Blood Makes Critics Swoon

There’s no avoiding it: There Will Be Blood is another long, “indie-flavored, male-centric American art film,” says Variety’s Todd McCarthy. But the “boldly and magnificently strange” flick still has critics enthralled. Following an unsavory and maybe unhinged oil tycoon’s rise to power, the film possesses “a blistering intensity,” raves Newsweek’s David Ansen, “and filmmaking that can make your jaw drop.”

Nothing star Daniel Day-Lewis "has done in the past fully prepares us” for this performance, says Newsday’s Jan Stuart. It's “a watershed achievement,” for Paul Thomas Anderson, who “seems incapable of composing a prosaic shot,” Ansen raves. It rolls towards its shocker ending behind a score by Radiohead’s Johnny Greenberg that is, like the movie, “both beautiful and terrifying.” (More movie review stories.)