Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Year Released: 2012
Rating: 2.5
A drunken sailor (Joaquin Phoenix) - with a history of impulsive, oftentimes overly sexual behavior (you finger bang that sand sculpture! you spill your seed into the ocean!) - becomes a key pupil of the leader of a cult (Philip Seymour Hoffman) whose purpose is, um, the betterment of mankind? Time travel? Something? Anderson, an exceptional cinematic technician (also see: Soderbergh, Steven) who has a gift at working with actors (the cast here is remarkable) and setting scenes, is being a tad too coy with this feature, which is all suggestion and vague allusions: a glorified thesis with no conclusions (was he scared off by the Scientology crowd?). He never extrapolates what the purpose of the cult is, he only gives hints about what draws the Hoffman character and the Phoenix character together (homosexual tension?) and the last full hour comes across as a series of disconnected scenes in search for meaning. Of course, it could all be an alcoholic's lucid dream: guzzling paint thinner simply cannot be good for the brain.
