I'll Drink Your Milkshake!!!

Wha!?!?

i saw the movie There Will Be Blood last weekend, and i gotta say, it was kinda weird. it's 2 hours and 40 minutes of Daniel Day Louis speaking crazy talk. He starts of kinda ok, maybe he's just eccentric, but by the end of the movie he is in full blown crazy mode. He's running around a bowling alley yelling about how he's going to drink Paul Dano's milkshake. Paul Dano doesn't even have a milkshake. ionno. As a film, a piece of art that has cultural and aesthetic value, then There Will Be Blood is pretty good. But as a Movie? an entertaining piece of escapism, then maybe not so much. and I am of the opinion, that the best pieces of cinema do both. and if i have to choose between the two, i'd go with the entertaining lowbrow movie almost every time. While i can appreciate the acting, the cinematography and the fine directing, i don't think i'll ever need to see the movie ever again. I'm glad i saw it once, but i'm not going to rush out and buy the DVD, and i can't say i can in good conscious recommend this movie to most of my friends.

So what movie would i recommend? One of my favorite movies that came out last year was "Gone Baby Gone." But Nobody Saw It!!! It's one of those movies you wanna watch and discuss, but if nobody saw it, i don't want to give the ending away. It was beautifully constructed. It got the shaft on the oscar noms. Only one? C'mon academy. Micheal Clayton was good but it wasn't 7 nominations good. Casey Affleck gave another great performance in this movie, i expect to see great things out of him in the future. And his big brother Ben as the director? He was really good. He wasn't overstated or flashy, but he was way better then anyone would have expected, and at times that were indicative that he could have a very good career as a director, and certainly have his next movie proudly proclaim "A Film By Ben Affleck." The film does a terrific job of blending what is wrong and right, and you spend the whole of the movie swimming in a sea of grey and moral ambiguity. It doesn't pick a side, but rather lets the viewer decide for himself what he thinks is right and wrong. We see the choices that the characters make, and we understand the reasons for those choices, and we are left trying to figure out what our own choices would be.

So go out and rent Gone Baby Gone, and tell me what you think. And if you're thinking about going out to see There Will Be Blood, think twice, and make sure you really want to see it...