Silly Looper is More than Just Your Average Joe

Looper is a silly film. Watching it is like watching your ultra-creative friend present their final project in class. They’re lobbing all kinds of things at the wall, only some of which stick, and most have nothing to do with the assignment. But they’re having fun and so is the class. And inevitably the teacher is loath to give them a bad grade because at least they’re trying to be creative.

Rian Johnson, Looper’s director, is trying very hard to be creative. Not trusting the strength of his premise, he attempts to give you two films for the price of one and sprinkles in some slapstick just for kicks. The first is a science fiction film about assassins and time travel. The second is centered around an old horror movie trope. The bad guys, well let’s just say they are Red Dwarf level bad.

The Two Joes

Looper is about a type of low-level assassin in the year 2042. Rather than stalking their targets these assassins serve more as a body disposal units for their victims who are sent back in time by the mob from 2072 to be eliminated. While well paid, these assassins know that one day their future self will be sent back for elimination and thus their “loop” will be closed. Thus the mob will have to deal with far less “one last job” clichés.

But what if a “loop” isn’t closed and the future self escapes? It’s one of many questions in the film that director Rian Johnson lobs at the audience.

The assassin caught in this dilemma is named Joe played by both Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis as two ends of the same time-line (pictured above in one of the best scenes in the film when they sit down at the local diner for a chat).

While both are the same person, their experience and motivations due to what end of the timeline they represent, are completely different. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the younger Joe as not the smartest cookie who has at least enough sense to understand his future prospects. Bruce Willis fills Old Joe with the desire to protect the woman he loves, it is in part why he has gone back in time to alter the future.

Both are being hunted down by their mob employer who is not interested in such temporal dilemmas.

Time Travel Hollywood Style

Primer is the only time travel film I’ve seen to truly understand the science behind the concept of time travel. Rumor has it they consulted on Looper. It must have been over coffee. Because the science behind Looper’s ideas belongs less to Primer and more to Star Trek.

In Looper, Old Joe’s plan is to go back in time and kill a few people thereby protecting the woman he loves in the future. J.J. Abrams’ used similar type of Hollywood logic when he had Eric Bana’s character Nero go back in time to avenge his destroyed home world. Rian Johnson sticks with the same play book.

More than that he includes a scene featuring Bruce Willis that can be best described as an homage to both Terminator and Die Hard.

But if killing a butterfly can irrevocably change the future, the havoc that Bruce Willis inflicts as the character of Old Joe assures mass chaos in the timeline.

Johnson’s script saves him from having to explain too much as Old Joe snarls, “You don’t want to talk about time travel. If we do we’ll be here all day, making diagrams with straws.”

There is one inspired flourish to the Hollywood time travel formula as the film shows what happens to an older looper’s body when their younger self is altered. It’s an nice twist on the classic mob torture scene.

The Rules of Halloween and Red Dwarf Level Bad Guys

If the first part of Looper owes some debt to many a sci-fi film, the second half owes more to the Twilight Zone. Specifically it reminded me of the episode, “It’s a Good Life.” I even found myself saying out loud, “wish him into the cornfield!”

While the script does the neat trick of making both stories fit together, the film itself loses much of its momentum during the shift. Rian Johnson has to provide a lot of back story to make the second half of the film work. But the momentum is never regained.

It would have helped if the bad guys converging on the two Joes were even the slightest bit competent. They are not. One could call them Stormtroopers but at least Stormtroopers hit something…just not the main characters. These bad guys don’t hit anything during the film, not even innocent bystanders. They are only a credible threat to the crew of Red Dwarf but just not as funny. There is even a bad guy, played by Noah Segan who has been in all of Rian Johnson’s films, who is so incompetent you half expect him to say, “I say it’s Duck season, and I say, FIRE!”

Without a competent threat the film is simply stuck waiting until the final confrontation between the two Joes. But hey the payoff is worthwhile and at least you can go get a refill of popcorn.

Full Circle

This is the kind of film that works if everyone is having fun. And they seem to be except for Paul Dano who for some reason is way overacting in his scenes. It is especially nice to see Bruce Willis actually acting in a role. The last time that happened was in Unbreakable.

Is Looper a good film? It is not as good as the last indie feature I saw Joseph Gordon-Levitt in, The Lookout; it is not as good as the last film Rian Johnson did featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brick; and it is not even in the same league as Bruce Willis’s best time travel film 12 Monkeys.

