From the director of modern classics “Boogie Nights” and “There Will Be Blood” is this movie about a Scientology-like “religion” and its most charismatic leader, a man whom many people love to follow and go to for solace and succor, a man who can be referred to by the film’s title, “The Master.”

Played by Philip Seymour Hoffman brilliantly, this would be 100% his movie if it wasn’t for the fact that Joaquin Phoenix plays one of the most mesmerizing, interesting and unhinged characters ever in a movie, a fella who needs as much as help as he can get, and even then that likely won’t be enough.

From my original review of “The Master,” written only after I had a second chance to see this dense film:

Maybe it was just the second viewing being of much service, but the scenes are strange at first and seem odd and out of place at times, but there is a definitely a larger picture that is being tended to and formed and developed and when you step back and take a look at the movie as a whole, the character arcs and motivations and stories come into focus and make more sense. It really is quite brilliant, considering how non-conventional the story seems initially, but turns out to actually be pretty straightforward. Anderson takes some pretty big jumps in time, cause really we don’t know how much time passes between events, and really sometimes it seems like quite a bit of time has passed. It’s like a Rorschach, you step back, you squint your eyes, and you see what you see, and while it might seem like a bunch of disparate and disjointed images and scenes, it really makes for a complete picture if you just know how to look at it.

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