Before I watched this I was almost ready to use the headline “All Master-ed Out” but then wait, whoa…hold up. This one has sex, audacity. energy, menace, flicking tongues, cops, fisticuffs. Forget the Piss Christ one-sheet that half-smothered interest and those “jeez, uhm, I think I need to see it again” Music Box reviews. The Master is back to urgent, bracing, necessary.

That aside, the apparent decision by the Weinstein Co. and Paul Thomas Anderson to blow off the Telluride Film Festival (8.30 through 9.3) is a highly bothersome thing, if not a tiny bit tragic. It’s been said that for the second year in a row that this much-loved Rocky Mountain festival feels a little light in the loafers. It needs at least one cold-cocking power hitter from the auteurist ranks, and the absence of both The Master and Terrence Malick‘s To The Wonder is being felt and meditated upon, let me tell you.