Movies I Saw All The Way Through In 2013 With No Fast Forwarding or Anything #13: The Master (2012)

With one exception, every Paul Thomas Anderson movie has been about people looking for love in all the wrong places, with a tremendous performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman. I think he’s done the former better, but in the latter department, this one takes the gold. And while Joaquin Phoenix was too inscrutable a lead for my taste, he’s certainly a terrific camera subject, with Anderson not wasting a flinch or crinkle. I could tell from the trailer I was in for the most gorgeous visual compositions I’ve ever noticed in a film; between that and how quickly we get into the cult stuff, my mind wandered nowhere nearly as soon as I thought it would.