poll thomas anderson 2

the top two were obviously going to be the top two, there's no surprise there.

kinda surprised TWBB placed 2nd and got so many votes. thought that one had really diminished in hindsight

lagoon otm re The Master

Predicted finish:

Phantom Thread
The Master
There Will Be Blood
Inherent Vice
Boogie Nights
Magnolia
Hard Eight
Punch Drunk Love

Not the inverse of how I'd rank them, but probably closer to the inverse than to how I'd rank them.

― clemenza, Tuesday, August 14, 2018 4:31 PM (two hours ago)

pretty close, boogie nights higher than you predicted though! (I know you really liked it, I did too)

Lol why does anyone like DDL, such a tiresome bore

Or ham, take your pick

can't believe BN is 21 years old. more time passed between now & '97 than '97 & subject matter. crazy. i'll be dead soon.

thought that one had really diminished in hindsight

it's easily his weakest imo but I thought that on first and only viewing too

(on DVD, the only one apart from Hard 8 that I didn't see in the cinema -- but it's showing in a 70mm festival here next month so thinking of giving it another chance)

you should definitely see it in 70mm

oh yeah for sure if you've never seen it in a theater

I thought TWBB had diminished in retrospect because of DDL histrionics. Phantom Thread didn't have the same problem because it was so surprisingly self-effacing and funny and loose.

lagoon otm re /The Master/

TWBB feels so narrow in scope compared to The Master

Lol why does anyone like DDL, such a tiresome bore

Or ham, take your pick

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 15 August 2018 02:22 (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pattern here imo

amazingly you can be a bore and still be a good actor and be a total ride as well.

I don't think DDL's performances in A Room with a View, My Left Foot, The Age of Innocence, The Boxer or Phantom Thread are the work of a ham. Let's say he can work both modes.

But TWBB is mostly a failure.

or My Beautiful Laundrette, In the Name of the Father, The Boxer, The Crucible...

That My Beautiful Laundrette and A Room with a View were made the same year is pleasing.

that they were made back-to-back, basically.

tbh I haven't enjoyed anything DDL has done since My Left Foot, which teenaged-me enjoyed almost solely because of his hamminess

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CF2PbJsaW8

lmao "there was hardly any fucking blood"

I mean, Jamie otm

man magnolia fucking sucks

Would love to see a yearly poll for his works since imho his “best” could change any day.

Man THE MASTER fucking sucks

One of my Letterboxd follows listed his ranking of PTA’s features and as I commented to him I would’ve complained about it but it’s hard to be offended when the movies are as good as they are. Which made me wonder, of the 8! = 40320 ways to rank his features to date, how many of the orderings are indefensible? Is ranking Punch Drunk Love or Hard Eight first necessarily trolling? Is rating Magnolia highly an imposture? Putting There Will Be Blood towards the bottom half would be a minority opinion but not a boorish one. Anyway I like these films.

Revisited Magnolia recently and, no, it's not at the top of the pile. I'm sure a rewatch of Inherent Vice would result in the same reassessment. So it's Phantom Thread because that's what's left.

as my date and i were coming out of there will be blood the guy behind us said to his date "i think he was consumed by greed"

guy was not wrong

i should rewatch the master

which does not suck

I honestly would love a yearly rehash poll of his works

btw “The Master” has a good example of something I think deserves a separate thread: Weird/Bad Last Line Said in a Film

“Now stick it back in, it fell out.”

one of those directors i like who still makes a lot of movies i don't like

the master had a hole where a main character should have been. twbb kind of a mess. adam sandler romcom. etc.

Punch-Drunk Love and Magnolia are, to my mind, better films than There Will Be Blood. I haven’t seen anything he’s made since then.

pdl and hard 8 both rule

I don't think Hard Eight is a particularly great movie, but the presence of the godlike Phillip Baker Hall raises it up to an extremely memorable 100 mins or so

his performance in that movie sort of reminds me of George C. Scott in The Hustler

Philip Baker Hall is so great in Magnolia. I think about him in that all the time.

I've always been curious about his turn as Trickie Dickie in Altman's Secret Honor. I know it's probably a bad movie, but I'm going to dl from the torrents to find out for myself.

it’s a helluva watch, recommended (for pbh only really)

nice one, that will do for me

he really blows the rest of the cast offscreen

It's on the Criterion Channel for those interested.

he really blows the rest of the cast offscreen

honestly that does happen too

I think Magnolia is a lot more personal than Boogie Nights, which is maybe why despite all its high points - and I'd argue it's mostly high points - it's still something of a mess, or at least feels teetering on the brink of out of control despite its virtuosity (it's certainly ott). But it definitely seems like he got something out of his system with it, because Punch Drunk feels like a conscious shift/reset, just as There Will Be Blood (which I still really like and view not as simply as "man consumed by greed" moral fall movie and more as "this guy/corporations are evil and/or literally the Devil" a la Chinatown) is the debut of a "mature" PTA. "The Master" is a pretty incredible and original movie, but imo Inherent Vice is neither of those things. I still need to see Phantom Thread!

PTA admits to something along those lines in a Marc Maron interview from a few years back wrt Magnolia

The Master above all. I have to maybe put Magnolia second.

I was so fucking disappointed with Phantom Thread. DDL is no PSH.

I rate Hard 8 pretty high tbh, not #1 but above some of the recent sacred cows in his filmography. As his attention has drifted away from plot & structure over the years, I've had more & more problems with the films.

I agree with Josh that There Will Be Blood is the transition into his mature period, probably why I like it the best, imo it combines the best elements (or at least what I like about best) of his early & later periods. If it lost the 1920s coda I wouldnt have anything bad to say about it.

every time i see it i fantasize about doing my own soderbergh-style edit to tweak the things that drive me nuts about it, maybe that'd be a fun quarantine project

I return to Hard Eight often: a model of concision.

I think I observed once that Philip Baker Hall would've made a splendid Wallace Stevens.

i literally can't read a negative opinion about inherent vice without being like what movie did you see