There Will be Blood/I Am Legend

No real spoilers.

So I caught both these movies yesterday, in a rather downbeat double-feature; the wife and I could have capped it off by sneaking into Cloverfield, but it seemed like a bit much.

There Will Be Blood is definitely a great movie on a lot of levels; it's a very intense character piece, Daniel Day Lewis is mesmerizing, and Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the best directors working today. But it is long, and it does lack a particularly satisfying third act, at least to mainstream moviegoers. But I thought it worked. Not something I'm liable to watch again all too soon, but a very, very solid film.

I Am Legend is interesting and well made too, though it has some nagging questions to it, mostly rooted in the fact that the movie jumps into the story very late, and then glosses over the question of exactly what did happen during the transition from a populated New York City to the one we see in the movie.

Mostly the question of why Will Smith's character didn't save any of the other survivors that there must have been in the city at one point. Which could have all been interesting, particularly as set-up to the climax we get here, but instead goes naggingly unexplained.

Still, I generally liked this film as well.

*******

In weekend estimates, Meet the Spartans has indeed been declared the surprise winner, with about $18.7 million. Its filmmakers also found success with Date Movie and Epic Movie, which I also didn't see, but which apparently weren't very good at all. Apparently with this sort of scattershot pseudo-parody comedy, quality really doesn't matter.

Rambo did about $18.1 million, Untraceable did an okay $11.2 million, and the well-reviewed How She Move tanked with only about $4 million.

Cloverfield dropped 68% in its second week, while 27 Dresses hung on pretty well and beat it for third place.

Juno crossed the $100 million line. Congrats, and it'll be interesting to see how studios try to figure out how to make another movie to capture the same audience.