The Master (2012)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Freddie Quell	Joaquin Phoenix
Lancaster Dodd	Philip Seymour Hoffman	½
Peggy Dodd	Amy Adams	½
Elizabeth Dodd	Ambyr Childers
Val Dodd	Jesse Plemons
Clark	Rami Malek
Helen Sullivan	Laura Dern
Doris Solstad	Madisen Beaty

Review

If Paul Thomas Anderson insists on making directionless, pretentious films about people who don't understand themselves or others around them, I'd rather he didn't populate them with such great actors trying their best to please him and/or me. You see, I cannot watch Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman for two hours without investing emotions in them and trying to understand them. Which is why it becomes so much more annoying when it turns out their great efforts are merely a showcase for Anderson's non-messages and misguided artsiness. What he tries to say with The Master is either so obvious that it's stupid or so pretentious that it's indiscernible, but either way it doesn't work. And if you think it does, it's because you've got your head so far up Mr. Anderson's ass that you cannot separate his shit from his shit.