Martin Schenke

I can't believe there are people like you out there. This movie was superb, and better on all counts than Punch Drunk Love.

May 1 - 10:45 AM

Matt Dawson

Holy shit this movie was so fucking boring. Can't believe I wasted my time watching it, ugh.

Apr 28 - 03:13 PM

Nyapuru Palandri

I want 2 hours and 18 minutes of my life back please! Pretentious, uncomfortably slow and painfully clunky.

Apr 13 - 05:04 PM

Fareed Kairon

All these mixed opinions of the film really say something...in fact, it's very similar to people's reactions of punch drunk love.

Apr 2 - 04:26 AM

Pisit W.

It's a deep film more then anyone thought. Just open your mind.

Mar 31 - 04:44 AM

Robert Maier

What a mess. I think everyone involved was cluless, but afraid to call a silly spade a silly spade. The photography wasn't stunning, it was over-worked, had unwatchable contrast issues at time, and pointless color shifting. The acting was brilliant, but I often felt the actors worked overtime and ultimately with futility to pull some shred of sense out of a Dadaist script. I felt like the PTA was making fun of the audience to be silly enough to sit through his joke on the universe. The whole thing seemed a mocking satire on the fools who make big Hollywood movies and laugh all the way to the bank. It was like sitting through two hours of a high concept lecture, hoping to understand it, but realizing you were in a lunatic asylum where the psychos had found an old movie script with many pages lost, and the rest out of order, and tried to make a play out of it. Interesting, but nonsensical exercise in absurdity and pretentiousness.

Mar 30 - 07:56 PM

Trevor Carroll

I first want to say, I loved "Tree of Life, Magnolia, Jacobs ladder and many other higher concept films. I hated this movie. I have now watched it three times, I thought I could have gotten there but sorry, good movies/stories compel you to care about the characters, PT was to busy trying to be deep and forgot the basics of good story telling. It happens.

Mar 26 - 01:55 PM

Tim Brannan

Worse Movie I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of movies.

Mar 24 - 10:57 AM

Sandy Burczyk

Awful...period

Mar 24 - 03:38 AM

Steve Shaw

Awful.

Mar 23 - 07:15 PM

Andrew DeSimone

What a piece of garbage. The only reviews that praise the movie are from people who want to feel intelligent and act like they get the movie. Boring, incoherent and pointless beyond belief.

Mar 21 - 08:25 PM

Rob O'Neil

Horrible, horrible movie. Pointless as well as excessively slow.

Mar 11 - 10:25 AM

Declan Cochran

I don't think you can judge a film like that. PTA clearly has a great understanding of story, and character, and yes you're right, the continuity was slightly confusing, but you've got to think to yourself; why did PTA decide to do that? And that's when the movie becomes a masterpiece.

Mar 10 - 10:27 AM

Lancol Et

Maybe it's just too complicated for you. Best that you just stick with the twilights

Mar 9 - 03:28 PM

Mary West

Double horrible! I could follow what was happening and the quality of the acting. I don't consider this entertaining when it has a dead end story line.

Mar 4 - 07:55 PM

Mike Kowzun

I'll never understand people who "didn't know what was going on" in this movie. Yes, it was episodic, but what was going on in the film was always pretty straightforward.

I'd hate to see any of these people watch something like Holy Motors or anything by Lynch.

Mar 4 - 07:05 PM

Jesse Low

All I can say is, what the hell did I just watch? I really don't even know how to describe this waste of 2+ hours. I enjoy a wide range of films and this just is not one of them. I truly wondered what the hell was going on the entire time. How did this movie get such high critic scores? Lets just see how weird and goofy we can make a movie, throw in a few decent actors and see if we can get people to pay for it. That is how I felt.

Mar 4 - 04:32 PM

Barbara Hyman

Big disappointment. It never got anywhere, Phoenix was too old for the role. Little transformation for characters in a movie about transformation.

Mar 4 - 08:19 AM

Elguapo BobTorre

The master = L. Ron Hubbard
The cause= Dianetics
The second Book = Scientology
The process = auditing
Words like implants, past life, and theMaster resume all resemble what we know of the founder of scientology.

This is about how an individual chooses not to be cured of his troubles and instead moves on just to live his life. And that is just fine. Who says that there is no joy in living in misery ... To be free to do so is a blessing. Live is precious regardless of how we choose to live it. That is the message of this movie for me.

