My verdict on Paul Thomas Anderson's career thus far

I want you flat on your back. Helpless, tender, open, with only me to help. And then I want you strong again.

In celebration of his upcoming new film One Battle After Another, my beloved local Tyneside Cinema has screened all of his filmography thus far. I went and watched them all, with the exception of Hard Eight, which I skipped because it looked boring and everyone says it’s a minor work.

Here is my verdict on PTA’s filmography. I’m not a huge fan of worst to best lists because they kick off with all the negativity, and reading through it all can feel like a slog before you get to the enthusiastic appraisals into which the author has put some love and care. So I’ve approached this in chronological order, with a ranking out of the 8 films (excl. Hard Eight and One Battle). Obviously 1/8 is the best one and 8/8 is the worst. Let’s kick off with…

Boogie Nights (1997): 2/8

This is the sort of film that makes you remember why you love going to the movies. It’s incredibly funny, very sexy, and constantly ups the ante. Burt Reynolds is hilarious as the Ange Postecoglou-esque porn impresario Jack Horner (a performance made retrospectively even funnier by how much Reynolds hated the film), and Alfred Molina’s coked-up gun-fellating scene near the end is one of the most memorable in PTA’s frequently divalicious filmography.

Magnolia (1999): 8/8

PTA’s worst film. I really don’t get on with this one. I find the central premise — that everything is connected — essentially banal, and explored more interestingly and entertainingly by the “Steamed Hams” episode of the Simpsons. Tom Cruise is incredible as an evil Andrew Tate esque pickup artist, and his breakdown at his father’s deathbed near the end is an incredible piece of acting. But other than that, I found it schmaltzy and corny, with the fourth wall breaking ensemble song near the end a particular low point.

Punch-Drunk Love (2002): 6/8

I used to think this was one of my favourite films full stop, but rewatching it last month I didn’t care too much for it. I think in a post Uncut Gems world, Adam Sandler delivering a great serious performance in a relentlessly anxious film doesn’t feel like quite the singular feat it once did. I feel his character’s relationship with Emily Watson comes off as arbitrary and ungrounded in anything — I guess you could say that’s the point of love, but it feels like cheating in a film. They don’t seem to have any kind of mysterious chemistry, they just sort of hang out together. Love Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character though, especially the scene when he’s on the phone and he loses his cool and yells at Adam Sandler to shut the fuck up.

There Will Be Blood (2007): 4/8

What needs to be said about this great film? Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Dano square up to each other and do Proper Acting, AKA yelling and wrestling around and getting all gothic and biblical with each other. It’s all good fun and I do think it’s under appreciated just how dark and evil PTA and DDL managed to make the character of Daniel Plainview. There’s a raging blackness inside his eyes, he’s constantly seething, there’s just nothing human in there whatsoever.

The Master (2012): 7/8

I really don’t think this one deserves its acclaim. Joaquin Phoenix leers and gurns as a mentally subnormal WW2 veteran who joins Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Scientology-esque cult. Their interview/therapy scenes feel like There Will Be Blood leftovers, and Phoenix’s character is too stupid and boorish to ever do or say anything interesting. Again, PSH is excellent, constantly simmering over the edge, losing his cool in an epic moment where he yells “pig FUCK!!!!’. But I actually think Amy Adams is wasted in this film, she’s basically just a nagging wife, and I don’t find that the film says anything too profound about religion and cultishness in America.

Inherent Vice (2014): 3/8

Such a gorgeous and hilarious adaptation of Pynchon’s novel, which is one of my favourites. Did you know PTA studied under David Foster Wallace in one of his few semesters at Emerson College? I wonder if that’s where he discovered Pynchon, given DFW’s reverence and obsessiveness over the great old man. PTA treats Pynchon’s story with real love and devotion, lifting the opening scene with verbatim dialogue, and incorporating all of the increasingly minor and zanily-named characters (Adrian Prussia, Puck Beaverton, Vincent Indelicato). The audience was absolutely creasing every few minutes, which was interesting as I previously saw the film as a particularly melancholic adaptation of the book. It’s a story about the co-opting and disintegration of the 60s’ revolutionary spirit, the dreams and sexual freedom of an entire post-war generation receding into a haze of weed smoke, FBI agents and counterrevolutionaries waiting in the wings. But audiences can’t be wrong about whether something’s funny; if it makes you laugh then it’s funny; and Martin Short running around as a coked up Austin Powers esque dentist called Rudy Blatnoyd was fucking funny.

Phantom Thread (2017): 1/8

PTA’s best film and one of my absolute favourite films. It excels at two things: being extraordinarily romantic, and being incredibly funny. Daniel Day Lewis and Vicky Krieps throw everything into their performances, both of them gazing into each other’s eyes with this resentful obsessiveness which it amazes me that great actors are able to fake. The shots of them driving down a country lane in winter, Jonny Greenwood’s gorgeous piano score tumbling away in the background, feel imbued with a romanticism that’s impossible to shortcut or fake. But really in the film there’s probably more screen time of them hating each other than them being madly in love with each other (even though both are true), and these bits can be so unbelievably funny. DDL pouting and complaining in verbose RP billows of language about his asparagus being sautéed in butter rather than his preferred oil and salt, or Alma making too much noise with her cutlery at breakfast, or having to make a dress for a fat woman who he doesn’t enjoy spending time with. It’s an amazing ‘big’ performance from him where he plays a strange and emotionally intense character, but with much more depth than the monstrous Daniel Plainview. And then Vicky Krieps’ Alma is subtle, patient, ultimately extremely cunning and conniving, cooking up poisoned mushrooms with a mysterious glint in her eye, knowing it will resurrect their love. What a beautiful film.

Licorice Pizza (2021): 5/8

Will likely go down as a minor entry in his filmography, but I do quite like this one because it feels looser and shaggier than anything else he’s made so far. There are no I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE! showstoppers, but lots of funny mellow scenes, like when Alana Haim brings her boyfriend to Jewish dinner and he informs everyone that he’s decided to become an atheist, and then afterwards she’s like, show me your cock, show me it, look it’s circumcised so you’re not a fucking atheist!!! That was funny. Also Cooper Hoffman is very endearing as a bolshy little charming businessman. And the whole film is just kind of a nice vibe, it captures something breezy and pleasurable about the 70s; the water beds, the music, the sense of open endedness in young people’s lives that doesn’t really exist today due to technology and economics.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for my thoughts on One Battle After Another!