There Was Very Little Blood

Into the Wild proved rather difficult to find, so we moved on to There Will Be Blood for the time being. In my opinion, this was a rather unfortunate turn of events. This film was the worst film so far, and will likely remain so for quite some time.

I’ll get the good thing out of the way first: the acting was very good. Daniel Day Lewis was excellent in his role. He delivered his lines well, and I actually was disappointed that there were so few of them throughout the movie. Actually, that brings me to my next point: the movie was far too long for its own good, and most of it was not even populated by dialogue. Apparently the key to making an Oscar-winning movie is to include long stretches of time in which very little actually happens. Arguably, these segments are where the film’s cinematography was supposed to shine, but I despised the cinematography. Don’t get me wrong; the technical elements of the cinematography were exactly as they should have been; the framing of every shot was perfectly balanced, the colors were what they should have been, and the focus was precisely in the ideal location, but I didn’t feel that it added anything whatsoever to the movie. I felt like the cinematographer was trying to take the best picture possible, with no concern for how it might help the story. As a result, there were far too many wide-angle shots. I know what the drill looks like, I would like to see the characters now, thank you. Combine this with the general lack of narrative assistance from the cinematography and you might as well have had a radio program. A radio program that would be silent for long periods of time.

Speaking of the film’s audio, the soundtrack was awful. In the first scene, there was some nice mood-setting music, but that was regrettably short-lived. The rest of the film’s score was indescribably poor, and used many times at highly inappropriate moments. For example, when the main character is surveying in the midst of some trees, one should not insert highly suspenseful and intense background music. Also, when things are on fire you shouldn’t use… whatever music was that was in the background during that scene. I cannot even describe what it sounded like.

Do not watch this movie. For your own sake.
I’ve retracted this statement as of this post. There are people out there who like it, and there is a chance you might be one of them, so it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea to watch this one for yourself. If you’re thirty minutes in and hate it, though, feel free to skip to the end.