Paul Thomas Anderson Ranked

Alright, the quarantine has lead me to this. I am finally doing the impossible. I am ranking the films of Paul Thomas Anderson. For any of you who don’t know, Paul Thomas Anderson is my favorite director. His work has meant so much to me as a cinephile and as a filmmaker. I have tried to do this in the past many times and I have always given up. It’s like Sophie’s Choice, picking between children. The man has directed eight films and I genuinely believe seven out of the eight are bonafide masterpieces, so this whole list is the definition of splitting hairs. With that said, here is the list:

8. Hard Eight/Sydney

This was the only easy one. Paul Thomas Anderson’s first film is by far his weakest, but it’s still quite a solid debut feature. Inspired heavily by Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob Le Famour, Hard Eight depicts a father-son like relationship between a young man looking for direction in his life named John and an aging former gangster named Sydney who now spends his retired life living in hotels while playing the casinos. This movie is very small in scope compared to his other works and it’s the only one of his films that isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s a solid noir. Phillip Baker Hall, John C Reily, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Samuel L Jackson all give great performances as we start to see the beginning of things to come from PTA with excellent performances, strong dialogue and long takes.

7. Magnolia

After the success of Boogie Nights, New Line wrote him an empty check to do whatever he wanted. The result was Magnolia, an epic ensemble familial drama that is easily PTA’s most ambitious film.

Magnolia has long takes after long takes, whip pans after whip pans, and needle drop after needle drop. It’s several small personal familial dramas told with maximum style in operatic proportions in the vein of Scorsese’s maximist style in his mob pictures. The basic idea is personal tragedies like family members dying or a child’s abuse may not be a huge deal in the grand scheme of the whole wide world, but to the individual who’s dealing with these things, they are Apocalyptic. PTA even delivers an Apocalyptic ending.

There’s like ten stories and fifteen characters because PTA wrote with no filter for the first and last time. This does lead to a bit of a mess at times, causing a bloated runtime and a bit of a bloated plot. However, I don’t know if a filtered, less messy version of Magnolia would actually be better, though. Part of the charm is the “writing from the gut” aspect and I think that’s what makes it special.

The performances are mostly great, with Tom Cruise stealing the show as a pick-up chicks guru, and PTA delivers great dialogue as usual. All and all, it’s a great film. The fact that I have this film seventh is crazy to me (most directors would kill to make a movie like this) but that’s just how consistent PTA has been. Similar to Boogie Nights and GoodFellas, this takes A LOT from Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and it is a bit messy, as I said earlier. That’s not much, but in a competition between masterpieces where we’re splitting hairs, that’s enough for me to drop Magnolia this low. Still, a beautiful film.

6. Inherent Vice

Thomas Pynchon has always been an author deemed unfilmmable, so many people thought Paul Thomas Anderson was crazy to adapt Inherent Vice. After the movie came out, many of them still thought he was crazy. Often called Inherent Twice due to the amount of times you’ll need to see it to even vaguely understand what’s going on, Inherent Vice is a stoner noir that makes its audience fall down the rabbit hole.

While it’s intentionally obtuse, Inherent Vice also has more than enough zany comedy to make the medicine go down. It’s filled with Zucker Brothers-like gags and often has a very playful tone when it’s not trying to confuse you. This is when the film is at its best, especially whenever Josh Brolin is on screen as Bigftoot. Many of the scenes with Josh Brolin, Benecio Del Toro, and Martin Short are some of the best scenes PTA has ever done.

While the plot itself doesn’t matter and the fact that it is so overwhelming is precisely the point thematically( which I’d argue the theme can be simplified to “this is why we can’t have nice things” because the world is corrupt and you can’t solve every problem and every time you find one solution you find another problem until your white board is a spiderweb of conspiracies and this corruption and inherent decay of morality in life is not simply caused by one way of thinking as our two most important characters, Doc and Bigfoot, are on completely opposite sides of the political spectrum, yet are equally oppressed by this inherent decay that The Golden Fang represents) I do find the film is never as serious or pretentious as it’s toughest critics claim. Even the big “intellectual” narration at the end of the film by Sorleige is interrupted by Bigfoot kicking down Doc’s door in Looney Tunes fashion. Inherent Vice does have very complex and interesting thematic ideas but they are told in a very fun way. This film has more in common with Airplane! and The Naked Gun than Tarkovsky.

