SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

mraculeated The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Asad Almond A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

diogomanuel This movie is a deep one, the problem is that it is a deep journey to nowhere!We learn nothing from it, we don't enjoy watching it, and not even the good performances of the main actors overcome the sense that we have wasted our time watching a movie that isn't worth watching!This movie may have been done to please a group of individuals with too much money on their hands...1 out of 10, because we can't give 0. Faultless acting though.

dylanhenty I feel like this movie will become more appreciated over time. In my opinion Joaquin Phoenix and Seymour Hoffman give two of the greatest performances i have ever seen- the complexity of both characters and their relationship really being the centre of the film. Although it takes a while to get off the ground, if you're interested in character heavy drama, this is a must see.

paul2001sw-1 Paul Thomas Anderson's typically lengthy movie 'The Master' tells the story of the association of a drifter and a cult guru, the latter clearly modelled on L. Ron Hubbard. As with his earlier 'There Will Be Blood', the story is both linear and not especially well-shaped, though Philip Seymour Hoffman is quite good as the pseudo-Hubbard. Indeed, that's the bigger problem here: Hubbard's story is quite interesting, and a good basis for fiction, but no light is shed by it that story through the eyes of a random acquaintance. What is presented here is just a story of two odd people, each of whom are hard to relate to. My favourite film of Anderson remains his first, 'Hard Eight'; interestingly, that was also his shortest.

rdoyle29 My favourite film of 2012 ... probably my favourite film of the decade. It's nominally the story of two men who appear quite different on the surface, but are really strikingly similar. Hoffman's Lancaster Dodd is attracted to Phoenix's Freddy Quell because they have the same ferocious, restless anger, and unlike Dodd, Quell has no desire to be restrained. Quell is attracted to Dodd because Dodd manages to get inside Quell and get him to reveal himself ... Quell is convinced Dodd's religion must have some answers. More than this, it's a meticulous recreation of the style of classical Hollywood melodramas, both in the look and in the extraordinarily controlled performances Anderson gets from his cast, but without feeling like a slavish reproduction. It's both strikingly modern and classical in style ... an extension of Anderson's work on "There Will Be Blood".