Phantom Thread (4/5 Stars)

Paul Thomas Anderson has my vote for the world’s most enigmatic writer-director. If I were to define his career into a type, most likely his next movie would prove me wrong. This is his filmography: “Hard Eight”, “Boogie Nights”, “Magnolia”, “Punch-Drunk Love”, “There Will Be Blood”, “The Master”, “Inherent Vice”, and now “Phantom Thread”. One used to be able to define him by locale. His first eight films all took place or were at least tangential to Southern California. “Phantom Thread” is about a dress-maker who lives in London, England. Its off the grid and comes back to back with “Inherent Vice” a movie that could not be more opposite in style and tone. As loose and wild as “Inherent Vice” was, “Phantom Thread” is uptight and repressed. The main character is Reynolds Woodcock, an aging dress-maker played by Daniel Day-Lewis at his most fastidious. At this rate, P.T. Anderson’s next movie might take place on the moon.

“Phantom Thread” presents an intense character study and utterly strange love story. Reynolds Woodcock is a great artist who uses the high demand and idol worship of his craft to tightly control the people in his life. In an early scene, brilliant in the efficiency of its setup, he breaks up with a significant other. She brings up during breakfast the fact that he does not pay enough attention to her. He responds that he has to deliver a dress that day and that he cannot start the day with a confrontation. She leaves and he does not seem to be bothered one bit. The line of people who want his attention are around the block outside.

Enter into his life, Alma, played by Vicky Krieps. He picks her out at a restaurant where she is a waitress because she is his favorite body type to make dresses for. Alma is a nobody next to Woodcock. Vicky Krieps could be said to be just an unknown (at least to me) opposite to Daniel Day-Lewis, one of the greatest actors in movies. At first glance, she would not seem to stand a chance in this relationship given the extraordinary level of competition for Woodcock’s affections and his intense focus on his work.

The movie is rather simple plot-wise so I will say less about it other than that Alma proves to be an especially worth adversary in the battle for Mr. Woodcock’s affections in ways that illustrate the notion that all things are fair in love and war.

The power struggle between Alma and Mr. Woodcock is surrounded by impeccable costume design. I have not the slightest notion of high fashion, but the women looked good in the dresses, that much I can say. Daniel Day-Lewis once again has the preternatural ability to convince the audience that he is and always has been this particular character. His retirement announcement is laughable given that he has only acted in six movies from 1998-2018 (Oscar nominated four times in that span, batting 0.750). I figured he was already retired and that he does acting gigs as a respite from not working. I expect we will see him once more in the 2020s just as soon as he feels like returning calls from A-List directors beggin to offer him another role of a lifetime. 

Lincoln (5/5 Stars)

Hmmmm….yummy political sausage….nomnom

Movies about the political process are about as rare as movies about marriage. We tend to romanticize politics by only making movies about campaigns, that romantic engagement between candidate and constituency, whose love for each other is consummated on election night right before the credits roll. Then like every romantic comedy that ends with a wedding we are left with the impression that everyone lived happily ever after. Love never faltered and the impassioned promises made in the campaign speeches were borne into reality by magical political storks. Abracadabra. Getting hitched/elected was the hard part and everything after was easy.

“Lincoln” the newest directorial effort from Steven Spielberg, is that incredibly rare movie that is about the actual work of being a politician. In it, our 16^th President, Abraham Lincoln, spearheads an effort to get the 13^th Amendment, which abolished slavery, passed by the required two-thirds vote in the United States House of Representatives. How rare is it for a movie to be about passing a bill in Congress? Well, according to what I’ve rated on Netflix, I have seen 1700 movies. I went through them all to find something similar on this topic. I found almost nothing. There are a few television series that have successfully written about the political process (Aaron Sorkin’s ‘West Wing,’ Armando Ianucci’s “Veep,” David Simon’s “The Wire) but to find a political movie that was not directly concerned with an election, I had to go all the way back to 1939’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Is it not amazing that whenever filibuster reform is discussed on the 24-hour news networks that they keep bringing up a movie from 1939? We literally do not have a more current movie to draw upon for examples of the political process. All we have is “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and that short cartoon from schoolhouse rock “I’m Just a Bill.” So when I say that “Lincoln” is the best movie I have ever seen about Democracy, you can take that with a grain of salt. The bar is extremely low.

“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” is a decent movie and great democratic propaganda for a nation on the edge of an apocalyptic war with fascism and communism, but it still makes the same goddamn mistake that every political movie has made since and in my opinion what has completely gridlocked the legislative branch we currently have. That mistake is the idea that an impassioned speech about principles will somehow convince the other side to change their position. It was bullshit when it worked in the 1939 movie and it is bullshit now. What I love most about “Lincoln” is that it shows politics how it should be done: down and dirty in the mud of power, greed, and nasty compromises.

