This most eccentric and haunting of modern epics is driven by oilman Daniel Plainview, who, in the hands of actor Daniel Day-Lewis, becomes a Horatio Alger story gone horribly wrong. Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson's camera is as crucial to the films hypnotic pull as the performance at its center. For its evocation of the early 1900s, its relentless focus on one man's fascinating obsessions, and for its inspiring example of how to freely adapt a novel—plus, what I think is the performance of the new century—"There Will Be Blood" stands alone. The more I see it, the sadder, and stranger, and more visually astounding it grows—and the more it seems to say about the best and worst in the American ethos of rugged individualism. Awfully good!