed-minded for not liking it? I don’t think so. I gave it a lot of chances.
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