The National Society of Film Critics has named There Will Be Blood Best Picture of the Year and awarded the film with Best Director for Paul Thomas Anderson, Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis, and Best Cinematography for Robert Elswit. The society comprises more than 60 critics from major publications throughout the country.

With the Oscar polls set to close at the end of the week, the New York Times film critics have weighed in on the list of nominees they'd like to see. A.O. Scott, Manohla Dargis, and Stephen Holden all agree that There Will Be Blood should be nominated for Best Director, Paul Thomas Anderson; Best Actor, Daniel Day-Lewis; and Best Adapted Screenplay. Holden and Dargis also think it should be on the list for Best Picture. Holden is joined by Scott in suggesting the film's Paul Dano for Best Supporting Actor. Scott also hopes Sweeney Todd will be recognized by Academy voters. He thinks it should be on the list both for Best Picture and for Johnny Depp as Best Actor.

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Dan DeLuca says that Jonny Greenwood's There Will Be Blood score is a must-have for die-hard Radiohead fans. DeLuca writes that with the score, Greenwood "extends Radiohead's art rock into the classical realm." The reviewer calls the music "a natural extension of the Radiohead aesthetic as well as a harbinger of a busy-as-he-wants-to-be movie-music-making career for Greenwood."

In her "A" review of Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum cites Jonny Greenwood's score in particular for helping to create "a complete universe" in the "towering new American epic and instant modern classic." She praises the film's lead, Daniel Day-Lewis, for giving "a magnificent performance" but calls Greenwood "as much the star of the show as Day-Lewis himself" for his having created a "revolutionary musical score ... like nothing we have ever heard before."

There Will Be Blood is "one of the most wholly original American movies ever made," writes TIME magazine's Richard Schickel in his review of the film. He calls Daniel Day-Lewis's performance "genius (and I use that word advisedly)," and points in particular to the film's "astonishing" last scene as an example of the actor's unparalleled performance. The film's ending, Schickel writes, "contains what I—resistant as I am to superlatives—consider to be the most explosive and unforgettable 10 or 15 minutes of screen acting I have ever witnessed."

"American cinema produced one flat-out masterpiece this year—Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood," says CNN's Tom Charity, who also calls the film "extraordinary" in his review of the year on screen. The writer was less charitable with some of the year's other artistic efforts, though he does compliment The Wire, proposing that most of the attempts at high-art movies in 2007 "don't measure up to the best TV series: The Wire, Deadwood, and The Sopranos, for example."

The Boston Herald's James Verniere writes that the year's best movie music was Jonny Greenwood's "entire, diabolically mesmerizing score for There Will Be Blood." In a separate article, he names the "insanely brilliant" film among the year's best as well.

Of all the efforts at big-scale movie storytelling over the past several months, writes J. Hoberman in the Village Voice, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is "the one that packs the strongest movie-movie wallop." He continues: "This is truly a work of symphonic aspirations and masterful execution. Anderson's superb filmmaking is complemented throughout by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood's excellent score—at once modernist and rhapsodic, full of discordant excitements, outer-space siren trills, and the rumble of distant thunder ... There's hardly a dull moment."

MTV's Kurt Loder says that Jonny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood is among the "wonderful" parts of Paul Thomas Anderson's new film. Loder calls Anderson's decision to hire Greenwood an "audacious" one, and one that paid off, with the end result an outstanding work independent of the film for which it was written: "The music is an orchestral wash of beautifully harmonized melodies spiked with thoroughly modern dissonance, and while it's a jarring accompaniment for some of the imagery, it stands on its own as a series of superbly astringent compositions."

New York Times film critics Manohla Dargis and Stephen Holden both rate Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood at the top of their lists of favorite films of the year. Dargis writes that it was one of the two films of 2007 that "matter most to me, that dug in the deepest and rearranged my own givens ... that shook up my world in the best possible way." And Holden compares There Will Be Blood to three classic American films, while recognizing that the director has created something entirely new as well. Anderson's film, Holden writes, "suggests a fusion of East of Eden, Giant, and Citizen Kane with the Hollywood finery ripped to shreds."

Jonny Greenwood’s score for There Will Be Blood and the Sweeney Todd film soundtrack have both made the list of the Allmusic’s favorite soundtracks from 2007. "Greenwood’s tense, coiled score mirrors the eerie emotional undercurrent to the film, pulling suppressed feelings to the surface, often with an almost operatic sense of drama," says Allmusic. "This is magnificently unsettling music, whether it's used within the film or heard on its own terms—either way, it's impossible to forget after it's been heard."

There Will Be Blood receives an A review from E!'s Chris Farnsworth, who cites the film's "compelling" story and a "fascinating performance" by Daniel Day-Lewis in the lead role.