There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)

8/10
First of all - NCFOM is so much better. That said, TWBB was still enjoyable (and Daniel Day-Lewis absolutely deserved the Oscar) but never fully gripped me...although it didn't bore me either. I just never really bought into what it was selling. Jonny Greenwood's soundtrack was polarizing, great at times and irritating and unnecessary at others. Anyway, good movie, but not as great as I expected.

Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)

6/10
I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. There were only two scenes that ever really held my interest - the Yardbirds performance and the game of "imaginary tennis" at the very end of the movie. Although afterwards I read Andrew Sarris' Village Voice review and he remarked on the apathy with which Antonioni treats his subject matter (the fact that a photographer has accidentally captured a murder in a park) and I thought that was pretty interesting as well...but as far as the film went - not so interesting.

Mr. Baseball (Fred Schepisi, 1995)

5/10
Well there's probably a good movie to be made about the alienation American athletes feel when forced to play in unfamiliar territories just to earn a living, but this isn't it (maybe there already is one and I haven't seen it?). But I can't be too hard on it because it is what it is and everything goes exactly as you expect it to. And cmon, it's Tom Selleck.