The Master

Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, “The Master”, is the story of two men.

One (Joaquin Phoenix) is an aimless, barely functional alcoholic, who is clearly not in control of his own behavior. His sanity is tentative at best. The other (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is an author and the leader of a small spiritual movement. He’s achieved a level of success and notoriety, but it’s clear that his “teachings” may be baseless, unfounded psycho-babble.

The movie revolves around the period when their lives intersect. Each of the men provide a much-needed counterpoint for the other. One gets a structure and a path to follow. A Master. The other receives a devoted follower, and a challenging student; one who may provide the ultimate test of his methodologies.

It’s a challenging, artistic, engrossing film. Like its titular character, “The Master” is captivating, intriguing, and enigmatic. Extremely thought-provoking. And when the credits roll, it may leave audiences wondering whether it was profound… or just full of hot air.

The 2012 Fall Movie Preview – Part I

With this weekend’s release of “The Expendables 2” and “ParaNorman”, the summer movie season is pretty much over. One weekend remains in August, and those movies wont have much room to run before school is back in session.

Nope, the season of the big blockbuster is behind us. It’s time to look ahead to the fall.

Not to despair, though, the fall brings sharp movies for the thinking movie fan. Movies which may have more selective box office appeal, but which may be some of the best movies all year.

So click through to take a look at the first part of this year’s fall preview. Today we’ll look at the last week of August, plus September, and then we’ll come back tomorrow with October and the first week of November. Together they’ll take us right up to the start of the Holiday movie season, and the November 9th release of Skyfall!

Battleship

Right up front? This movie is in the running for the dumbest movie of all time.

There are easily twenty to twenty-five points in the movie where you could look at what’s happening onscreen and list ten good reasons why whatever’s going on would be either impossible, improbable, incongruous, or idiotic. And that’s ALLOWING for the possibility of an alien invasion in the first place, I’m not even counting that…

Yup, this script was someone’s Jr. High creative writing assignment, but on the plus side? They blow a lot of shit up.