There Will Be Blood
Posted on January 4, 2008 at 8:00 am
B+| Lowest Recommended Age: | High School |
| MPAA Rating: | R for some violence |
| Profanity: | Some strong language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, smoking |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Brutal graphic murder, industrial accidents, characters (including child) injured and killed |
| Diversity Issues: | None |
| Date Released to Theaters: | January 4, 2008 |
It opens with a scorching contrast of light and darkness. Alone at the bottom of a dark pit, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) stubbornly scratches and claws in the mud. High above, a pitiless sun bleaches a remote desert landscape. Plainview goes back and forth between the dark and the light, repeatedly returning to pick away at the earth. He is as flinty and unyielding as the rocky terrain itself, a man of ferocious resolve seeking something of value deep inside the rock. For almost 15 minutes, there is no other person but the resolute miner, no other sound but his relentless attack on the wall of stone. Finally, it begins to yield tiny bits of previous metal. Plainview falls. He is badly injured. But he perseveres, dragging himself to the assay office.
When we see him again, he is just as focused, just as intense, now seeking another kind of treasure. Plainview supervises a small group of men, digging for oil. To make sure there is no doubt about the nature of the forces that have been unleashed on the earth, it all becomes powerfully clear when one of the wells ignites, creating a vivid scene from Dante’s Inferno, belching fire and brimstone into the night, killing one of the men, leaving his infant son an orphan.
Marjane Satrapi brings her award-winning graphic memoir to the screen in a powerful story of growing up in Iran as the Shah was ousted and hopes for democracy were crushed by the rise of the fundamentalists. Named for the legendary ruin Alexander the Great is believed to have burned, the frank portrayal of Satrapi’s coming of age personally and politically is a stunning achievement. Like the books, it is told almost entirely in black and white, with simple, supple, strong lines that beautifully complement and underscore the starkness of the story.
Tristan (Charlie Cox) promises to bring back a fallen star to win the hand of the girl he loves. To find it, he must cross the wall that divides his village from the magical land of Stormhold on the other side. It turns out that he has a connection to Stormhold that he did not know. And it turns out that the fallen star is not an it but a she — the star has a human form, a woman named Yvaine (Claire Danes). And so begins a journey that will include sword fights and transformations, captures and escapes, bickering and kisses, encounters with rascals, villains, and imprisoned princesses, and reunions with unexpected lost connections.
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(also featuring Pfeiffer). And they will enjoy the 
by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Charles Vess.
puts a struggle for personal redemption and atonement in the context of devastating divides, ethnic, cultural, poltical, and moral, set in Afghanistan before, during, and after the Soviet invasion of 1979. Loyalty, betrayal, even identity itself are themes that echo and circle back on themselves in this moving story of learning what it means to “be good again.”