Add Wesley to the voices praising "There Will Be Blood" and Daniel Day-Lewis to the skies -- of the actor's performance as a monomaniacal oilman, Wes writes "He's the smoke, the ash, the lava, and the volcano." That sounds about right. This isn't an easy movie, and some of the best things in it are also the screwiest, but it feels absurdly alive while you're watching it, and how many films can you say that about anymore?
If you want something easier and more inspirational -- but good -- there's Denzel Washington's "The Great Debaters" (starring Denzel, Forest Whitaker, and a young actor improbably named Denzel Whitaker -- no relation to either, apparently). If you really want blood, there's "Sweeney Todd." And don't forget Julian Schnabel's rapturously beautiful "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" at the Coolidge, the Kendall, and the West Newton.
"Black Narcissus" is playing at the Brattle tonight -- only one of the most gobsmackingly gorgeous color movies of all time, co-directed by the great Michael Powell and with Oscar-winning cinematography by Jack Cardiff. And, yes, it's about sexual repression among a group of British nuns in the Himalayas. The scene in which Kathleen Byron puts on lipstick (above) remains one of the great creeporama moments in classic cinema. Seriously, you need to see this puppy on a big screen.
Tomorrow (Saturday the 5th), the Brattle switches gears and hosts a Monty Python festival. What, the curtains?
Also tomorrow, the MFA rescreens Sergei Bondarchuk's massive 1968 adaptation of "War and Peace" -- all four parts and 484 minutes of it. The marathon begins at 10:30 a.m. and is well worth clearing out your calendar for. Think of it as the Iron Man competition of movies.