Mar 2 - 07:39 PM

First Last

The cynical side of me says that the people who genuinely liked this movie (and this ?auteur?s? other insufferable gaseous bloatware, ?There Will be Blood?) did so because they believe they are intellectually compelled to.
I wasn't disappointed by ?The Master.? I was appalled. To me, it was laughably pretentious, completely incoherent, boring, unpleasant and utterly abstruse.
I have no idea what Joaquin Phoenix was going for, but he did succeed in reminding me of a cross between a malevolent grasshopper and a drowning rat. He may be my new favorite overactor. Philip Seymour Hoffman was just dull - not that he had a lot to work with. Who knew that a man as dynamic as "The Master" would be a pedestrian bore and dime-store creep? (To the extent this is ostensibly about a real person whose chief talent was charisma, Hoffman's performance reminded me of DiCaprio's smaller-than-life portrayal of Howard Hughes in The Aviator).
For me, this movie is nothing short of terrible. It concerns me that so many modern movies don't know how to 1) tell a story; and 2) create characters that you kinda sorta recognize as human, and can kinda sorta relate, or at least comprehend - or, at the VERY least, follow.
To the poster who said that tidy stories don't exist in life, my reply is that all art is an attempt to make a statement about life by bringing order out of chaos and imbuing meaning to that which has no inherent meaning. For thousands of years, that attempt has taken the form of some kind of recognizable narrative structure - whether it be in painting, sculpture, music, whatever - it is only with the decline of a common thread of experience ? the abnegation of a somewhat homogenous, shared cultural map of the world whereby we all swim in the same human ocean - and the advent of post-modern deconstructionism - that we have come to embrace utterly non-linear, non-cohesive structure in our art.
On occasion, this uber-self-conscious conceit has some modest intellectual validity (the feral energy of Pollack, perhaps, or the early experimenters in bebop jazz). But when it departs from the human experience so completely, it becomes an exercise in traversing the tedious, onanistic obstacle course of one person's mind, and the qualities of art that used to bring us together to celebrate (or at least ponder) the humanity we had in common is lost completely, and instead of emotional catharsis, we nod our heads in pseudo-intellectual admiration because our insecurity tells us this makes us smart in the eyes of our peers.
The entire purpose of art has thus shifted from providing emotional succor based on our shared humanity to doling out individualized intellectual self-gratification based on how much smarter I am than the guy sitting next to me because I ?get it.? Art has thus become diminished.
This is not a healthy development in a society that likes to claim its primary trait is compassion. It is not; it is the self-assuaging of intellectual/moral vanity.

Mar 2 - 05:08 AM

Chase Nyland

This film had me hooked from the bizarre and offensive opening scene all the way to the conclusion. I haven't been so compelled, disturbed, and confused since I first saw Eraserhead. As David said, the film isn't for everyone. But I truly believe that the performances in this film were spectacular. Phoenix is astounding here as well as Hoffman. I don't have a damn clue if I enjoyed the movie but I do know that it showcased some of the best cinematic performances I've seen in years.

Mar 1 - 12:53 PM

Stephen Dhondt

To be brutally honest: I liked it, but I would never recommend it to anyone. The cinematography was stunningly beautiful, the performances were powerful and honest but PT Anderson has created a world that is so void of narrative structure that it's hard to care about any of these characters.
Being able to place yourself within the struggles of the main character (or characters) is essential for a good character piece, otherwise we're just observing rather than living through the emotions portrayed on screen. I didn't feel there was anyone I could relate to in this film. Not the powerhungry master and not the inner demon fighting Freddy.
I was left with, as Mishcka puts it, 'disjointed' elements that were separately engaging but never seemed to work for me as a whole. They worked enough for me to warrant it three stars but I won't be rewatching it to find hidden layers.
I'm happy just to have seen it once and to remain as clueless as the lead characters.

Mar 1 - 06:31 AM

Jeffrey Batts

This film is so obviously directed at Scientology so why do all the reviews leave that out.......spooky..!

Mar 1 - 02:23 AM

Mike Kowzun

This is a film for people looking for a nuanced, subtle character study with layered subtext, not those looking for an easy fix of entertainment (not that there's anything wrong with that every now and then). It caters to a very limited, yet discerning taste so naturally it isn't going to be for everyone.

Feb 28 - 12:48 PM

Jim Crockett

My wife and I had a "private" showing at Rave Cinema in North Richland Hills. Not that we were special; just happened that we were the only two foolish enough to buy tickets! One gentleman walked in about half way through the film, but had the good sense to walk out after only 10-15 minutes of this boring, confusing, pointless epic. We finally left after two hours and twenty minutes. Later found out that we missed only the last 4 minutes, but still glad we didn't have to see any more. I'm glad you enjoyed the movie David, but the only thing "riveted" when we saw it were the empty seats. I nearly stroked out when I saw it was nominated for anything other than a RAZZIE.
The only thing I've experienced in the last 6 months that was anywhere near as disappointing as watching the movie was today when I went to the Redbox and found it headlining the new releases. It wasn't worth half of the $5 matinee price at the Rave or the buck-twenty it would cost to rent. If (heaven forbid) I forgot to return it, I might be tempted to commit Hari-Kiri!
Ms O'Connor was being kind.

Feb 27 - 12:28 PM

David Tanny

I respect your opinion. But I found the Master riveting. Yes, there is little to no plot, but it's more of a character piece. Joaquin Phoenix was on fire here, keeping me glued to the screen for it's entire run-time. Hoffman and Adams were both excellent as well. P.T. Anderson also has a wonderful eye for detail, and perfectly re-created the time period. I appreciated the hell out of this film, but I can see why many would be turned off.

Feb 25 - 11:17 PM