"The Master": Joaquin gets back to acting.

[UnSub]

I really liked "TWBB". Sociopathic capitalism trumping manipulative religion FTW! 

[Muffled]

thpoilerth

That tidbit makes the movie a lot more interesting and understandable for me, it's a shame that information was left out.

[schild]

I'm just jumping in to say:
1. Daniel Day Lewis is an actual master. So stoked for Lincoln.
2. Philip Seymour Hoffman is more entertaining on screen his his shittiest roles than Joaquin will be any day of the week.
3. This still looks like its worth seeing. But only because pandering Oscar grabs generally are. Except Crash and Mystic River. Those can blow me.

Edit: Also, Haemish is objectively wrong about There Will be Blood. Even if I hadn't been entertained by There Will be Blood (which I was), just as a piece of cinema the thing is goddamn film perfection from beginning to end.

[murdoc]

I... just didn't get it.

The performances are impressive, but the movie itself is extremely dull and just seems to be really in love with itself. This reeks of a 'best actor' delivery vehicle and not an actual movie.

[pxib]

...the movie itself is extremely dull and just seems to be really in love with itself.

A standard P.T. Anderson project, then. I'll wait until it's on the small screen.

[Amarr HM]

The performances are impressive, but the movie itself is extremely dull and just seems to be really in love with itself. This reeks of a 'best actor' delivery vehicle and not an actual movie.

Just saw this & I fully agree, the only reason I didn't switch it off was cause of the performances, some nice cinematography too. Came away thinking it was a pointless movie with a dull narrative, I didn't really care what happened to any of the characters.

[HaemishM]

So against my better judgement, I watched this movie.

Can someone please explain the fucking ending to me? I don't consider myself a stupid man, but goddamnit, what the fuck happened? I sort of nodded off when Joaquin rode the motorcycle off into the sunset but woke back up when he was walking up the steps to Doris's house. Did I actually miss anything that would explain why he and The Master would be sworn enemies if they met in the next life? Maybe it was that Joaquin's entire characterization seemed to be "talk like Mushmouth, act like retard" so I couldn't actually understand the words that were coming out of his mouth in that final scene. Other than the few times he was able to emote (because Anderson just fucking loves to have the camera focus on someone for minutes a time while they do fuckall and other people talk offscreen), he had a terrible performance. Hoffman was brilliant as usual, and I was actually interested in the middle bits with all the processing and applications and stuff. But then it just... ended. At least There Will be Blood had a resolution. This fucking thing... what happened?

[Amarr HM]

I'm all for endings that leave you wondering, but the one in this film only left me wondering why I bothered to sit through it.

My feeling was that it was trying to outline the power struggle between two different breeds of human and who would turnout to be 'the master', similar to There Will Be Blood, 'the stoical religious devout' against the 'battle-hardened mogul'. I think it was a casting issue with Joaquin as the 'animalistic wanderer' pitted against a 'high brow cult leader'. Great actor but too effeminate to carry that persona off.

[HaemishM]

I'm not sure the problem was the actors so much as the message being an utter muddled mess - if that was indeed the message. The problem was that message did not come through at all. And even if that's what he was trying to say with the two factions represented by the actors, the ending didn't resolve any of that nor was it even clear what happened to the cult other than it went to England. Why? No idea.