But for the amount of creativity on display it is well deserving of your movie going dollars.

Super 8 Invites You Out To Play, Yelling “Hey, You Guys!”

I like to imagine there is a time in all professional filmmakers lives when a love for film trumps a paycheck. When that love was their only motivation. When they ran around with their friends creating and capturing scenes in any way they could before Summer ran out. It is the kind of breathless time that Ray Bradbury often wrote about and the kind Spielberg’s early films evoked.

Super 8 is a movie that reminds me both of Spielberg and Bradbury. It evokes Spielberg’s wonder years specifically Goonies and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It also captures the kind of breathlessness kids have when while working on a creative project that has to be completed now.

Director J.J. Abrams owes a lot to both.

I don’t know if J.J. Abrams ever read Ray Bradbury but Spielberg sure did. Spielberg once said of Bradbury, “”He was my muse for the better part of my sci-fi career.” You can see that influence in Spielberg’s early films and it is no coincidence you see it in Super 8; Spielberg is after all producing.

Strange Goings in the Night

The film centers around a group of kids in the late ‘70’s trying to make a short film to enter into a competition. They make models, sneak out at night, borrow equipment and sometimes cars to complete the film. To them it is serious business. The fact that for the first time ever they need an actress…well that too is serious business.

The kids can be described in some ways by their role in the short film they are trying to create. They are: Joel Courtney (Make-up), Riley Griffiths (Director), Ryan Lee (Explosive Expert and occasional zombie), Gabriel Basso (Detective), Zach Mills (Guy on Phone), and Elle Fanning (the Wife).

Their group dynamic is completely believable and the young actors all shine in their roles. By giving them lots of space J.J. Abrams captures the magic of the groups creativity and what happens when they get in over their heads.

The Mystery Box

Inevitably all that running around leads them to being at just the right place at the right time when they find themselves witnesses to a spectacular train wreck. A scene so well put together that we rewound it three times just to soak it all in.

In his TED talk, J.J. Abrams talks about his love for the unseen mystery. He does a good job of letting the audience unwrap the mystery along as the kids figure it out.  Strange things like car engine disappear, dogs run away, and the military shows up. All the while Abrams doesn’t reveal his hand until the 3rd act which adds to the fun.

Some Assembly Required

As with any sleight of hand things fall apart if you look too closely. There are plenty of logic leaps that don’t make sense, adult characters who seem to solely serve the mechanism of the plot, and certain science fiction choices that belong more to comics and less to science.

This is the kind of film that you either allow yourself to be caught up or you don’t. While it plays heavily on Spielberg nostalgia it stands very well on its own. Bradbury often said that even his youngest fans would come up to him and poke holes in the science in his stories. It didn’t make his fans love them any less, because while he may have missed the science he captured the heart.

Super 8 does just that. Plus any film that gives the explosive expert a chance to demonstrate his craft gets my vote. Stay for the end credits if you want to know just what dastardly deeds Romero Corporation has been up to.

Listless Master Skirts More Interesting Tale

Paul Thomas Anderson is emerging as one of the best filmmakers of our time. He certainly strives to create art. And like any artist not every work will be a success. Roger Ebert once said of Werner Herzog, “even his failures are spectacular.” The same can be said of Anderson; as both writer and director his latest film, The Master, is certainly a spectacular failure.

Anywhere the Wind Blows

This is not to say it isn’t worth watching. The problem with the film is that Freddie Quell, played by a perfectly hollowed Joaquin Phoenix, is the central character.

All you need to know about Freddie Quell is that he drinks paint thinner.

Not straight mind you. He does mix it. But he drinks it nonetheless.

At one point in the film he confides that you just have to know “how” to drink it.

Now there have certainly been excellent films with alcoholics as the central character. With Nail and Iand Leaving Las Vegas come to mind. But they have to have some personality. Wood alcohol has stripped Freddie of any. He’s just a storm waiting for someone to stumble across his path.

In Freddie’s path are Lancaster Dodd, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Peggy Dodd, played by Amy Adams. They are husband and wife. He is a bestselling author and charismatic leader of a budding cult called the Cause with a herd of followers to tend to. She is all smiles at his side when they are on stage and the fierce protector of their small empire behind the scenes.

