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Created Sep 22, 2012 09:33PM PST • Edited Nov 02, 2019 07:28PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Monumentally accomplished storytelling plus bravura cinema done in rich and deep 65mm images make The Master another Paul Thomas Anderson masterpiece. Plus there’s the Best Acting trophies all around.

   Intoxication unites its leading men – hooch for one, power the other. Joaquin Phoenix’s hardcore alcoholic latches onto Philip Seymour Hoffman’s sophisticated cult leader and his luxo lifestyle. A destructive boozer gets enabled by an uppity bamboozler, basically. It’s not a healthy bromance.

   Amy Adams’ Queen of Scientology, er, Queen Bee completes a powerhouse thespian triumvirate.

   Scientology serves as the jumping off point for a disquisition into post-war America’s male-dominated power structure. Driving home the point is a scene that vastly expands on Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass.

   Too much of a good thing is too much however. Losing 15 minutes would improve The Master’s figure.

   Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures has its third winner with The Master, her second this year, with Lawless still in theaters. That’s one hell of a year.

   There’s now another famous Ellison besides Larry. Think her paterfamilias is proud? Could go either way.

4. Acting

   Perfect 5.0

   Joaquin Phoenix contorts his body like if Leonard in The Big Bang Theory were a depraved alcoholic, his exceptionally angular face creased in extreme ways.

   PSH delivers one of his most monumental performances. Iconic.

   Amy Adams bravely appears like Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair, then later declaims porn-prose to Joaquin Phoenix in some bizarre psychosexual “processing” bullshit. (Whoops, excuse the editorial bullshit.) Extreme scenes in stride, count this as her most impressive performance yet. Powerful acting.

   Jesse Plemons kills in his single declamatory scene, so much that he makes the trailer. Friday Night Lights’ Landry Clark is going to be under much bigger lights going forward based on this brief but assured turn.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Perfect 5.0

8. Male Costars Perfect 5.0

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    The Master rivals Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life as an idiosyncratic and cinematically bravura character study of post-war America. It also rivals it in extended cinematic indulgence.

    The Master just talks time travel, unlike Tree of Life which travels it for real. Physics aside, they both reach for – and mostly grasp – Great American Filmhood. Kudos.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Really Great 4.5

    Two flawed men, one low down, the other highfalutin. The highfalutin one preaches “We are not animals” as the low down one proposes fornication to a random woman. Obvious irony but still well done.

    Freddie Quell – great name – and Lancaster Dodd – another great name. Quell and Dodd, buddies through thick and thin.

13. Music Perfect 5.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    The booze ain’t pretty. Poison really. See the poster above. That’s Freddie Quell’s “booze”.

    FDR’s personal yacht motoring out under the Golden Gate Bridge on a perfect May night is a sight to behold, the blue Pacific eddying behind, a trail of memory churned up from the depths.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.7

    Freddie Quell would f**k anything, down to and including damp sand. Department store models, switchboard operators, you name it. He’s blind drunk half the time anyway. The bottom of the barrel is often too good for him. He’s happy to drink brake fluid. You get the drift. Beyond bad – suicidal.

    Thus sordid.

17. Sex Erotic 2.6

18. Violence Fierce 1.8

19. Rudeness Nasty 3.7

21. Reality

    Glib 1.5

    Much needs to be written about where and when The Master intersects Scientology. Just not now.

22. Circumstantial Glib 2.0

23. Biological Glib 1.5

24. Physical Natural 1.0