The Master

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  • Opened September 14, 2012 (Limited, Expands 9/21)
  • 2 hr 16 min
  • R | Graphic Nudity, Sexual Content and Language

  • Parents: Common Sense Media says Iffy for 16+. More on child suitability

  • Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is a troubled, boozy drifter struggling with the trauma of World War II and whatever inner demons ruled his life before that. On a fateful night in 1950, Freddie boards a passing boat and meets Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the charismatic leader of a religious movement called the Cause. Freddie tries hard to adhere to Dodd's weird teachings and forms a close bond with his mentor, even as other members of Dodd's inner circle see him as a threat. Full synopsis

  • Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Laura Dern, Jesse Plemons
  • Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
  • Genres: Drama

What's the Buzz?

So-so
Fans say So-So
6,603 fans
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Must Go!
Critics say Must Go!
86 out of 100
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Fan Reviews

Oh No!
The Master

by wallythom

The worst tripe masquerading as some great intellectual character play. Would the sheep write such rave reviews if the critics had not gushed over it? The Emperor has no clothes, folks. WT...

Oh No!
Master Disaster

by Lazard

Master is a self-indulgent exercise in art for art's sake designed to appeal to critics and Hollywood insiders not the ticket-buying public. There is no plot, no narrative arc-just a series of...

So-so
Lost in It's Own Beautiful Reflection

by alandm61

Beautifully shot capturing the postwar period visually in "you are there" color and composition. Music, too...but relentlessly intense as is the film, which is promising for first 1/2 hour. The film,...

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Critic Reviews

100
Boston Globe
| Wesley Morris

Nothing as big and strange and right as The Master should feel as effortless as it does. That's not the same as saying that it's light. It's actually heavy. It weighs more than any American film from this or last year. It's the sort of movie that young men aspiring to write the Great American Novel never actually write. Read full review

100
The Hollywood Reporter
| Todd McCarthy

Two things stand out: the extraordinary command of cinematic technique, which alone is nearly enough to keep a connoisseur on the edge of his seat the entire time, and the tremendous portrayals by Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman of two entirely antithetical men Read full review

100
Rolling Stone
| Peter Travers

Written, directed, acted, shot, edited and scored with a bracing vibrancy that restores your faith in film as an art form, The Master is nirvana for movie lovers. Anderson mixes sounds and images into a dark, dazzling music that is all his own. Read full review

100
Entertainment Weekly
| Lisa Schwarzbaum

It's also one of the great movies of the year - an ambitious, challenging, and creatively hot-blooded but cool toned project that picks seriously at knotty ideas about American personality, success, rootlessness, master-disciple dynamics, and father-son mutually assured destruction. Read full review

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Photos

A scene from "The Master."