The Master isn’t Paul Thomas Anderson’s best film, but it’s still an amazing, maddening, intriguing headfuck. The prime mover is Joaquin Phoenix, who turns in an intense performance as brutally awkward and awkwardly brutal as anything you’ve seen on a screen. But Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams are turning in career highlight performances, too, and the story—a thinly veiled account of the birth of Scientology—will haunt you for days. You must watch it in glorious 70 mm, as Anderson intended, at the Cinerama, also known as Seattle’s First Church of Moviegoing. (See Movie Times)