The Master
This not so stealthy Scientology putdown is brought to you by the Weinstein company and Larry Ellison’s (less bad) kid. I guess the new money doesn’t like old school grifters, but they are equally vulnerable to the new ones.
This is such a non-stealthy putdown, the credits mention it’s not similar to “any movements or persons, living and deceased”. Good old L. Ron Hubbard’s Reality Distortion Field could not extend through time for a trillion years (with a T).
There’s plenty of people in the Cause that hate the thing are are just mixed in with it to make a quick buck. There are true believers that are brutally put down by The Master. The bulk of the money comes from bilking old rich ladies for barely updated séances, some of them press charges. Doubters get the lash either way.
A big part of the film is set on the boat, but this was an even greater part of L. Ron’s life. This starts when he was already wining and dining on someone else’s dime, not his sci-fi writer era.
It’s really hard to understand why does The Master takes such a shine to a drunk maniac, causing him such grief. The scene at the party in New York is emblematic: The Master attempts some verbal judo of a random normal person horrified by a cult, but Freddie just throws a tomato at the guy, then stalks him to his home and beats the crap out of him. The obsequiousness is too much.
Joaquin Phoenix is intense, as usual, but Paul Thomas Anderson is almost always calm and composed, keeps you on your toes, his outbursts are always unexpected. The scene where Phoenix wrecks a toilet is incredible.
Amy “Lady Macbeth” Adams doesn’t hold back either, but she’s a proper pregnant lady. That scene in the bathroom jumps straight into the weirdest sex scene with full dialogue, beats Network by a mile.
There’s a lot of future stars too, so very young. Rami Malek and Jesse Plemons seem like children! Finally, Benni from franchise:TheMummy is yet again a punching bag, without the funky accent.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.