‘There Will Be Blood’ Two-Disc Special Edition

Simply the best new movie I’ve seen in years. You can also save a few bucks and get the Cheapskate Edition instead.

One of Hitchcock’s gifts to cinema was the insight that the key to building suspense is to let the audience know something the characters do not. With its title alone, There Will Be Blood accomplishes this before the film even starts. There’s an ominous dread hanging over even seemingly innocuous scenes that wouldn’t be there if the film were titled, say, Oil! (which was the name of the Upton Sinclair novel from which it was loosely adapted by Paul Thomas Anderson).

★ Friday, 11 April 2008