Lancaster is looking for a reason to test his metal and perhaps destroy himself. He finds it in the hooch that Freddie concocts. He is also drawn to Freddie and takes him on as a pet project saying at one point, “If we are not helping him, then it is we who have failed him.”

Peggy Dodd’s counterpoint in the same scene is, “He will be our undoing if we continue to have him here.” She says this not because of any machinations of Freddie’s part but because she recognizes the self-destructive attraction her husband has to Freddie.

If that conflict, between the Dodd’s, had been the focus of the film it would have been another masterpiece likeThere Will Be Blood. Instead we are treated the extended travelogues of Freddie Quell paint thinner drinker extraordinaire.

You can ask yourself as a viewer, “Will Freddie drink too much?”, or “Will Freddie try to have sex with every woman in the room?”, or “Will Freddie find a reason to pick a fight with someone, anyone?” The answer to all of those questions is yes. There is no surprise in Freddie Quell. It is always yes.

That may make for a truthful character but it makes for a listless film. By setting the film with Freddie at its helmThe Master misses the opportunity to tell a far more interesting tale.

Lost with Freddie and Other Useless Characters

Like Lancaster, Paul Thomas Anderson is equally overly fascinated with Freddie. He tells a back story of the character that takes a half-hour prior to the real story kicking in to gear. Most of it could have been told via flashback during the extensive question and answer sessions, known as “processing” that Lancaster puts Freddie through. The whole opening could have been cut to five minutes.

The processing is the highlight of the film and the first session Lancaster puts Freddie through is mesmerizing. The subsequent sessions are not. Especially those in the latter half of the film, where Dodd’s whole entourage turns their focus on helping Freddie. Those sessions are meant to seem endless, semi-cruel, and futile. They are all of those things indeed. Freddie often asks in those scenes, “How is this helping?”

The answer is the extended process isn’t helping him or the film.

There is much that needs trimming. Whole characters could be cut. Dodd’s son Val is there to only deliver one line, “He’s making this whole thing up as he goes along. You don’t see that?”

The same line could have been delivered by Dodd’s married daughter Elizabeth, whose only purpose seems to be to stir sexual tension in Freddie. The thing is Freddie doesn’t need someone to stir sexual tension in him. He is both sexual and tense all the time.

Elizabeth’s actions as a temptress could have served another, more sitcom like purpose, by giving Freddie the opportunity to confront her. He could have told everyone the truth about her flirtations and been ironically not believed the one time he told the truth. Anderson neatly avoids this sitcom like scenario but the results are only empty screen time.

Phoenix, Hoffman, and Especially Adams Deliver

Still looking for a reason to see it? Then see it for the three main leads.

Joaquin Phoenix allows Anderson to pose him like a sunken chested, twisted limbed mannequin. He constantly contorts the character of Freddie Quell as if Freddie was some sort of vine seeking a lattice to latch on to for support. Any lattice.

Phoenix’s best moments come during a prison cell confrontation with his shoulder blades are sharply arched and spiked like an emaciated Quasimodo and in silent stormy revelations at just what Lancaster Dodd is selling.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is cursed with being too good of an actor. He brings high expectations to every role. He doesn’t slack here, using his the timbers of his voice to both charm and confront. Every scene where Lancaster Dodd has to defend the Cause against those who dare question him, simply simmer.

The biggest revelation here is Amy Adams who easily holds her own against both Hoffman and Phoenix. Friendly and doting when there is an audience present she is a lioness in private. Peggy Dodd sees both her husband and Freddie for the charlatans that they are. There is a great scene where she slaps Freddie awake to tell him he must quit drinking or leave.

It’s the movie’s biggest failing that she is given so few lines.

Final Thoughts

That sentiment about the lack of Amy Adams’ screen time, could be even more generalized. The Master held about 30 minutes of great scenes for me. In a film that is two hours and seventeen minutes long those scenes were too few and too far between.

Cinematography is a highlight in Paul Thomas Anderson’s films. This was shot in 65mm film. Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet was the last film to be widely distributed in that format. Both feel equally long. The visuals in Branagh’s film hold up regardless of what format you see it in. I saw The Master at a digital theater. The benefits of the 65mm process did not hold up. Unless you get to see it at a theater that will display it in a non-digital format seeing it on the big screen is not a must.

It should also be noted that this is a very sexual film. There is one scene that may ruin the new Muppets forever for you.

