Review: "The Master" is an Overlong Love Letter to Your Brain

Left to right: Joaquin Phoenix and W. Earl Brown

It is always tough to respect someone's follow-up to what is perceived as their best work on that movie's own merit. After hitting a formula, you'd expect them to pull it again in a similar vain. For director Paul Thomas Anderson's follow-up to There Will Be Blood entitled The Master, we would expect the loud vibrancy that came with Daniel Day Lewis' haunting portrayal of businessman Daniel Plainview. Instead, we get something more nuanced and different. There aren't any loud bangs or big set pieces burning to the ground. What we get is Joaquin Phoenix humping a pile of sand in the shape of a naked woman.