There's Power in ‘Blood'

Movie Review:  THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Rating:  *** 1/2  (three and 1/2 stars)

Ever the chameleon, Daniel Day-Lewis disappears into another character and gives arguably his best performance yet in "There Will Be Blood," a powerful drama about the early days of the American oil industry.

Unless you count "Boogie Nights," which went back a few years, this is the first period piece for writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, whose work might be termed divinely-inspired if the film's content didn't make that a potential negative.

Loosely based on Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!" which may still be read in lit classes where the syllabus hasn't changed in 50 years, the film gives us total immersion in its times and places.  It begins in 1898 when a grizzled miner, Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) finds some silver, almost killing himself in the process.

He earns enough to expand his operation, with a few men working for him digging for oil as he envisions going high-tech with drilling apparatus.  As the song says, "Out o' the ground come a-bubblin' crude - oil, that is."  Suddenly Daniel's got a good business going, talking farmers into leasing him their land for a small fraction of the money he stands to make from it.

Daniel hits a motherlode on a tip from Paul Sunday (Paul Dano), who thinks there's a lot of oil under his father's goat farm.  Oh, and Standard Oil is buying up land to the North of them.  Oddly, Paul is never seen again, though he's referred to later.  At the Sunday home Daniel meets Paul's father, Abel (David Willis), brother Eli (also Dano) and the rest of the family.

Soon Daniel's drilling all over the area and planning to build a 100-mile pipeline to get the oil to the sea, rather than pay the railroad to ship it.  He gives lip service to Eli's Church of the Third Revelation but refuses to pay them the $5000 he promised as part of the deal for the Sunday land.

This is the start of an ongoing battle between Daniel's business and Eli's church, one of the film's central conflicts.  The other is between Daniel Plainview and humanity.  He confesses to Henry (Kevin J. O'Connor), who claims to be his half-brother and becomes his confidante, "I have a competition in me.  I want no one else to succeed.  I hate most people."

Even Daniel's son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier), who helps him display his family values to the farmers, ceases to be of use to him after losing his hearing in an accident.  Daniel cruelly abandons him.

To put it simply, more money doesn't make Daniel a better person.  The final act takes place in 1927, when he has everything he ever wanted except a capacity for enjoying it.

Seeing "There Will Be Blood" you're less likely to say, "Oh, another Paul Thomas Anderson movie" than "Who's the new guy?"  Telling an intimate story against a broad canvas (mostly filmed around Marfa, Texas, home of "Giant" and parts of "No Country for Old Men"), he shows a new maturity and an ungimmicky (i.e., no frogs) mastery of the medium.

Probably the most controversial aspect of the film will be the score by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood.  Played mostly by a string quartet, it screeches and thumps to unnerving effect, but is sometimes just too overpowering.

Daniel Day-Lewis is the man to beat in the Best Actor race.  Playing a man who's acting most of the time gives him considerable opportunity to act.  His voice, soothing but firm, is a combination of Sean Connery and Jack Palance.  Paul Dano positions himself as the next Edward Norton.

It's ironic, from our perspective, to see this microcosmic clash between the oil industry and the Pentecostal church, now two bastions of the Republican Party.  "There Will Be Blood" isn't out for irony, or even blood.  It just wants to tell a good story, and it succeeds magnificently.

Simón Says "Boo!"

Movie Review:  THE ORPHANAGE
Rating:  ** 1/2  (two and 1/2 stars)

Is "The Orphanage" ("El Orfanato") about a mother's descent into madness over the loss of a child or do ghosts really exist?  Or is there a third explanation for the strange goings-on in the old dark house?  The only sure thing is that you'll be kept guessing until the last minute of Spain's submission for the 2008 Oscar.

elén Rueda ("The Sea Inside") has one of those dream roles for an actress.  If it were English-speaking (or if Marion Cotillard didn't have a lock on the foreign-language slot) she'd be a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination.  She plays Laura, who was adopted from an orphanage as a little girl and returns as a wife and mother to turn the rundown place into a home for special needs kids.

Her big mistake is having everyone wear masks at a party celebrating the grand opening - an oddly well attended party, considering she's only planning to house five or six children and she doesn't know a lot of people in the area.  Anyway, the masks make it easy for ghosts to mingle undetected and for Laura's son Simón (Roger Príncep) to disappear during the party.  (If you're planning a party, masks aren't the best way for strangers to get acquainted.)

