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Reviews
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Paul Thomas Anderson Disaster-class
The film ended an hour ago, and yet I'm still perplexed and heated. I am genuinely insulted that this lackluster, narrative-desolate dumpster fire Paul Thomas Anderson put out is actually on the iMDB top-250 list. Kudos to Daniel Day-Lewis, who, like clockwork, put out another highlight reel worthy tour-de-force of a performance, especially considering what he had to work with. Plainview was a bad man. He was bad at the beginning of the film, and was bad at the end. He got considerably worse as he got considerably more wealthy and powerful. This is hardly a complex/insightful phenomenon. There is no depth to this character beyond "Oilman = bad." Characters along the way all basically only exist to showcase this, and because of this somehow even come off as more shallow than Plainview. This film deserved it's Oscars for lead actor & cinematography, but Paul Thomas Anderson got absolutely carried by the people surrounding him with this effort; with this film he was something akin to the 15th man on an NBA team hoisting the Larry O'Brien trophy despite the fact that he never contributed in any meaningful way.
Stephen Curry: Underrated (2023)
Felt.. very unnecessary
Stephen Curry is my favorite athlete of all time and plays for my hometown team, and I think he is at worst a top-10 player in NBA history. I still don't know why this documentary was made.
Nothing new outside of a few never-before-seen clips of him in high school/at college was revealed to us. No exciting quotes, no truly encapsulating behind the scenes clips/interviews/soundbites, sparsely invoked sidebar comments from Steph that really don't add anything new or insightful.
Anyone even tangentially knowledgeable about Steph is likely already aware of his magnificent run at Davidson in 2008, so the fact that this documentary spends roughly an hour and forty minutes covering it all while saying nothing of note is.. disappointing as a massive Steph fan. I could have simply watched the 10 minute YouTube video of Steph's 2008 March Madness highlights followed by another 10 minute video of 2022 Finals Game 4 highlights and walked away virtually just as knowledgeable.
This is just the first major venture into the media world for Steph & Co, so I'm not really worried, (that Warriors Dynasty documentary in a decade or so is going to HIT) but I expected better to be completely honest, I walked away from this rather underwhelmed.