The Master Movie Review

Posted by Charmaine Blake on Sep 14th, 2012 in Drama, Featured Articles, New Releases | 0 comments

The Master Movie Review

The Master is a movie that has an apparent intrigue since it somewhat mimics the ways of Scientology and is garnering a lot of reviews from critics all over the country. The Master stars Phillip Seymour, Amy Adams, Joaquin Phoenix, Jesse Pleamons and Laura Dem. This movie is bound to hit theatres this Friday, September 14th 2012 and is directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Let’s take a look at a movie review for the movie: The Master

“The Master: A Breathtaking Cinematic Movie

There’s something startlingly noncommittal about many of the initial reviews of The Masterthat leaked out following the impromptu screenings writer/director Paul Thomas Andersonorganized in 70mm-equipped houses across the country, and later in response to the film’s official bow at the Venice Film Festival. This is perhaps the natural, if not most productive, response to a film that, like the central character played by Joaquin Phoenix, resists conforming to any preconceived template of what it could or should be.

In admitting that “Master” Lancaster Dodd(Philip Seymour Hoffman, offering a new twist on the roiling vulnerability Anderson has always highlighted)—the figurehead of a growing faith movement in 1950s America—was inspired by L. Ron Hubbard, Anderson set up expectations of an exposé of the origins of Scientology that would satisfy everyone who clucked approvingly whenKatie swept Suri from the snatches of the Sea Org. Instead, Anderson has delivered a free-form work of expressionism, more room-size painting than biopic, star vehicle, or character study, mirroring Hubbard’s story when convenient while strenuously avoiding direct representation. As with Boogie Nightsand There Will Be Blood, Anderson takes what he needs from history to recast his own story, yet he has never made a film so elusive.

Structurally similar to the Oscar-winningBlood, The Master begins with the origin story of how an iconoclast joins a community that he’ll then struggle to live within, leading to a final confrontation with a man with whom he shares an adversarial and primal connection. Here, that iconoclast is Freddie (Phoenix), a Navy man we meet in the South Pacific in the waning days of World War II. He’s a pervert and a drunk who’s equally likely to kick a party into high gear by whipping up homemade booze or bring it to a dead halt by acting like a fucking weirdo. Did the war do it to him, or did collective catastrophe give him a space in which to almost blend in? Forced to assimilate back into the real world, he takes a gig as a department store photographer. He’s probably in it for access to chemicals he can treat as liquor, but the job also gives this longtime itinerant a measure of control—in a circus replica of postwar domestic-consumer fantasy. He can be in the system and at the same time gnaw away at it. That’s a mode of being that he’ll repeat. Always on the run from some scrape, Freddie eventually ends up passing out drunk on a yacht carrying Dodd and his family.”

Continue reading the review at Village Voice

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Charmaine Blake loves movies, musical theater listening to music and taking pictures of anything that she finds interesting. She is a voracious reader and writer, and enjoys her time writing for New Movie Launches. Charmaine loves spending time with her pets and currently has a Siberian Husky, a toy poodle and a cat.