Silly Looper is More than Just Your Average Joe

Looper is a silly film. Watching it is like watching your ultra-creative friend present their final project in class. They’re lobbing all kinds of things at the wall, only some of which stick, and most have nothing to do with the assignment. But they’re having fun and so is the class. And inevitably the teacher is loath to give them a bad grade because at least they’re trying to be creative.

Rian Johnson, Looper’s director, is trying very hard to be creative. Not trusting the strength of his premise, he attempts to give you two films for the price of one and sprinkles in some slapstick just for kicks. The first is a science fiction film about assassins and time travel. The second is centered around an old horror movie trope. The bad guys, well let’s just say they are Red Dwarf level bad.

The Two Joes

Looper is about a type of low-level assassin in the year 2042. Rather than stalking their targets these assassins serve more as a body disposal units for their victims who are sent back in time by the mob from 2072 to be eliminated. While well paid, these assassins know that one day their future self will be sent back for elimination and thus their “loop” will be closed. Thus the mob will have to deal with far less “one last job” clichés.

But what if a “loop” isn’t closed and the future self escapes? It’s one of many questions in the film that director Rian Johnson lobs at the audience.

The assassin caught in this dilemma is named Joe played by both Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis as two ends of the same time-line (pictured above in one of the best scenes in the film when they sit down at the local diner for a chat).

While both are the same person, their experience and motivations due to what end of the timeline they represent, are completely different. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the younger Joe as not the smartest cookie who has at least enough sense to understand his future prospects. Bruce Willis fills Old Joe with the desire to protect the woman he loves, it is in part why he has gone back in time to alter the future.

Both are being hunted down by their mob employer who is not interested in such temporal dilemmas.

Time Travel Hollywood Style

Primer is the only time travel film I’ve seen to truly understand the science behind the concept of time travel. Rumor has it they consulted on Looper. It must have been over coffee. Because the science behind Looper’s ideas belongs less to Primer and more to Star Trek.

In Looper, Old Joe’s plan is to go back in time and kill a few people thereby protecting the woman he loves in the future. J.J. Abrams’ used similar type of Hollywood logic when he had Eric Bana’s character Nero go back in time to avenge his destroyed home world. Rian Johnson sticks with the same play book.

More than that he includes a scene featuring Bruce Willis that can be best described as an homage to both Terminator and Die Hard.

But if killing a butterfly can irrevocably change the future, the havoc that Bruce Willis inflicts as the character of Old Joe assures mass chaos in the timeline.

Johnson’s script saves him from having to explain too much as Old Joe snarls, “You don’t want to talk about time travel. If we do we’ll be here all day, making diagrams with straws.”

There is one inspired flourish to the Hollywood time travel formula as the film shows what happens to an older looper’s body when their younger self is altered. It’s an nice twist on the classic mob torture scene.

The Rules of Halloween and Red Dwarf Level Bad Guys

If the first part of Looper owes some debt to many a sci-fi film, the second half owes more to the Twilight Zone. Specifically it reminded me of the episode, “It’s a Good Life.” I even found myself saying out loud, “wish him into the cornfield!”

While the script does the neat trick of making both stories fit together, the film itself loses much of its momentum during the shift. Rian Johnson has to provide a lot of back story to make the second half of the film work. But the momentum is never regained.

It would have helped if the bad guys converging on the two Joes were even the slightest bit competent. They are not. One could call them Stormtroopers but at least Stormtroopers hit something…just not the main characters. These bad guys don’t hit anything during the film, not even innocent bystanders. They are only a credible threat to the crew of Red Dwarf but just not as funny. There is even a bad guy, played by Noah Segan who has been in all of Rian Johnson’s films, who is so incompetent you half expect him to say, “I say it’s Duck season, and I say, FIRE!”

Without a competent threat the film is simply stuck waiting until the final confrontation between the two Joes. But hey the payoff is worthwhile and at least you can go get a refill of popcorn.

Full Circle

This is the kind of film that works if everyone is having fun. And they seem to be except for Paul Dano who for some reason is way overacting in his scenes. It is especially nice to see Bruce Willis actually acting in a role. The last time that happened was in Unbreakable.

Is Looper a good film? It is not as good as the last indie feature I saw Joseph Gordon-Levitt in, The Lookout; it is not as good as the last film Rian Johnson did featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brick; and it is not even in the same league as Bruce Willis’s best time travel film 12 Monkeys.

