Quite the cornucopia of motion pictures for you to choose from this week, including one of the best pictures of 2007.

There Will Be Blood –
This would have secured Best Picture of the year if not for No Country For Old Men. Perhaps not so much a movie as it is a performance – Daniel Day Lewis controls every frame of this film. His riveting, insane portrait of Daniel Plainview, the megalomaniacal oil man who squares off against Paul Dano’s equally insane pre-television televangelist, earned every inch of that golden Oscar statuette. Grand American filmmaking.

Recommended if you liked Magnolia or Taxi Driver

Lions For Lambs
Perhaps the most spectacular of the recent Iraq war films to go down in flames at the box office, not even Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, or Tom Cruise could save it. On second thought, Tom Cruise was probably as much of a liability as the subject matter. Nothing says “Pay $10 to see me at the theater!” more than Iraq and Scientology. So, what’s it about? Um….uh….war stuff?

Recommended if you liked In the Valley of Elah, Rendition, Stop-loss, or any other self-consciously anti-Iraq film.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
One of the many feathers in Judd Apatow’s cap, Walk Hard spoofs the recent glut of musical bio-pics. John C. Reilly is the it titular Cox, singing tantalizing tunes like “Let’s Duet” and “(I Hate You) Big Daddy.” Let’s duet. Heh heh. This one received rather favorable reviews, so if you’re digging This is Spinal Tap but wished it was about country music, Walk Hard might be right up your alley.

Recommended if you liked This is Spinal Tap, Ray, or Walk the Line

Hit the jump for the rest of this week’s releases.

Resurrecting the Champ
The feel-good sports movie of the year that no one saw, Resurrecting the Champ is for a specific breed of people, namely people who can appreciate feel-good sports movies. I am not one of those people, and tend to stay away from the genre like Ben Affleck stays away from Gigli reviews. Josh Hartnett plays a sports writer looking for a story, Sam Jackson is a washed up prize fighter, yada yada yada, you can guess where this goes.

Recommended if you liked Cinderella Man, Rudy, or Remember the Titans

P2
This is one that actually intrigues me, even though it’s as derivative a thriller as they come. Two actors you’ve never heard of star as a business woman and the psychopath who is hunting her. The title refers to the parking garage level that they’re playing cat and mouse on. Very Hitchockian in its setup, although I imagine the implementation is somewhat less than what Alfred would have pulled off.

Recommended if you liked Wait Until Dark, Dial M for Murder, or Redeye

Reservation Road
Similar to last year’s What We Lost In the Fire, Reservation Road had all of the Oscar pretensions but garnered none of the nominations. Joaquin Pheonix and Mark Ruffalo star in this moody drama about someone driving a car who hits someone else’s kid. The critics received it with mediocre fanfare, but this one could prove to be a dramatic gem just waiting to be discovered on DVD.

Recommended if you liked In the Bedroom or The Human Stain

The Water Horse
Walden media keeps setting ‘em up, swinging the ball back, and bowling a solid gutter ball every time. Without the upcoming Prince Caspian sure to fill their coffers with enough shiny coin to last another couple years, I would imagine they’d be sinking to the bottom of whatever lake the managed to pull The Water Horse up from. Undoubtedly a sweet tale about a boy and his pet Lochness monster, this one just doesn’t resonate. However, I would recommend it over a certain other film with a certain other computer generated creature that rhymes with Spalvin (cough*Josh*cough).

Recommended if you liked Pete the Magic Dragon or E.T.

The 11th Hour
While I enjoyed An Inconvenient Truth and thought it was an important conversation starter, there are only so many global-warming-is-bad-and-will-kill-us documentaries I can take, even if they are narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio. There’s something off-putting about the poster, with its big combat bootprint in the middle of the globe, kind of like Full Metal Jacket meets War of the Worlds. Actually, that movie sounds pretty sweet.

Recommended if you just couldn’t get enough of Al Gore and his Power Point presentation.