‘There Will Be Blood’ is a surefire Oscar nominee

In theaters

THERE WILL BE BLOOD, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, 156 minutes, rated R.

The best movie of Daniel Day-Lewis’ career turns out to be the best movie of Paul Thomas Anderson’s career, a nice slice of symmetry that, gets even better when you consider that so far, the actor and director have achieved their personal peaks in one of 2007’s best films, “There Will Be Blood.”

By far, the movie is among the most satisfying, complex and intelligent films to hit theaters in years. Any year.

As if the movie’s title weren’t enough indication that all won’t go well in this reimagining of Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel “Oil!” Jonny Greenwood’s score gets right to it in the film’s opening moments.

With the screen still dark, a shrieking of strings is unleashed in ways that become so unsettling, you know you’re in for it even before you lay eyes on Day-Lewis’ Daniel Plainview, an intense man whose cultivated voice obviously is modeled after John Huston’s. It’s an uncanny impersonation, as slick with oil as the oil Plainview himself comes to pump in California at the turn of the last century.

Thick with mustache and armed with enough greed and hate to ruin a country, never mind a town, Plainview comes to the oil-rich town of Little Boston thanks to a tip sold to him by Paul (Paul Dano), a mysterious young man who suggests that Plainview visit Paul’s family and buy up their land.

For a steep price, Plainview follows through. With his son H.W. (Dillon Freasier) at his side, he rushes to beat Standard Oil at its own game and buys up as much land as he can. Meanwhile, he finds in Little Boston an unexpected adversary in Paul’s brother, Eli Sunday (also Dano).

Eli is a Bible-thumping evangelist, the head of the Church of the Third Revelation, and what he sees in the Good Book is what Plainview sees in oil – absolute power over the people. Together, these two are pitted against each other in ways that make for stirring, dangerous entertainment, with each actor railing off the other and giving terrific performances in the process.

This is especially true for Day-Lewis, who will be nominated for an Academy Award (as will the movie itself) and who might have a good chance of winning, provided the fierce, complicated monster he creates onscreen doesn’t turn off too many voters. There’s a chance that it might not, if only because of how Day-Lewis shades the man – his Plainview can be devastatingly cruel and kind in one brushstroke.

In that way, he literally is the face of the emerging West. In all the dirt and suffering that surround Plainview, a groundswell of promise nevertheless bubbles beneath his feet. Blood will be spilled to realize that promise (an element that gives the film its sharp connection to the present), but in this do-or-die culture of creating a secure new culture, the pull of that promise is enough to tip those who seek it into madness.

Just as it is now.

Grade: A

On DVD and Blu-ray disc

THE GAME PLAN, directed by Andy Fickman, written by Nichole Millard and Kathryn Price, 110 minutes, rated PG.

Somebody should put Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in a remake of “The Miracle Worker,” because when it comes to a working actor whose personality can override even the dreariest of cinematic drivel, he’s right near the top – and that’s no joke.

Have you seen the man’s vitae lately? He isn’t exactly dipping from the same pot as the Clooneys and Pitts. Instead, The Rock’s pot is a bit more shallow, and yet each time he’s handed a piece of dreck, as he is in Andy Fickman’s “The Game Plan,” he manages to wring something better from it than you might expect.

For Hollywood and for audiences, that quality is the stuff of gold.

In the film, Johnson is Joe “The King” Kingman, star quarterback for a fake Boston football team who is having the time of his life living large and worshiping Elvis when into his life comes an 8-year-old girl claiming to be his daughter from a previous marriage.

Her name is Peyton (Madison Pettis), she’s as cute as Joe is big, and what she brings to the movie is just what you expect – a softening of Joe’s ego, a purpose to his life that he didn’t know he needed, and plenty of comedic bumbling on Joe’s part, not to mention a romantic interest in the form of Peyton’s ballet teacher (Roselyn Sanchez).

What Johnson has in movies are the very qualities that made him a wrestling superstar at the WWE. He works hard, sure, and he’s taking none of this movie star business lightly, but the real key to his success is his personality (hugely likable), his talent (don’t bet against it), and his ability to adapt from the action genre to the comedy genre with apparent ease.

That takes more skill than most will admit, and even though every one of his previous movies has been a rehash, he still has managed to make most of them work, just as he does here.

Grade: B-

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays, Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle, as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.