But for the amount of creativity on display it is well deserving of your movie going dollars.

Super 8 Invites You Out To Play, Yelling “Hey, You Guys!”

I like to imagine there is a time in all professional filmmakers lives when a love for film trumps a paycheck. When that love was their only motivation. When they ran around with their friends creating and capturing scenes in any way they could before Summer ran out. It is the kind of breathless time that Ray Bradbury often wrote about and the kind Spielberg’s early films evoked.

Super 8 is a movie that reminds me both of Spielberg and Bradbury. It evokes Spielberg’s wonder years specifically Goonies and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It also captures the kind of breathlessness kids have when while working on a creative project that has to be completed now.

Director J.J. Abrams owes a lot to both.

I don’t know if J.J. Abrams ever read Ray Bradbury but Spielberg sure did. Spielberg once said of Bradbury, “”He was my muse for the better part of my sci-fi career.” You can see that influence in Spielberg’s early films and it is no coincidence you see it in Super 8; Spielberg is after all producing.

Strange Goings in the Night

The film centers around a group of kids in the late ‘70’s trying to make a short film to enter into a competition. They make models, sneak out at night, borrow equipment and sometimes cars to complete the film. To them it is serious business. The fact that for the first time ever they need an actress…well that too is serious business.

The kids can be described in some ways by their role in the short film they are trying to create. They are: Joel Courtney (Make-up), Riley Griffiths (Director), Ryan Lee (Explosive Expert and occasional zombie), Gabriel Basso (Detective), Zach Mills (Guy on Phone), and Elle Fanning (the Wife).

Their group dynamic is completely believable and the young actors all shine in their roles. By giving them lots of space J.J. Abrams captures the magic of the groups creativity and what happens when they get in over their heads.

The Mystery Box

Inevitably all that running around leads them to being at just the right place at the right time when they find themselves witnesses to a spectacular train wreck. A scene so well put together that we rewound it three times just to soak it all in.

In his TED talk, J.J. Abrams talks about his love for the unseen mystery. He does a good job of letting the audience unwrap the mystery along as the kids figure it out.  Strange things like car engine disappear, dogs run away, and the military shows up. All the while Abrams doesn’t reveal his hand until the 3rd act which adds to the fun.

Some Assembly Required

As with any sleight of hand things fall apart if you look too closely. There are plenty of logic leaps that don’t make sense, adult characters who seem to solely serve the mechanism of the plot, and certain science fiction choices that belong more to comics and less to science.

This is the kind of film that you either allow yourself to be caught up or you don’t. While it plays heavily on Spielberg nostalgia it stands very well on its own. Bradbury often said that even his youngest fans would come up to him and poke holes in the science in his stories. It didn’t make his fans love them any less, because while he may have missed the science he captured the heart.

Super 8 does just that. Plus any film that gives the explosive expert a chance to demonstrate his craft gets my vote. Stay for the end credits if you want to know just what dastardly deeds Romero Corporation has been up to.

Listless Master Skirts More Interesting Tale

Paul Thomas Anderson is emerging as one of the best filmmakers of our time. He certainly strives to create art. And like any artist not every work will be a success. Roger Ebert once said of Werner Herzog, “even his failures are spectacular.” The same can be said of Anderson; as both writer and director his latest film, The Master, is certainly a spectacular failure.

Anywhere the Wind Blows

This is not to say it isn’t worth watching. The problem with the film is that Freddie Quell, played by a perfectly hollowed Joaquin Phoenix, is the central character.

All you need to know about Freddie Quell is that he drinks paint thinner.

Not straight mind you. He does mix it. But he drinks it nonetheless.

At one point in the film he confides that you just have to know “how” to drink it.

Now there have certainly been excellent films with alcoholics as the central character. With Nail and Iand Leaving Las Vegas come to mind. But they have to have some personality. Wood alcohol has stripped Freddie of any. He’s just a storm waiting for someone to stumble across his path.

In Freddie’s path are Lancaster Dodd, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Peggy Dodd, played by Amy Adams. They are husband and wife. He is a bestselling author and charismatic leader of a budding cult called the Cause with a herd of followers to tend to. She is all smiles at his side when they are on stage and the fierce protector of their small empire behind the scenes.

