I saw There Will Be Blood last night, and I knew I wouldn't like it but I had to prove it to myself.  It's proven.  I didn't like it.  It was a sad story about a greedy, alcoholic oilman.  That's about it.  It seemed to be pretty historically accurate, but I could've gotten the same amount of information from Wikipedia. 

People who like the film say it was full of great acting.  Is that what makes a good movie?  That's like saying a book uses a nice font.  In my opinion, good acting should be expected from a good movie, but it's not what actually makes the movie good.  To say a movie was made good because of its acting is sort of circular logic. 

The other thing critics liked about the movie was that it was original.  That's like saying a book uses unusual words.  That doesn't necessarily make it good.  The opposite is also true:  A tired, unoriginal movie is typically bad (e.g. why make Walk the Line when the exact same movie [Ray] came out one year prior?).  Originality is a positive thing, but it can't be what makes a movie good. 

To me, movies are about entertainment, not art, and entertainment can come in various forms.  Explosions are entertaining.  Unusual information is entertaining.  Plot twists that make your brain hurt are entertaining.  It's not necessarily important what is entertaining, but more the fact that something is entertaining.  Movies like There Will Be Blood just aren't entertaining.  Good acting can't take away the fact that there wasn't much of a plot.  Originality can't take away the fact that there really wasn't much of a purpose (i.e. in the end, I came away with nothing).  For that reason, There Will Be Blood wasn't a good movie, and my initial feeling was correct once again:  Movies that win awards generally aren't good. #entertainment