There Will Be Blood

Newsweek David Ansen

There Will Be Blood is ferocious, and it will be championed and attacked with an equal ferocity. When the dust settles, we may look back on it as some kind of obsessed classic.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

There Will Be Blood is, in fact, not a historical saga; rather, it's an absurdist, blackly comic horror film with a very idiosyncratic satanic figure at its core.

The Hollywood Reporter John DeFore

Daniel Day-Lewis stuns in Paul Thomas Anderson's saga of a soul-dead oil man.

The New Yorker David Denby

An enthralling and powerfully eccentric American epic.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Boldly and magnificently strange, There Will Be Blood marks a significant departure in the work of Paul Thomas Anderson.

Slate Dana Stevens

For a story that's all about the harnessing of fateful chthonic forces, Paul Thomas Anderson has dug deeper than ever before, and struck black gold.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

For bleakness, the movie can't be beat -- nor for brilliance.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

The film is above all a consummate work of art, one that transcends the historically fraught context of its making, and its pleasures are unapologetically aesthetic. It reveals, excites, disturbs, provokes, but the window it opens is to human consciousness itself.

Film Threat Zack Haddad

This may be an extremely bold statement to make, but there hasn’t been such an amazing character study in film since “Citizen Kane.” I honestly can’t praise it enough. From the opening to the ghastly ending, this film will sit in the depths of your stomach for some time to come.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

This is truly a work of symphonic aspirations and masterful execution.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal is not just the performance of the year -- there will be injustice if he doesn't win an Oscar -- but a creation of awesome proportions.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Anderson's uncompromising masterpiece will continue to resonate as a harrowing cautionary warning to a country with oil pumping through its veins, clouding its judgment and coarsening its soul.

Time Richard Schickel

One of the most wholly original American movies ever made.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Day-Lewis... the role of a lifetime.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

A searing, apocalyptic and finally breathtaking drama.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

With There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson has taken a stab at making The Great American Movie -- and I daresay he’s made one of them.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

An unusual, visually hypnotic, American Gothic historical epic that traces the rise and tragic fall of a Western mining magnate of the Gilded Age.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

There Will Be Blood" is anti-state of the art. It's the work of an analog filmmaker railing against an increasingly digitized world. In that sense, the movie is idiosyncratic, too: vintage visionary stuff.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Anderson’s fearless, bighearted filmmaking is an antidote to the toxic cloud of Manifest Destiny. He has made a mad American classic.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

In terms of excitement, imagination and rule-busting experimentation, it's a gusher.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The fact that that character happens to be so repellent -- and yet so endlessly fascinating -- is one of the film's many strokes of genius.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

There Will Be Blood is not a movie that disappears quietly.

Empire Helen O'Hara

Uncompromising, intelligent and searing cinema. Along with The Assassination Of Jesse James... and No Country For Old Men, this is the best batch of Western-set dramas in decades. John Huston would have been proud.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's first-rank filmmaking, through and through, even if it struggles to find closure.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Sprawling yet cramped, There Will Be Blood may not be the best movie of the year, but it's certainly the strangest. It evokes passing comparisons to everything from "Giant" to "Citizen Kane" but it's impossible to pigeonhole.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

It's important to remember that Sinclair was as much a committed socialist as a novelist, someone who probably wrote for political purpose more than for dramatic effect. So while Day-Lewis' gorgeous acting largely disguises it, the people in "Blood" tend to be schematic and the film as a whole has a weakness for the didactic.

USA Today Claudia Puig

A searingly intense and artful tale that grabs hold of the viewer from its jarring and wordless opening scenes and doesn't let go.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Just a few barrels short of being a masterpiece.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

That's not to say that There Will Be Blood isn't something exceptional; it's just that the movie is jarringly erratic, ranging from moments of delicacy to majesty to over-the-top bombast.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The kind of film that is easily called great. I am not sure of its greatness. It was filmed in the same area of Texas used by "No Country for Old Men," and that is a great film, and a perfect one. But There Will Be Blood"is not perfect, and in its imperfections we may see its reach exceeding its grasp. Which is not a dishonorable thing.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

With a grating symphonic score by ­Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood and the constant sense of danger following Plainview, "Blood" does not release its grip on the audience until its last, bizarrely crazy minutes.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Between D-Day, the sheer ambition of Paul Thomas Anderson's historical epic and Robert Elswit's dazzling cinematography, this is a must-see movie - even though its emotional temperature rarely rises above freezing and the climax goes way, way, way over the top.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Unfortunately, the film's final third is poorly focused and, while there is a clear conclusion, it feels strangely hollow.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Ambitious, deeply flawed and studded with sequences that achieve pure, majestic greatness.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It's mostly a disturbingly believable portrait of a psychopath whose true depths of rage are buried where none but he can see. The ironically named Plainview does not come into plain view until the last scene, and the lupine, scowling Day-Lewis is mesmerizing in the role.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

This has loads of swagger, but for stylistic audacity I prefer Anderson's more scattershot "Magnolia."

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Anderson almost brings off a picture worthy of his grandiose ambition.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

There are epic impulses everywhere you look in There Will Be Blood; what's missing is character development, focused storytelling and, most significantly (apart from that terrific opening sequence), any sense of raw, intuitive drama.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Anderson and Day-Lewis strip themselves of their natural talents for invention and poetry, as if any hint of romance, nobility or fun would soften the film.