poll thomas anderson 2

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

"The Master" is a pretty incredible and original movie, but imo Inherent Vice is neither of those things

i would say that the good things about both of these movies are very similar!!!!

His last three films are his best imo, in ascendending order.

His last three films are his best imo, in ascendending order.

_His last three films are his best imo, in ascendending order._


I frequently think of Dr. Morbius’ crack about it being “about a closet case with a poisoning fetish.”

i've definitely said this before, but magnolia was my favorite film of all time for like a decade (i know) (i know) and i agree fully with alfred. pta's '90s films are all great (well i still haven't seen hard eight) but there's sort of an obvious post-scorsese energy they're picking up on and rolling with; master, inherent vice, and phantom thread are all operating on their own rhythms, more liberated from any de rigueur cinematic language, their scripts rely on elision and space instead of dialogue to move themselves forward

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

I didn't have a single clue what was going on.

it doesn't matter

even in the book the mystery is a möbius strip, it is part of its stoned paranoiac logic

Nah, Magnolia would still be top three for me, it’s a glorious mess in some ways but the glories is how I feel about it. The first time I saw it, I was supposed to be studying so I recorded it and watched it after I’d finished for the evening. As soon as I’d finished - on Claudia’s smile, an ending I still adore - I rewound the whole thing and watched it again. Even recently I put it on intending to just watch a couple of scenes and ended up watching the whole thing from start to finish again. Why so compelling? The obvious: the casting, the intersection, the soundtrack, the sense of it being hugely personal. But also! Stanley, John C Reilly’s well-meaning but oblivious cop, the way the whole thing is about fathers, the opening scene, the way Tom Cruise is more weirdly magnetic when he’s breaking down than when he’s jumping around pumping himself up. A million little things and all the others too. Imperfect as it may be, it’s genuinely touching and I adore it.

I’m sure his later films are worth a watch, just never felt the inclination.

I saw Hard Eight recently and it struck me that I've never seen such stupid characters in a movie (Reilly and Paltrow), without their stupidity being played primarily for comedy.

The endings of movies are the most important to me, and PTA regularly fumbles them (or the endings reveal that what he thinks the films are about is not what I was getting from them up to that point). I'd rank The Master at the top and Inherent Vice at the bottom (I don't need to know "what is going on", but I never felt ANYTHING was going on).

on Claudia’s smile, an ending I still adore

ugh it's the best i cry every time

great post gyac

It’s so good as well, you can barely hear what is being said, but it doesn’t matter because the focal point of the scene is Claudia’s face. Love it a lot.

Ah no, the scene where Frank looks at his dying father and goes from the shell he’s built for himself to anger he’s held onto for years to this wounded little boy in almost no time is just... spectacular. Cruise was robbed that year, robbed.

I agree with all of that.

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.

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

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

Er, rather, just the quoted part

I loved Magnolia back in the day but it's been twenty years so I should probably review.

Hard Eight isn't PTA's best film but it would be hundreds of lesser directors' best film. It's definitely top tier PTA. Kind of the apotheosis of '90s indie film aesthetic imo, and everyone is great in it.