There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood should be retitled "There Will Be Oscar for Daniel Day-Lewis". And then left it at that. One of the all-time great performances. Ok, now that that's out of the way, can we get on to how depressing that movie is? As much as I loved it, it was pretty unrelenting miserableness for 2.5 hours. And that ending just made it all the worse.

Here is the thing though. No Country for Old Men deserved the Oscar. And you will never get me to agree with you if you say that There Will Be Blood was a better film. They may be 1-2 over the last few years (and certainly, only the Departed ranks up there in American films during that time), but No Country for Old Men was nearly perfect. This suffers from no female characters, and really, only two characters are developed at all, Daniel and Eli. I wish that more films had women who weren't just there to be plot points or flash some tit, because it's depressing to think of the gender imbalance in Hollywood films. And man, just look at this post, from XKCD (one of the best webcomics ever), about the gender imbalance among the highest grossing films. Admittedly, I am not the typical moviegoer, but the trend is clear: Hollywood is chauvinistic, and there are too few strong women in movies. I also wouldn't mind seeing a River Tam kicking ass film.

Anyway, I felt the film just was all about greed and a very evil person, but without any leavening that No Country for Old Men had.

I do, however, want to drink a milkshake (drink it all up). Which is why, last night, in the middle of the ending scene, I had a strong desire to run downstairs and eat my mint chocolate cookie ice cream, purchased just for this occasion. Which lead me to staring at my fridge magnets and last night's post.

Anyway, next on my plate: a post comparing No Country for Old Men and New York Minute, again two stories of evilness and greed. I expect that No Country for Old Men will be in for a much tougher battle this time.