With One Battle After Another due to hit cinemas on 26th September, we’ve been reflecting on the career of the auteur behind it.
Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the most highly esteemed and downright influential directors of his generation. His nine films to date (One Battle After Another marks his landmark tenth) span 19 years, which is a remarkably consistent level of output by anyone’s standards.
Even more remarkable is the level of quality that PTA (as he’s often referred to) has sustained. Of his nine films to date, there isn’t a single dud, nor even one you could justifiably class as mediocre.
That’s not to say that we don’t have our clear favourites, however. It’s inevitable, really, when you consider the sheer mileage Anderson has covered over the years.
He’s made gonzo capers, historical epics, literary adaptations, chilly costume dramas, and whatever Punch-Drunk Love is.
Here, then, is our take on Paul Thomas Anderson’s formidable oeuvre. You’ll almost certainly disagree, so do have your say in the comments.
9. Inherent Vice
![Inherent Vice - Official Trailer [HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/wZfs22E7JmI/maxresdefault.jpg)
Inherent Vice is perhaps the most misunderstood and, ultimately, disliked movie in PTA’s library. His left-field adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel makes out like a rambling detective story, but its plot (as much as there is one) proves to be as disjointed and confused as Joaquin Phoenix’s frazzled private investigator.
In retrospect, that kind of seems to be the point. It’s a film you’re best advised to just sit back and allow to flow over you – a true stoner classic.
8. Hard Eight
Anderson’s first film has aged remarkably well. True, it’s far leaner and (dare we say) more beholden to genre conventions than the director’s subsequent work, but it’s a very effectively made crime drama nonetheless.
Philip Baker Hall shines as an ageing and regretful gambler who impulsively takes a young homeless man (a remarkably fresh-faced John C. Reilly) under his wing and teaches him the trade. As an early example of PTA’s eye for talent, Gwyneth Paltrow and Samuel L. Jackson also play memorable roles.
7. Punch-Drunk Love
The 21st century has turned up a couple of pieces of evidence (namely The Meyerowitz Stories and Uncut Gems) that Adam Sandler might be more than an unfunny comic actor appearing in a string of terrible movies (come at me, Sandler fans).
But the directors of those two films only knew this to be the case because of Punch-Drunk Love. Anderson’s skewed romantic dramedy pits Sandler’s anxious entrepreneur into an unorthodox relationship with his sister’s co-worker. Punch-Drunk Love is one of the director’s smallest, strangest movies, but its fans tend to be of the evangelical variety.
6. Licorice Pizza
Anderson’s most recent movie (before One Battle After Another) saw the director slipping into an altogether breezier, messier mode after the icy poise of Phantom Thread. It’s a refreshing change of pace from the director and also undoubtedly his funniest film yet.
Cooper Hoffman plays a preternaturally confident teenager who becomes infatuated with a much older woman, played brilliantly by Alana Haim, better known as a member of the band Haim. Licorice Pizza nails the West Coast 1970s period detail as well as Boogie Nights, but in a rather more relaxed manner.
5. Magnolia
If Boogie Nights put Anderson on the map, it was Magnolia that sealed his status as a potential all-time great. Its narrative ambition and sheer heft (it remains his longest film at 3 hours and 18 minutes) still stand out among the rest of the director’s work.
Magnolia’s sprawling ensemble cast is all given their due through the film’s Rashomon-like multi-perspective structure. However, it’s Tom Cruise, smack bang in the middle of his artistic peak, who steals the show as an eerily prescient alpha male proto-influencer.
4. Boogie Nights
In only his second film, Paul Thomas Anderson announced himself to be a generational talent, launching the second career of an artist formerly known as Marky Mark into the bargain.
We can forgive Anderson for that, especially as the actor now known as Mark Wahlberg is so perfectly cast as the impressively endowed but none-too-bright young man making his way in the ‘70s porn industry. It’s a suitably grubby yet multi-faceted tale filled with fascinatingly flawed characters.
3. Phantom Thread
![PHANTOM THREAD - Official Trailer [HD] - In Select Theaters Christmas - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/xNsiQMeSvMk/maxresdefault.jpg)
Phantom Thread sometimes feels strangely overlooked in Paul Thomas Anderson’s filmography, perhaps thanks to its painstakingly manicured style and performances. It’s so chilly it almost makes you want to put a (cashmere) jumper on.
But it’s absolutely filled with subtle delights, from Daniel Day-Lewis’s complex portrayal of an elitist English fashion designer during the ‘50s, to the defiant performance of Vicky Krieps’s young waitress and love interest. It’s neither a surprise nor an insult to state that the film won an Oscar for its costume design – it looks gorgeous – but that's not the extent of its appeal.
2. The Master
It’s easy to view The Master as a thinly disguised dissection of Scientology and its charismatic leader L. Ron Hubbard – here called Lancaster Dodd and played by the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman – in their early days.
It’s about much more than that, though, as we follow the frazzled navy veteran Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) and his attempts to find meaning and purpose in post-war America. But yeah, it’s also about Scientology. Ever wondered why Tom Cruise never appeared in another PTA joint after Magnolia? Just saying...
1. There Will Be Blood
Considering how consistently remarkable Anderson’s filmography is, it’s surprisingly easy to name his crowning achievement. It’s not just that There Will Be Blood brought the director two of his three Oscars (though not for Best Picture or Best Director, thanks to No Country for Old Men).
Nor even that it starred the finest actor of our generation, Daniel Day-Lewis, in one of his greatest (and indeed Oscar-winning) performances. It’s the sheer epic sweep of its story, which somehow seems to encompass all of American modern history as Day-Lewis’s insatiable oil prospector strives for greatness. An all-time great, and one that every self-respecting film fan needs to see.
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