Strange things have already been happening.  Simón, 7, is a loner whose two best friends are imaginary.  In a cave near the house he makes another friend, Tomás, and soon five more.  Laura assumes they're all imaginary until she hears they've revealed to Simón that he's adopted and he's going to die.  Laura and her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo), a doctor, have been waiting for the right moment to tell the boy the truth about his parentage and that he's HIV-positive (hardly a death sentence in this day and age but the screenplay reportedly sat around for close to a decade).

An old woman, Benigna (Montserrat Carulla) comes to the house claiming to be a social worker with an interest in Simón.  That night Laura catches her snooping around their shed.  Simón says his new friends play a game where they "take what you love and leave clues so you can find it."

Months pass after Simón's disappearance and the police make no progress.  They assign a psychologist, Pilar (Mabel Rivera), to the case, but the distraught Laura is getting into parapsychology and invites a medium, Aurora (Geraldine Chaplin), to check out the house.  Carlos and Pilar believe Aurora's encounters with ghosts are staged and Carlos insists it's time to move on - literally.  Laura begs to be allowed to stay behind alone for two days for a last-ditch effort to find Simón through his "friends" and "to say goodbye."

Director Juan Antonio Bayona favors long shots that suggest the point of view of someone - or something - watching or following, but he knows when to move in close for impact.

I'm not a huge fan of ghost stories but those who are seem to love "The Orphanage."  I merely liked it.

Last Train to Geezerville

Movie Review:  THE BUCKET LIST
Rating:  ** 1/2  (two and 1/2 stars)

I thought Carl Reiner was the old guy and Rob was his middle-aged son, but Carl still has some edge to his humor while Rob has been cranking out one movie after another that are so sappy and sentimental they'd embarrass his ex-wife, Penny Marshall.  Maybe Archie Bunker was right and he really is a "meathead."

Rob's latest is "The Bucket List," which is obviously designed with Oscar in mind.  Released at year-end (year-beginning in Atlanta and most of the country), it stars two infallibles, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, playing to their strengths; and being about old people it's designed to appeal to those Oscar voters who actually have time to watch movies.

The movie opens with narration by Freeman, who is the new James Earl Jones.  He sounds like the Voice of God, even when he's not playing God, especially speaking over Himalayan vistas.  He tells us Edward Cole died in May, etc., etc.

The rest is flashback.  Carter Chambers (Freeman) is a mechanic, married forever to Virginia (Beverly Todd in the film's most Oscar-worthy performance because she's not doing something we've seen her do ad nauseam) and father of three.  He's lived a good life, even if the last 40 years or so haven't been very exciting.  Now he has terminal cancer.

Ed Cole (Nicholson) has been married four times but prefers his own company to that of women, on a long-term basis.  He built a billion-dollar business that privatizes public hospitals with the attitude, "I run hospitals, not health spas.  Two beds to a room - no exceptions."  He too has terminal cancer.

It's a shock to Ed, who can afford an entire floor, to find himself sharing a double room with Carter.  Ed's assistant, whom he calls Thomas even though his name is Matthew (Sean Hayes, underplaying too much to make an impact against Nicholson - Hey, it's Jack vs. "Just Jack"!), insists it would be bad p.r. if he didn't play by his own rules.

The freewheeling know-it-all and the noble plodder who really does know it all (Carter missed his calling by not going on "Jeopardy") are an odd couple who bond, as odd couples do in movies.  One day Ed catches Carter working on an old freshman Philosophy exercise, a "bucket list," a list of goals to accomplish before kicking the you-know-what.  It seems different at this end of life than it did at the other, but the idea sparks something in Ed.  He can afford to do anything he wants but has no one to do it with - other than "Thomas," who will go along to make the arrangements; so he makes his own bucket list, merges it with Carter's, and they're off.

Over Virginia's strong objections, the two men set out to race cars, jump out of planes and travel to the French Riviera, Egypt, India, Tanzania, China, the Himalayas and Hong Kong.  Each in some way becomes a better man for the experience and for knowing the other, because there has to be something positive in a feelgood movie about two guys dying of cancer.

The screenplay by Justin Zackham carefully mixes the prescribed amounts of silliness, seriousness and sentimentality with sitcom slickness.  Reiner's direction consists of saying "Action!" and "Cut!" and letting the actors do their thing in between.  There are minor glitches in editing and continuity that keep "The Bucket List" from being the classier act it might have been.

A certain susceptible subset of the potential audience will laugh, cry and find the movie a life-changing experience, but if I were you I wouldn't put seeing it too high on my bucket list.