poll thomas anderson 2

I haven't seen Phantom Thread yet, so this remains a toss-up between Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood, the only two of his movies that I flat-out loved on first viewing. Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love both feel a bit too much like stunts, to me, and while I could see The Master growing on me in time, Inherent Vice, as much fun as it is, just feels like an even wackier version of the already-sufficiently-wacky The Long Goodbye. I haven't seen Hard Eight since it played on cable in the late 90s.

boogie nights still my vote also but phantom thread is prob 2nd now

The Master

The Master

The Master

but haven't seen magnolia or phantom thread

Also read Inherent Vice before I saw the film and the film suffered in comparison. Even tho it’s ~minor Pynchon~ it’s such a colorful, mystical, dream/cartoon and the movie just felt so flat and surface in comparison. Definitely interested in seeing it again removed from that and seeing it as it’s own thing.

Phantom Thread was wonderful. It felt small in a way, not aiming for the fences, but it was totally successful and I would gladly watch it again and again.

I didn’t really rate this guy until TWBB, which I didn’t love but had marks of a new and interesting artistic voice.

Was kind of hoping I'd be the only Boogie Nights vote, but I guess not. His films always interest me, but becoming a textbook case of what Sarris called "strained seriousness."

that is the wrongest descriptor of phantom thread

The Master

The Master

(xpost) That's actually the film I'd most apply it to.

Phantom Thread is a romcom

“Troubled weirdos struggle to communicate” is how I’d sum up his oeuvre for the most part. It’s a shtick I don’t think I’ll get tired of.

I’ve heard it bounced elsewhere, but “fucked up weirdos making their own family” is def a recurring theme.

And yeah it’s a good theme that has legs.

glad to see so much support for The Master -- the reviews I read seemed kind of lukewarm about it but then I watched it and was rapt. There Will Be Blood is the overrated one for me.

The Master > Boogie Nights > Inherent Vice > There Will Be Blood imo

There Will Be Blood is his weakest by far imo (or rather, emptiest).

I'm surprised how much TWBB is hated around these parts, I think it's fantastic, and it marked a real interesting shift in his approach that has carried forward in the subsequent films. It was the moment when he truly found his voice.

If Paul Dano’s character was played by someone better it would’ve worked more for me. Guy kinda ruins the movie imo.

I mean, hard as hell role, but shit is he not up to the task.

glad to see so much support for The Master -- the reviews I read seemed kind of lukewarm about it but then I watched it and was rapt. There Will Be Blood is the overrated one for me.

― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive), Saturday, June 9, 2018 1:15 AM (thirty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I saw it when it came out, two days in a row, and was nonplussed both times... second night was with friends, all fans of PTA, we all left just sort of scratching our heads, unsatisfied but unable to articulate why. I actually don't think I've seen it since but it's the movie of his that's stuck with me the most, it has sort of has the Vertigo effect of a movie that feels like it never really ends or begins, as if it exists out of time. I haven't seen it in years, definitely not since PSH's death and maybe not since that opening weekend. But TWBB, which I loved at the time and have seen maybe 3-4 times, seems overwrought and ridiculous in retrospect. Probably suffers from memefication of milkshake ending and DDL's performance which again just seems silly compared to Phantom Thread. A great movie I should revisit... eventually.

Boogie Nights is great but Altman cosplay. My second favorite. Magnolia was my favorite movie when I was 11 but I don't think I've seen the whole thing since then. Not sure if it'd hit me as cloying & saccharine now, because I still love the singalong and the frogs.

Punch Drunk Love was my favorite for years but after watching it for the first time in a few years a couple months ago I sorta turned on it. Beautiful moments, Adam Sandler is amazing & it's really a drag no one else has hired him or pushed him to do another performance like that. PTA, very astutely, saw how much rage and male insecurity was in Happy Gilmore/Billy Madison/The Waterboy/The Wedding Singer and how that could be used and turned on its head. But the movie excuses some awful behavior from Sandler's character, particularly destroying the bathroom in the restaurant. Emily Watson forgiving to the point of absurdity - basically a pixie savior girl. I just didn't find it as moving as I used to.

Inherent Vice is really fun, liked it when it came out and even more when I watched it last summer. "There's something wrong with your couch!" pops up in my head a lot. circa1916 otm about Phantom Thread, it was small and unforced and very funny and it's definitely the most successful example of PTA's post-TWBB "loose" / "are they making this up as they go along?" approach.