As I said at the beginning, these rankings have been so difficult because I am splitting hairs. The reason Inherent Vice isn’t higher despite having many scenes that I would consider PTA’s best work is really one major issue: The film’s pacing. Inherent Vice feels longer than it is which is not a good thing, especially for a movie that actually is long. What makes this even more difficult is that I don’t think there is an obvious way to fix this issue. There’s not a bad scene in the film that obviously needs to cut. However, I’d argue the sum of the parts aren’t as great as the parts themselves. I believe this issue is a result of that fact that the film is such an overdrive of information that is thrown at you while intentionally being confusing that it begins to wear on you by the two hour mark. It’s still a helluva way to spend two and a half hours, though.

5. Boogie Nights

While Boogie Nights wasn’t PTA’s first film, it certainly was his coming out party. Widely ambitious for a twenty seven year old director, Boogie Nights is the rise and fall of a 1970’s porn star told in epic fashion.

Intentionally structured like GoodFellas while also stealing it’s style and aesthetic, Boogie Nights uses excessive style such a long takes, whip pans, quick camera moves and needle drops to seduce the audience into a life they would, in theory, be repulsed by(instead of gangster life, it’s the porn life). Also like GoodFellas, there is an act of violence in the film that signals a change in tone for the second half of the film. The first half seduces you into the lifestyle, while the second half shows you just how bad the lifestyle really is.

What separates Boogie Nights from other Scorsese homages is the tenderness that PTA has for his characters. In many ways, Boogie Nights is also a story about the island of misfit toys. There’s an innocence about it that is not in GoodFellas which makes Boogie Nights unique from it’s influence. The over abundance of lovable wacky characters is Altman-esque and Boogie Nights owes a lot to Altman’s Nashville as well. However, this isn’t simply an Altman/Scorsese cover. PTA has said this film is, oddly enough, about his childhood. He grew up in the San Fernando Valley in the 1970s and was aware of the kind of dirty films that were being filmed around him. The Colonel is played by Robert Ridgley, one of his dad’s friends who was around during his childhood. PTA also spent his childhood watching Robert Downey Sr films and cast him in a small role and built a whole set-piece around an homage to his films. All of these personal details in the film seperate it from it’s influences. Boogie Nights does take a lot from GoodFellas and Nashville, but PTA uses those influences not to make a cheap imitation, but instead uses them as a vehicle for something very personal to him.

There was a three way battle between this, Punch Drunk Love and Phantom Thread. Ultimately, this fell lowest of the three because the other two are more original and uniquely PTA, while this one does feel like he’s trying to be Scorsese Jr and Altman Jr a little too much. However, this is PTA’s POP HIT and it’s a banger!

4. Punch Drunk Love

When PTA told press after Magnolia that he was going to make a ninety minute movie with Adam Sandler, they all laughed. Little did they know what was brewing in his head. Punch Drunk Love is Paul Thomas Anderson’s first film where he shed his influences and was more comfortable in his own skin. He said he got pretty good at making the Boogie Nights/Magnolia kind of pictures and was bored. He wanted to find a new way of working.

While music played a big part in his first three films, Boogie Nights and Magnolia both had a lot of needle drops. Starting with Punch Drunk Love, PTA would begin utilizing LOUD, dominant scores that really set the tone for the film. The marriage of the music and his camera movements that have dominated his filmography this century also begin here. Lastly, he leaves the ensemble piece for a film that focuses on one relationship, something he would end up revisiting often (There Will Be Blood, The Master, Phantom Thread). In short, Punch Drunk Love was the first film in a new era for Paul Thomas Anderson.

Punch Drunk Love is a simple story on paper and somewhat easy to look over in PTA’s filmography because it’s very low key in comparison to the epic scope he has often worked in. Adam Sandler plays a lonely, disturbed man who falls in love with a girl while he’s combating a sex-line money extortionist. Adam Sandler is downright amazing in this film while Phillip Seymour Hoffman delivers his best comedic performance in a career filled with under-rated comedic performances. Punch Drunk Love is PTA’s most surreal film as it blasts colors, music, random sounds, car crashes and musical instruments at us at full speed, often with no explanation. The film works simply as a comedy, but it also works as a character study of Barry Egan. As PTA described it in an interview in 2014 “it’s about falling in looooove”. It may be that simple, but like falling in love, it’s quite powerful.

3. Phantom Thread

Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis reunite ten years after There Will Be Blood, this time to tell the story of a dressmaker in England in the 1950s and his romance with a Jewish immigrant who knows how to keep her own against him.

