There Will Be Blood (2007)

HOLY SHIT. I never quite understood the full extent of my sister's obsession with DDL (that's Daniel Day-Lewis, of course) until now. And believe me when i say that i just didn't think PT Anderson had it in him. I liked each of his film's a little less than the one before it, except for Punch Drunk Love which was far better than Magnolia. But nothing could have prepared me for the Soddom-and-Gomorrah-like wrath of god to be found in this movie.

The film is set in the wide-open-spaces of the American West but any familiarity you might feel from the big cinemascope vistas is soundly squashed by Johnny Greenwood's burning, alienating score (which is augmented, unexpectedly, with the final movement from Brahms's Violin Concerto.) That huge space is the perfect stage for DDL's portrayal of a man of staggering hunger to devour everything before him, and colossal disgust for the world and men.

There's not too much for me to tell you about the story, which unwinds slowly and let's DDL, in each scene, add a block to his swaying tower of insanity. One of the best parts is the opening, about ten minutes with no dialogue, just a man slowly boring into the earth in search of oil, thirsting for the earth's blood.