...and I haven't seen Hard Eight lol

i love a good few of these but come on it's phantom thread

i also read inherent vice before watching the movie but i’m confused about how the movie supposedly suffered in comparison. other than some altered plot points they both have this wonderful, hallucinatory progression, gliding through ever deepening confusions. movie has the added bonus of a great soundtrack and excellent performances

it’s my vote here but i still haven’t seen phantom thread

I mean, film has its limitations and I can understand that, but Pynchon Hallucinatory and IV-The-Movie Hallucinatory are continents/sunken cities apart.

Sad to see so few people repping for Hard Eight. It's, y'know, a '90s indie film but much more ambitious than most of that crop (although I do have a soft spot for even lesser '90s indie films). It's all about the performances imo. Phillip Baker Hall and John C. Reilly are great, as is Samuel L. Jackson in a smaller role. It would be another director's best film.

Clearly, I need to rewatch The Master. I thought it was fine the one time I saw it but I'm not sure I was in the best headspace to appreciate it.

Hard Eight was for a long time his best film.

Pynchon Hallucinatory and IV-The-Movie Hallucinatory are continents/sunken cities apart.

― circa1916, Saturday, June 9, 2018 4:31 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don’t think this is true about that particular book!

which i love, don’t get me wrong

i really loved The Master. so many great performances and wonderful moments in that. that one scene with "Get Thee Behind Me Satan" playing. the other scene where Philip Seymour Hoffman is commanding a room full of singers and it slows pans over to reveal everyone is naked is awesome and unexpected.

i admit i haven't seen most of these. Punch Drunk Love was nice but it's been at least 15 years. TWBB was a great film but i've never wanted to go back and rewatch it.

i also read inherent vice before watching the movie but i’m confused about how the movie supposedly suffered in comparison

flappy's long post otm

i like the frogs in magnolia too but can't stand the wall-to-wall score or all the tv "arcs" and there's way more of those than there is of the frogs

LOVED punch-drunk love as a high schooler and don't mind its "excusing" sandler's behavior which i don't know that it does, but yes emily watson is only a surreal device and it is p boring to me now to watch a movie about a guy and his surreal device

there will be blood has that terrific score and a couple of good long scenes with a lot of tension and scenery, but its big moments (thinking of camera assuming role of demonic presence in baptism scene) aren't rly any less showy or mannered than boogie nights doing i am cuba, and in the end the movie is worse kubrick cosplay than BN is altman

tho the back half of BN isn't rly altman right? it's scorsese, and alfred molina setpiece aside i find it a drag. i like the movie and actually think goodfellas is like hugely overrated and have never loved it in the endless-rewatch hangout way i think it works for many, but come on boogie nights is not better than goodfellas. ultimate darkness and danger much better-integrated into + present alongside exhilarating romp section in the latter, for one. also it comes up with its own camera moves

the master was rly great

haven't seen phantom thread yet.

voted for p thread, a perfect movie to me

voted for p thread, a perfect movie to me

voted for p thread, a perfect movie to me

cool

lol

I think phantom thread may be my choice too, but now I want to go back and watch boogie nights, magnolia, and punch drunk love again

LOVED punch-drunk love as a high schooler and don't mind its "excusing" sandler's behavior which i don't know that it does, but yes emily watson is only a surreal device and it is p boring to me now to watch a movie about a guy and his surreal device.

pudding scam in punch drunk love is best scam since penny round off scam in superman iii, that movie should be called pudding drunk love airline miles

that movie should be called pudding drunk love airline miles

― Philip Nunez, Monday, June 11, 2018 10:43 AM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao

ok, Hard Eight: definitely "early work" and some moments I thought were truly maladroit but John C. Reilly's character is a pretty classic PTA loser. "I know three kinds of karate!"

Reilly is pretty reliably one of the best elements of any film he's in, I find.

Phantom Thread is the first PTA film I've really liked. The Master and There Will Be Blood were OK. Still can't stand Magnolia. He still doesn't know how to end a movie.

He should always end them with a dong shot imo.

i like pretty much all these movies (i didn't like magnolia much but i only saw it when it first came out and i wasn't sure what to expect and i'm betting i'd like it more if i rewatched it). there will be blood, the master, and phantom thread are the best. voted for the master because the subject matter is more intrinsically interesting to me.

the blub blub blub sound he makes when he gets baptized is A+

IV > 8 > Phantom > The Master of Teras Kasi

I can't stand Joaquin Phoenix, which makes viewing Inherent Vice and The Master impossible, but even the movies around them misfire for me: I find both of them bludgeoningly antic and boring. Loved Phantom Thread.