Phantom Thread focused on an egotistical, difficult artist that easily can be viewed as an avatar for both PTA and DDL. However, the whole film is not about indulging in his selfish, idiosyncrasies, but instead is about challenging them and challenging the very idea of a difficult artist. Alma, the love interest of our artist Reynolds Woodcock, does exactly that. Their relationship is a tug of war for power, filled equally with love and frustration. Woodcock wants to believe that he needs no one except his work. However, his obsession with his dead mother seems to hint that he does need someone to take care of him and Alma wants to do exactly that. They eventually discover their unique way of making this power dynamic work. PTA said that Phantom Thread is ultimately a film about the dueling desire to be with someone while also the desire to do be completely independent.

Like all of PTA’s films, Phantom Thread is very funny. This film could have easily been a stuffy period piece, but the humor never allows that and the music and cinematography elevate it from any kind of stuffy Oscar bait. Not to mention the mushrooms which uh…I won’t spoil for anyone who hasn’t seen it. Needless to say, this film is weird and hilarious. A downright hoot.

All in all, I have to admit that despite PTA and DDL coming back together, I was a little worried and underwhelmed at the idea of them making a movie about a dressmaker in the 1950s. The fact that this movie is SO good and SO damn entertaining despite its subject matter is proof to me that this is one of PTA’s best films.

2. There Will Be Blood

I still vividly remember the first time I saw There Will Be Blood. It was a rainy Sunday afternoon and I had just gotten it in the mail from Netflix( Yes, back when Netflix was primarily a snail mail service). I watched the film and was absolutely floored. When Daniel Day Lewis echoes the fitting last words “I’m Finished”, I sat shocked, unable to process what I had just watched. I had two thoughts in my mind: You can make movies like that? I want to make movies like that. And Thus, in many ways the genesis of my style and desires as a filmmaker stem from There Will Be Blood.

Paul Thomas Anderson describes There Will Be Blood as the most expensive Tom and Jerry episode ever made. Simplified, it is simply a cat and mouse game between two powerful, corrupt men. Daniel Plainview is an American oil man while Eli is an American Preacher. We see Greed and Ambition can corrupt Business and Faith. You could say a lot of things about America, Capitalism and Faith in this film, but ultimately it really does work as a character study. The big themes are simply the setting for this Tom and Jerry tale. PTA focuses primarily on characters.

Jonny Greenwood’s score is haunting and it’s marriage with Elswit’s cinematography creates a sublime experience. The opening fifteenish minutes is reminiscent of Kubrick’s Dawn of Man sequence in 2001. Perhaps the Dawn of The American Man? Nevertheless, the nearly dialogue free section is a masterclass in directing, setting the tone for the rest of the film.

Day-Lewis gives his best performance in a career of all-timers and PTA is patient with his camera and cutting, allowing Day-Lewis’ performance to breathe-allowing him to tell the story. That is one of PTA’s greatest strengths. He lets his actors live in the world. He doesn’t cut together sequence after sequence. He cuts when he needs to.

I acknowledge that There Will Be Blood will be Paul Thomas Anderson’s legacy film and I am OK with that. I am happy that it recently was named the best film of the 21st century so far. I get that this is his “best” film in a lot of people’s eyes. However, they are wrong. It’s simply #2.

1. The Master

Drum roll… The Master is Paul Thomas Anderson’s best film. Is the film a dream? It certainly feels like it sometimes. The marriage between Jonny Greenwood’s anarchic score and Mihai Malaimare Jr’s beautiful 70mm cinematography creates a dreamlike quality that tells a story through a progression of moods instead of plot.

Joaquin Phoenix as Freddie Quell is probably my favorite performance of all time. He’s a ticking time bomb waiting to explode, yet he’s also completely vulnerable. Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the titular Master AKA Lancaster Dodd is part L. Ron Hubbard, part Orson Welles. The scenes with the two of them are like Manning vs Brady, two Goliaths going toe to toe, matching each blow perfectly. Add Amy Adams in the mix, and you have probably the greatest acted ensemble since George Steven’s GIANT.

Hoffman’s Orson Welles act is only bettered by Paul Thomas Anderson’s Orson Welles act. His camera movement is precise and ambitious, particularly during the long take where we follow a dress model in a mall. However, it’s when he doesn’t move his camera where I’m even more floored. The shot choices and blocking choices are astounding. Arguably no film has inspired my shot choices more than The Master.

PTA uses Scientology, or more specifically dianetics, simply as a setting for the characters. Perhaps that’s what I like most about this film and PTA in general as we wrap up here. He often uses high concept ideas( 70's Porn Star, Oil Miner at the turn of the century, cult like figure inspired by L Ron Hubbard, noir detective story about a missing girlfriend), simply to set a stage for his characters. It helps make the mundane theatrical. It helps make people theatrical. That makes them entertaining. And that’s why he’s so damn good.