A dense, complex, and excessive film, There Will Be Blood (PC rating: 4/5) is more admirable than likable–a nod to a past cinematic era, when filmmakers were not afraid to betray artistic ambition (in this regard, one thinks of, say, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 or Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now). And, indeed, There Will Be Blood is nothing if not ambitious: boasting stark, arresting visuals, and an unsettling, if somewhat overbearing, soundtrack, it tells the story of a California oilman (expertly played by Daniel Day-Lewis) and his slow but certain descent into nihilism. In the process, it depicts just about everything that seems wrong with America–its tendencies toward greed, wastefulness, and religious hypocrisy–and yet does so with such partiality that the film loses credibility toward the end, as the enigmatic humanity of the characters begins to give way to their grim archetypal significance.