I violently disagree with many of them, but man there are some insightful and penetrating takes in this thread. Maybe the best thing about PTA is that he is worth discussing at that level.

Christ what a gauche comment, I’ll get me coat

he should stop playing people with intellectual disabilities. he's bad at it.

i think he's goddamn amazing in the master

A pity he won the Oscar for Joker; he's one of the three or best working mainstream American actors.

Hoffman singing “Slow Boat to China” to Phoenix is one of my favorite film scenes ever.

watching those two performances bounce off of and complement each other is the best romantic comedy of the last decade

Someone explain Phoenix’s appeal

You just stare at his face

It’s a nice thing to take a picture of

Dont rly understand the question

Hes really great in some of his roles, im unconvinced of the framing that says "you must be fans of the individual so"

i would say he embodies freddie quell so completely that it makes me believe i've met the character irl

Joaquin's best performance = a porn-addicted teen in Parenthood

PTA really did a fantastic job of establishing the characters of Plainview and Quell in their respective opening scenes with little to no dialogue. Love the scenes of Quell fucking up over and over again at the start of the film.

https://data.whicdn.com/images/50529197/original.jpg

btw, anderson was apparently able to finish filming the next one, so it might be viewable in a theater someday.

I've never done much of a deep dive into Anderson the person or filmmaker, but I just learned today that he used the same DP for his first five movies, plus Vice, before they apparently stopped getting along. And I guess the relationship between PTA and the DP on "The Master" was pretty fraught, too, which may be why he shot Phantom Thread himself. Who shot the upcoming one, was it another PTA DIY special?

iirc this was discussed on the phantom thread uh thread

One of the more intriguing aspects of Phantom Thread was the revelation that Anderson wasn’t working with his longtime cinematographers. In fact, no cinematographer was ever announced, so everyone assumed Anderson was working as his own director of photography. But the filmmaker tells EW that’s not the case—the film has no single director of photography:

“I should really clarify that. That would be disingenuous and just plain wrong to say that I was the director of photography on the film. The situation was that I work with a group of guys on the last few films and smaller side projects. Basically, in England, we were able to sort of work without an official director of photography. The people I would normally work with were unavailable, and it just became a situation where we collaborated — really in the best sense of the word — as a team. I know how to point the camera in a good direction, and I know a few things. But I’m not a director of photography.”

Robert Elswit, who shot most of Anderson’s films including There Will Be Blood and Inherent Vice, was busy shooting Roman J. Israel Esq. at the time, and Mihai Malaimare Jr., who shot The Master, appears to have been otherwise engaged as well. Indeed, Anderson says there’s no director of photography credit at all, but he does single out a few members on the crew who helped handle those duties in a collaborative fashion:

“If you can give credit, Michael Bauman is the gaffer that I’ve worked with for many, many years on a lot of projects. I could veto Mike, I guess, but he held a lot of the keys. There was a camera operator, Colin Anderson, I’ve worked with, and Erik Brown, who was the first assistant cameraman and Jeff Kunkel, who was a grip. It was a real package like that. It was a really easy way of working. You have to be very, very careful because there are way too many good cinematographers that I would not put myself in that class for a second.”

https://collider.com/phantom-thread-cinematographer-paul-thomas-anderson/

Huh. Well, as I understand it those other DPs were not simply unavailable, they had a real falling out, especially Elswit. Unclear why, other than they just stopped getting along.

where'd you hear that?

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/02/robert-elswit-paul-thomas-anderson-cinematographer-1202044674/

Robert Elswit has shot six films for Paul Thomas Anderson and won an Academy Award for his work on “There Will Be Blood,” but the cinematographer doesn’t expect to work with Anderson again. During an appearance on the Light the Fuse podcast, Elswit didn’t have great things to say about their working relationship: “God, I don’t know what it is anymore,” he said. “It’s like a bad married couple. Unpleasant.”

Asked whether he could see them collaborating again, Elswit didn’t sound optimistic. “I don’t know. Probably not. You know, it depends on how he feels. I would do it again…I didn’t enjoy myself on ‘Inherent Vice’…It was a combination of me and Paul just not getting along, and I can be as immature as him.”

Part 1: https://soundcloud.com/user-552949050/ep-34-robert-elswit-interview
Part 2 (this is where he talks about PTA): https://soundcloud.com/user-552949050/ep-35-robert-elswit-interview