“Phantom Thread,” February 15 2018 (2017), theater. Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day Lewis in what he’s said will be his last film role) is an haute couturier in 1950s London in this incredibly lush and perverse film from Paul Thomas Anderson. He’s utterly devoted to his craft and relies on a muse. His last has played out – and been removed by his sister Cyril, a marvelously cold Lesley Manville, she who makes all run in the shop – and he’s off to the country to relax. He meets his new muse, Alma (Luxembourgian Vicky Krieps) a beautiful waitress with calm, cold ambitions of her own. They return to London and we enter his world, one of service and obsession. This is a very twisted look at creativity, gender and interpersonal power, but it really works. Some hate it for its genuinely bizarre perversity (no, not sexual, per se) but I thought it quite gripping. Normally, I could care less about these sorts of folks, but this is so twisted, it really drew me in even as I found myself appalled. Lewis is amazing, and Manville’s is a real work of art and craft. I’ve read Lewis wants to go into design instead of film; another example of full immersion baptism yielding transformation. He’s both wonderful and quite opaque in many ways as a character.