For this reason and how it is so clearly and efficiently represented, the writer Tony Kushner should win an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The job performed is to represent all constituencies that Abraham Lincoln has to appease to in order to pass the Amendment. There is the Conservative Republican led by Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook) who are anti-slavery but prize the preservation of the Union above all else. Lincoln has to promise them that he will take into consideration any peace offer by the Confederates, even if slavery is to remain intact, if it will end the war. Lincoln has to keep this secret though from the Radical Republicans led by the abolitionist firebrand Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones). The radicals are not merely for equality before the law but total racial equality (i.e. going into the south, breaking up plantations and redistributing property amongst the ex-slaves). Lincoln has to temper the positions of this voting block in order to make the idea of a 13^th Amendment palatable to everyone else. But even if Lincoln gets the unanimous support of all the Republicans in Congress he still needs twenty Democrat votes to get past 2/3rds. Practically all these votes are pro-slavery. So Lincoln decides to call upon three “fixers” from Albany (James Spader, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson) to do some bribing. They focus on lame duck congressman who have lost the past election and will be out of a job come the next term. They are offered political posts like postmasters and treasury secretaries in exchange for a “Yes” on the 13^th Amendment. Each voter has his own opinions and motivations. It takes extremely good writing to get everything explained in such a way that is clear, creates suspense, and does not bog down the momentum of the story. It is accomplished and then some with enough room for Kushner to throw in updates from the Civil War and some domestic strife for Lincoln to deal with, i.e. the hysteria of his historically crazy wife Mary Todd (Sally Field) and the wishes of his son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to join a war effort that has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

This is all rather serious stuff; so much so that one of this movie’s greatest attributes is that it is also consistently funny. The three “fixers” provide a good part of the comedic relief but the main component of humor is Abraham Lincoln himself, played brilliantly by Daniel Day-Lewis. It has often been chronicled that the historical Lincoln was a great joke and storyteller and in this movie we are treated to a retelling of his best material. Have you ever heard of the one about Ethan Allan and the portrait of George Washington in an English outhouse?

The portrayal of Lincoln in this movie does great justice to the man as a politician. Many times I have read about politicians who were great at actually getting things done as opposed to politicians who were just great at making speeches (think LBJ and FDR as opposed to JFK and BHO). One consistent attribute is the ability to making others believe that they are in agreement without any real commitment being made. There are many great examples of that being done in this movie by Lincoln. The trick is to listen thoughtfully and then tell a rather vague yet humorous story. For instance in the beginning of the movie, Lincoln is speaking to a couple of black soldiers. The black soldiers speak of equal pay with white soldiers and having black officers someday. Then they press Lincoln on what will happen to them after the war. “I’m not very good at shining shoes and cutting hair,” one says. Lincoln then makes a self-deprecating joke about how hard it is for anyone to cut his hair. “My last barber committed suicide,” he jokes. Then the conversation is interrupted by a couple of other soldiers and the conversation topic is eluded. Classic Politician. This great technique goes back thousands of years all the way to Jesus. Instead of focusing on the details of current policy that can lead to many minor points of contention, tell a parable vague enough that everyone can agree with it in theory. The fact that Lincoln was able to do this in private and at the same time actually craft a definite specific policy that successfully passed is the essence of his genius. I am of the opinion that it takes genius to aptly portray genius and that is what makes this one of the best movies of the year.  

There Will Be Blood 01/08/08

Will there actually be blood? The answer may surprise you. There is actually very little. And that scarceness of blood is magnified by the length of the movie (Three hours long.) This is unforgivable and though there were good moments in this film I cannot ignore the stretches when I was nervous and bored. Stretches where I found myself questioning writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson and what the hell he was doing.
The huge problem this film has is that it claims to be an epic. It isn't. The story isn't big enough. It's perfect for a normal sized movie about two hours long. But it is way two shallow for three hours. There is not enough happening. I swear, I could cut a half hour to forty minutes of this movie just in dramatic pauses and not lose a thing. This is how a usual scene would go: ten seconds of someone walking into the shot, they would speak a few lines, dramatic pause, someone else would say something, then they would stand around for awhile more. This movie is host to the most boring character I've seen all year. It's a man who claims to be the half-brother of the oil man Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis). There is nothing interesting about the guy and every line he speaks is said in this tired slow-motion. And in the background to all of this is the weirdest musical score I've ever heard in a western (It's quite ingenious actually and I really liked it.) It's frenzied, dramatic, and active. But It's completely out of place. They get the viewer all riled up and excited for a bunch of long slow shots of nothing. And I don't care if Westerns are supposed to be boring and slow. They don't have to be, and I would expect P.T. Anderson, one of our most exciting directors, to realize that. His second movie "Boogie Nights" fitted ten times as much story in the same amount of time. This movie, with a thirty minute trim, would be vastly superior than what it currently is.
The story this movie has, though shallow for its time length, is very good though. It has several great scenes and contains some memorable characters. The best and most original is Paul Dano's evangelical preacher Eli Sunday. Every scene with him is great. So much so that when he is not on the screen the movie suffers. I wish there were more of him. He is the only character in the story that can stand up to the very big character of Daniel Plainview. It is great to see the two together. One representing corporate greed, the other representing religious fanaticism. There is a competition amongst them, which by the end plays itself out in ways you wouldn't imagine. One would only hope that the story would be more about these two and not get sidetracked so much with subplots that take forever to resolve. Who could watch the baptism scene and not concede that this relationship is what the entire movie should have been about.