Spoiler Alert! "There Will Be Blood" Movie

Note to readers: If you haven't seen "There Will Be Blood" and want to, don't read this post. Or maybe read this post and then you won't want to see it.

Yesterday I got the hankering to go to a movie, come hell or high water. My friend Melanie and I had talked about going to the movies for weeks. We had a running list going, and we whittled it down. Our final two choices were Juno (a comedy about a teenage pregnancy) and There Will Be Blood (a drama about a man who strikes it rich in the oil business in the early 1900's), two very different movies. Melanie and I had talked about Juno for so long, but suddenly it wasn't as attractive, simply because so much time had passed since its release. There was so much recent buzz about TWBB, it was intriguing. Happy and fun movie, or dark and thought-provoking? We went with the dark, arrggghh! We were so pumped up.

The movie was 158 minutes long. When it was over, as the lights came on, I think the first thing I said was, "Huh?" and the second thing I said was, "Wanna go see Juno?"

Oh my god, it was so slow and disjointed! It dragged on and on. I kept waiting for something to happen to bring it all together, or to make sense of all the characters. It got so bad at one point, Melanie leaned over and asked me, "Why did he do that?" When you talk during a movie, it's not a good sign. It was thought-provoking, all right. I thought, "Why did such-and-such happen? What was the point of this? And that? Why all the buzz?" Movie shoulda been called, "There Will Be Questions." And I hated the score; it was awful throughout. I usually don't even think about a movie's music!

The only good part about the movie was Daniel Day-Lewis, who did an amazing job with his character. The problem was, it wasn't fleshed out enough, and everything around him was so weak, it didn't matter. Melanie had the same issues I did, but she kept saying she was glad she went, and that it made her think. It made me think, too. It made me think of joining Netflix, so I could watch some movies that were thought-provoking in a meaningful way.

I gave her two examples of really good movies that were also very long and about men who went crazy: The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe. That's how it's done. And you know what movie Daniel Day-Lewis was in where everything worked? In the Name of the Father. To balance what I saw last night, I'll see those three movies again, and then I'll feel better.

I hate when I see a movie that bugs me. But at least it made me realize yet another calling I have: Movie critic.