Trailer of the week: The Master

THE new film from Paul Thomas Anderson, director of Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will Be Blood.

What’s it about?

Good question. There have been three trailers in the run-up to its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, none of which gives very much away. Joaquin Phoenix is a psychologically damaged Second World War veteran. Philip Seymour Hoffman is a smooth-talking intellectual who starts a scientific movement that is accused, in a scene in the third trailer, of acting like a religious cult – and who recruits Phoenix to his cause (along with Amy Adams). It’s been suggested that the film is about Scientology, which is a provocative subject for a man who once directed Tom Cruise to be exploring.

Does it look any good?

Based on the little information available so far, it looks fascinating. Hoffman is as charismatic as ever, Phoenix looks like delivering the same man-on-edge-of-meltdown performance he gave in I’m Still Here.

When is it out?

9 November.