A Review: There Will Be Blood

"I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. . .  I hate most people."

                                                                                                                                                  --Daniel Plainview

Daniel Plainview has done whatever it took him to get to the top of the oil business, to do deals with others to attain his wealth, success and seclusion. Although I won't say he wasn't an honest, hardworking businessman who took all the (nearly) legal steps to get to where he is by the end. Eventually spending his days shooting his rifle at random objects inside the halls of his mansion.

Drunk, dark, wobbly, and greasy. But alas, this is we feel, the payoff he has been working his whole life for. To do what he wants, inside his own walls, with only himself.

The two scenes that follow that introduction to Old Man Plainview are both, powerful, darkly comic and quite simply an astonishing show of an acting Grandmaster, who essentially, is just not acting anymore.

A Review: Knight & Day

Staring ominously at someone you've never met (while wearing Nicholson style black sunglasses) is no way to behave. Speaking like that to someone is another thing not to do in social situations... Especially inside an airport in 2010 America. 

Which is how Roy Miller (Cruise) conducts himself the first time we meet him. June Haven (Diaz) reacts by trading secrets and stories with him over cheesy music on an airplane bound for Boston. Hmm... Okay. 2 minutes later, an inspired and unique fight sequence takes place aboard their plane with June in the bathroom with "Just-met-that-someone-who-I'm-starting-to-like" jitters.  

But wait! There's more!