Silver Screen Reviews

On Thursday, One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson’s tenth feature film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, and Teyana Taylor hits theaters and it’s been one of my three or four most anticipated movies of the year. The reviews all make Andersons loose adaptation of Pynchon’s Vineland sound like it’s one of the decades best and is even being cited as possibly Anderson’s career best, so it’s safe to say I’m excited.

Unfortunately, it feels like I’m going to be the last person to actually see One Battle After Another because I don’t live in New York or Los Angeles and I’m doing a cooking class with my girlfriend on the night it hits theaters. The things you do for love, right?

Regardless, this release feels like an event. I’ve never seen a Paul Thomas Anderson movie in theater, but I know what it felt like when I saw my first Fincher on the big screen (The Killer) and my first Scorsese on the big screen (Killers of the Flower Moon) and even my first Nolan on the big screen (Interstellar). It’s a jolt of lightning into your veins. Seeing a masterful film makers work in the way it’s meant to be seen is like a night out on the town that you get all dressed up for and schedule a reservation at a nice steakhouse. It’s something you look forward to.

To celebrate the special occasion of one of the best working film makers releasing a new movie, I’ve decided to rank Paul Thomas Anderson’s filmography. It wasn’t easy, but someone has to do the heavy lifting around here.

9. Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

The worst part of ranking a directors filmography is having to slot a movie in “last place”. There are aspects of Punch-Drunk Love I enjoy. The neuroticism of Sandler’s performance as Barry Egan is fantastic and his chemistry with Philip Seymour Hoffman as the two scream down at each other through the phone is the true highlight of the movie, but outside of that, I didn’t bite on much of what Anderson created here. The two films at the bottom of this list share one similar trait and it’s that I want to really like both Punch-Drunk Love and the movie I ranked eighth. Perhaps it’s too smart for me and I just missed the point, but I’ve tried twice now, and in both watches I felt almost hollow. There was no connection like when I watch Magnolia and there wasn’t that spark of excitement I felt like when I watch Cooper Hoffman laying next to Alana Haim on a waterbed as Let It Roll plays in Licorice Pizza. Maybe one day I’ll get it.

8. Inherent Vice (2014)

Every fiber of my body wants to love Inherent Vice. You can easily ask the question “What’s not to love about Inherent Vice?” It’s one of the most loaded casts Anderson has ever assembled with Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Benicio del Toro, Reese Witherspoon, Maya Rudolph, Hong Chau, Martin Short, and Katherine Waterston and it’s a dashing adaptation of one of Pynchon’s best novels, but something didn’t click when I watched it for the first time and in turn, it’s made me not want to revisit it. I should, but the slow, mysterious pacing on display with its sparce rambling dialogue made my dad and I share looks of confusion in our viewing. Then again, this was probably four years ago when I watched it so maybe my taste has changed.

7. Phantom Thread (2017)

Before any PTA sycophants attempt to behead me for having Phantom Thread in the lower third of my rankings, I want to say that I like Phantom Thread. Hell, I really like it. The issue is that Anderson’s filmography is so extremely strong that some great movies have to be the sacrificial lamb and be ranked seventh. For Anderson, I find Phantom Thread to be his most tender film. It’s a raw love story wrapped in deceit and anger and just simmers and simmers up to one of the most beautiful line readings of Daniel Day-Lewis’s career when he says “Kiss me, my girl, before I’m sick.” It’s a shame Daniel Day-Lewis didn’t win his fifth career Oscar for this performance and it’s an even bigger travesty that Lesley Manville didn’t win Best Supporting Actress.

6. Hard Eight (1996)

I’m sure that Paul Thomas Andersons directorial debut is lower on many peoples list when it comes to ranking his filmography, but I have a soft spot for this gritty, depressing crime drama starring John C. Riley, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Philip Baker Hall. It sounds simple and or cliche to say, but due to its grungy and desperate nature, Hard Eight feels like a spiritual prequel to Andersons sophomore film, Boogie Nights. It’s a movie about people being used, abused, and wanting to feel love throughout Andersons career is a central theme. Sure, it’s rough around the edges, but I have such a love for the film that laid the ground work for all of PTA’s films that followed.

5. Licorice Pizza (2021)

It took me a second watch, but I eventually saw the light on Licorice Pizza. I’ve been vastly radicalized into now believing this is one of the best films of the 2020s and I think it’s because when Paul Thomas Anderson directs a movie, he acts as an elite offensive coordinator putting his cast into the right spots to succeed. Cooper Hoffman as a charming, ambitious, pussy hungry teen works. Alana Haim as a self centered and confused twenty something works. Guess what else works? Benny Safdie as a young gun politician and Tom Waits as a drunk Hollywood friend and George DiCaprio as a waterbed salesman and Bradley Cooper as a psychotic celebrity shagging Barbara Streisand. IT ALL WORKS.

