Paul Thomas Anderson Unveils Best Movie Trailer Ever – THE MASTER

Screw Superman, you guys. This is the real deal. Paul Thomas Anderson just released the best movie trailer ever for his upcoming film (i.e., his next masterpiece) The Master.

What’s it all about? Well, the trailer is awfully vague. And that’s what makes it stellar. It’s what tells you, the simpleminded viewer, that this film will be better than you. It’s smarter than you—not because PTA is smarter than you (who dumps Fiona Apple for Maya Rudolph?)—because it really doesn’t tell us anything other than who’s in it. It’s just superior, so shut up and watch the masterpiecey-ness unfold, will you?  This is character-driven cinema. Like when you saw Sunset Boulevard at the rinky dink public library in Whitmore Lake and thought, uh, that’s the movie? Yes, silly. It’s about the characters. Not what happens. It’s about the cast.

And what a cast. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Laura Dern, and Joaquin Phoenix star, with Phoenix playing a drunk drifter who comes to Hoffman’s newly organized religious cult. What else happens? Who cares! It’s art.

The whole thing looks to be shaping up just as There Will Be Blood did back in 2007. You probably remember that film as the one that you thought was boring and slow until you went home and realized a month later that Daniel Day Lewis was phenomenal, Jonny Greenwood’s score was ridiculously sick, and the plot gimmick of throwing Paul Dano in as an identical twin was actually genius. (Note: this also happened, with different minor details, when you saw Magnolia and Hard Eight.)

Or you remember it as the movie that was only worthwhile because of the “I drink your milkshake” line. If that’s the case, you’ll skip The Master and wait a week to see Paranormal Activity 4 .

The Master opens October 12. Then, next February, Anderson will once again lose the best director Oscar to John Madden or Clint Eastwood or something.