Lancaster is looking for a reason to test his metal and perhaps destroy himself. He finds it in the hooch that Freddie concocts. He is also drawn to Freddie and takes him on as a pet project saying at one point, “If we are not helping him, then it is we who have failed him.”

Peggy Dodd’s counterpoint in the same scene is, “He will be our undoing if we continue to have him here.” She says this not because of any machinations of Freddie’s part but because she recognizes the self-destructive attraction her husband has to Freddie.

If that conflict, between the Dodd’s, had been the focus of the film it would have been another masterpiece likeThere Will Be Blood. Instead we are treated the extended travelogues of Freddie Quell paint thinner drinker extraordinaire.

You can ask yourself as a viewer, “Will Freddie drink too much?”, or “Will Freddie try to have sex with every woman in the room?”, or “Will Freddie find a reason to pick a fight with someone, anyone?” The answer to all of those questions is yes. There is no surprise in Freddie Quell. It is always yes.

That may make for a truthful character but it makes for a listless film. By setting the film with Freddie at its helmThe Master misses the opportunity to tell a far more interesting tale.

Lost with Freddie and Other Useless Characters

Like Lancaster, Paul Thomas Anderson is equally overly fascinated with Freddie. He tells a back story of the character that takes a half-hour prior to the real story kicking in to gear. Most of it could have been told via flashback during the extensive question and answer sessions, known as “processing” that Lancaster puts Freddie through. The whole opening could have been cut to five minutes.

The processing is the highlight of the film and the first session Lancaster puts Freddie through is mesmerizing. The subsequent sessions are not. Especially those in the latter half of the film, where Dodd’s whole entourage turns their focus on helping Freddie. Those sessions are meant to seem endless, semi-cruel, and futile. They are all of those things indeed. Freddie often asks in those scenes, “How is this helping?”

The answer is the extended process isn’t helping him or the film.

There is much that needs trimming. Whole characters could be cut. Dodd’s son Val is there to only deliver one line, “He’s making this whole thing up as he goes along. You don’t see that?”

The same line could have been delivered by Dodd’s married daughter Elizabeth, whose only purpose seems to be to stir sexual tension in Freddie. The thing is Freddie doesn’t need someone to stir sexual tension in him. He is both sexual and tense all the time.

Elizabeth’s actions as a temptress could have served another, more sitcom like purpose, by giving Freddie the opportunity to confront her. He could have told everyone the truth about her flirtations and been ironically not believed the one time he told the truth. Anderson neatly avoids this sitcom like scenario but the results are only empty screen time.

Phoenix, Hoffman, and Especially Adams Deliver

Still looking for a reason to see it? Then see it for the three main leads.

Joaquin Phoenix allows Anderson to pose him like a sunken chested, twisted limbed mannequin. He constantly contorts the character of Freddie Quell as if Freddie was some sort of vine seeking a lattice to latch on to for support. Any lattice.

Phoenix’s best moments come during a prison cell confrontation with his shoulder blades are sharply arched and spiked like an emaciated Quasimodo and in silent stormy revelations at just what Lancaster Dodd is selling.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is cursed with being too good of an actor. He brings high expectations to every role. He doesn’t slack here, using his the timbers of his voice to both charm and confront. Every scene where Lancaster Dodd has to defend the Cause against those who dare question him, simply simmer.

The biggest revelation here is Amy Adams who easily holds her own against both Hoffman and Phoenix. Friendly and doting when there is an audience present she is a lioness in private. Peggy Dodd sees both her husband and Freddie for the charlatans that they are. There is a great scene where she slaps Freddie awake to tell him he must quit drinking or leave.

It’s the movie’s biggest failing that she is given so few lines.

Final Thoughts

That sentiment about the lack of Amy Adams’ screen time, could be even more generalized. The Master held about 30 minutes of great scenes for me. In a film that is two hours and seventeen minutes long those scenes were too few and too far between.

Cinematography is a highlight in Paul Thomas Anderson’s films. This was shot in 65mm film. Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet was the last film to be widely distributed in that format. Both feel equally long. The visuals in Branagh’s film hold up regardless of what format you see it in. I saw The Master at a digital theater. The benefits of the 65mm process did not hold up. Unless you get to see it at a theater that will display it in a non-digital format seeing it on the big screen is not a must.

It should also be noted that this is a very sexual film. There is one scene that may ruin the new Muppets forever for you.