Despite this taking place four years before Boogie Nights and came out almost twenty five years after it, it feels like the proper companion film about young adults figuring out their lives and relationships against hip and stylish backdrops in and around Los Angeles. It’s a colorful, swift moving piece of film making that I can’t wait to revisit for years to come.

4. The Master (2012)

The Master is a film that, in my eyes, is a double edged sword. You can view it as this masterful take on cults and weak individuals that becomes so volatile through the performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd. Or, you can view it as an extremely well crafted love story between a feeble minded follower and a domineering, charismatic leader. However you view it, and either option isn’t wrong, you’ll see the magic that Anderson makes in each frame and greatly appreciate it.

Wall to wall, The Master is packed with career best, or close to career best performances for just about all of the actors and actresses involved. Whether it’s the Joaquin Phoenix’s timid portrayal of Freddie Quell, Philip Seymour Hoffman as the explosive cult leader, Amy Adams as Lancaster Dodd’s loving and blinded wife, or even Jesse Plemons who continually questions his fathers words, there is not a miss. While just about every Anderson movie has these superb performances, The Master is the one where everyone is firing on each cylinder making one another better.

3. Boogie Nights (1997)

In preparation for One Battle After Another I revisited PTA’s sophomore film, Boogie Nights, and what’s odd is that I remember not loving this the first time I watched it. It was when I was a junior in college and I feel like this should’ve hit me in my sweet spot because it’s Mark Wahlberg swinging his dick around in a stylized late 70s LA, but in reality it’s more than that, and in my recent rewatch I locked into the sensibilities of those around Wahlberg like Philip Seymour Hoffman and William H. Macy’s characters. They’re losers sauntering through their miserable lives of either being disrespected or yearning for love and both, William H. Macy more, have bitter, bleak endings. Even though I keyed into those roles more than in my first watch, it can’t be said enough how unreal Mark Wahlberg is. If we’re being honest and in a safe space, he’s never even come close to dialing in a performance on this level ever again. I know he has it deep down inside, but will he ever reach this point again? My guess is no.

Within Boogie Nights, once you wade through the incredible tracking shots through valley house parties and clubs and the electric performances from Alfred Molina and Burt Reynolds and Julianne Moore is a 26 year old with balls the size of basketballs who made this movie and it kick started one of the best careers of any American film maker ever. If you haven’t watched it recently, carve out two and a half hours in your day to watch or rewatch Boogie Nights.

2. Magnolia (1999)

I remember where I first was when I watched Magnolia. I was in my first senior year of college (or second junior year, I guess it depends how you look at it) and I was laying in my dark dorm room in December, blankets wrapped around me as I blew off an assignment for a class I knew I was going to fail and I watched Magnolia and I felt changed. Seeing Tom Cruise in a toxic role shouting about respecting the cock and taming the cunt and later becoming a vulnerable character at his fathers bedside was so against character for what I knew from Cruise that it made me realize the magic that Anderson possessed as a film maker. His ultimate riff on loneliness in an intertwining, harsh story about these characters for lust after human interaction makes this one of my favorite, if not my favorite if you caught me on a different day, from Anderson.

When Zach Cregger’s Weapons came out this year and he cited Magnolia as an inspiration for his film, I was excited to see what bits and pieces he would use. While he did use a semblance of the structure to craft his horror epic, my favorite portion he utilized was modeling Alden Ehrenreich’s character after John C. Riley in Magnolia as this bashful, mustached cop trying to figure out the meaningful interactions in their life. If any up and coming film makers take anything from Magnolia, I hope it’s making more mustachio cops with a tender side.

1. There Will Be Blood (2007)

Clocking in at the top of my Paul Thomas Anderson ranking is his 2007 magnum opus, There Will Be Blood. Past the smoke (literally) and fire presented, whether it’s the grand landscapes of California or intense dialogue spewed between Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano, the thing Anderson does best here, and a common thread throughout his films, is he hammers home the turbulent relationship between a young man and his father figure. In Magnolia he does it well with Cruise as his vessel to convey the tumultuousness between two people and the same can be said in Boogie Nights between Mark Wahlberg and Burt Reynolds, but there is such a raw, brutal nature to the relationship between Daniel Plainview and H.W. Plainview. It feels, initially, like there is a lot of love, even if it’s conveyed in a rough around the edges manner, but as it begins to erode due to Daniel Plainview’s greed and hunger for power, you feel your heart break.

Not many movies can make you feel that way and it still baffles me that Anderson was able to emit that emotion in a scaled up epic revolving around the world of oil at the turn of the century. But, he does it. He fucking does.

While the early reviews of One Battle After Another are out of this world great, I have a hard time believing that it will top this. It’s simply lightning in a bottle for over two and a half hours with the best performance of the 21st century.