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No Country was a great movie. I loved it, although the ending was very unsatisfying (I understand it, I just didn't like it).
There Will Be Blood was boring and pointless - several times I wanted to quit watching (and my wife actually did quit - she just gave up and called it a huge waste of time), but I kept telling myself: "It's gotta get better, this is supposed to be good."
The acting was superb. That's it. The plot sucked. Plus the score hurt my fucking ears.
I found this review in Netflix that sums up my feelings really well:
Daniel Day-Lewis' intense and spell binding performance aside, I don't get the hype behind this film. The film, which spans 25 years, goes no where and is nauseating slow. Unlike in the movie, Unforgiven, where the slow pace builds tension until Clint's explosion at the end of the film, the slower pace here only allows the tension to fade as events occur too late to have any effect. The perfect example is the confrontation between the antagonist, Daniel Plainview, played by DDL, and his adult son, who is introduced a minute before the scene occurs. The only sympathetic character that you are emotionally invested in, the son, jumps 15 years and immediately we get the confrontation? There is also a subsequent confrontation between Plainview and Paul Dano's character, Eli Sunday, a young evangelical preacher who lures Plainview to his small town to dig for oil and abuses his position as church leader to coerce money for the church (and apparently his own pocket). The final confrontation between Plainview and Sunday is predictable and occurs so late you are wishing the movie would end so you can go home. Anderson thankfully complies and ends the film suddenly, which adds no cinematic improvement other than ending a long and boring film. It should also be noted that having people do things and sometimes speak (the movie opens with 30 mins of speechless non action) is neither plot nor character development. In fact, both are so glaringly absent from this film, you wonder what the critics are smoking. Maybe I am not sophisticated enough, but this film has no plot, no character development, no hook, a tardy climax, and no comprehensible resolution. What it does have is lots of film. The art direction and scenery are fine, but nothing worthy of best picture here. If anything, this film demonstrates just how poor the films of 2007 were, as nothing short of No Country for Old Men is close to being Oscar worthy IMHO.
-----by MP 757698
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