Movieline Online

THERE WILL BE BLOOD: Although he began his directing career with both critical and commercial success on Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson has had to settle for only the former on most of his subsequent work. Neither Punch-Drunk Love nor Magnolia managed to cross into the mainstream despite the big-name talent involved, with audiences perhaps catching a whiff of artistic arrogance. Whatever the reason, the box-office numbers just haven’t backed up the guy most critics have already crowned the savior of American cinema. And things aren’t likely to change after There Will Be Blood, even with a score of Oscar nominations and Daniel Day Lewis’ win for Best Actor. Make no mistake, Anderson has crafted a powerful film set against the background of oil prospecting in the early 1900s; the kick-off to a modern age that was even more ruthless and cutthroat than those that came before. Daniel Plainview is a despicably soulless creation - a man stripped of all humanity - and yet Lewis’ performan...

THE FLICK: I’ve come to loathe the sort of egotistical first-person film reviews that have taken over the web today, most notably on Harry Knowles aintitcool.com. If I wanted to hear about how many Goobers you ate while standing in line I’d check out your MySpace page, otherwise stick to the facts at hand. That being said, I find it next to impossible to write about The Adventures of Baron Munchausen without getting personal. It was, after all, the film most responsible for sending me off to film school and pursuing my own dream of celluloid artistry. The fact that I ended up a poor man’s Roger Ebert is neither here nor there. Meanwhile director Terry Gilliam’s film remains an undiscovered manic masterpiece, perhaps the best proof since Apocalypse Now that true genius can flourish in the midst of chaos. Based on the historical imaginings of its central character, Baron Munchausen (Robert Neville) is a braggart, a phony and a bald-faced liar of epic proportions, his stories full of outr...

THE FLICKS: The death of the drive-in movie theater left a hole in the hearts of many a genre fan. It wasn’t just enjoying a flick in the great outdoors or smuggling in your own snacks or scoring some nooky during intermission. What the current multiplex lacks is that unique double-feature experience: watching two films in quick succession that complement each other like fine wine with a fancy meal. The Tarantino/Rodriquez project Grindhouse was an attempt to recapture the magic, but After Dark’s Horrorfest got there first, rolling out into theaters as a 3-day festival and now hitting DVD as individual titles or in a comprehensive box set. Even though it will set you back around $70 bucks, the latter is definitely the way to go, mixing the good with the bad, the cheesy with the genuinely chilling, for an old-school drive-in experience. THE DEATHS OF IAN STONE: Likely the most pedigreed title of the bunch, this comes from FX wizard Stan Winston’s studio and features some elaborate CGI w...