There Will Be Blood (2007)

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Five years after Punch-Drunk Love, an older, wiser, more wildly ambitious PTA extravaganza hits the screen.

There Will Be Blood is a barnstorming tale of Texas wildcatter Daniel Plainview, and his Kane-like rise and fall. Daniel Day-Lewis attacks the role with the explosive energy of an oil well blowout, although a performance of this magnitude – all wild eyes and grand gestures – tends to suck some of the subtlety out of the film’s themes.

As a study of the roots of modern America, where religion, politics, greed and cynicism collapse into a civilisational struggle, There Will Be Blood clutches at the coattails of genius. But there’s a sense of the film slipping away from Anderson in the closing stages, as if he can’t control the force of nature he’d so assiduously unlocked in his lead actor.

Even so, this is a brilliant film, and the score from Johnny Greenwood suggests great things to come from the ex-Radiohead guitarist.