The Master

His personality trailing behind, obliviously, inquisitively and contendedly basking in the wake, quietly lounging in his own residual perpetual motion, with a sun he fails to see warmly beating down on his inebriated candour, Freddie Quell's (Joaquin Phoenix) proclivities for the peculiar lead to transformative miscues while the narrative which he inhabits, Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, derisively lambastes its own nostalgic attachment to film's longing for nostalgic attachments (through its initial choice of music).

Mr. Quell's sense of buoyancy has been quasi-permanently kept afloat due to his wartime experience, as has his creative knack for improvisationally concocting alcoholic beverages.

He also seeks partnership.

Fortunately, he stows away on a ship by chance which has been rented by a carefree spirit (Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd) and his followers, many of whom share his desire to circumvent sobriety.

They have taken things one step further, though, having devotedly conjured a flexible theoretical fundamental foundation, whose profits have secured a fantastic incorruptibility.

As these two tinkerers intersect, pseudoestablished faith-based charlatanism attempts to absorb obstinate itinerant (restrained, undirected, generally harmless) epicurean anarchy through a series of mind tricks, the confident modest inclusive yet principled performance expertly executed by Mr. Hoffman in their first obligatory interaction sophisticatedly counterbalanced by Joaquin Phoenix's focused resistant exactitude.

As Freddie is lured in, the film's structure attempts to grab hold of its audience's recalcitrance and transfer it deep within its hallucinatory consciousness, as if it's relying on the sheer conviction of its form alone, regardless of what form it takes, to transcribe potential transgressions of the post-modern through personal investments of hesitant, guilt-ridden trust, incipiently causing a cult to appear happy-go-lucky, and attempting to internally harness a distilled independent rationality.

The best American film I've seen so far this year.

Amy Adams puts in a great performance too.