PHANTOM THREAD: Paul Tomas Anderson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Fifties London

pta's division down the center of his filmography is also a way clearer narrative than trying to define a rich mature period for either spielberg or scorsese, for me at least. and even then that's simplifying things too much, phantom thread is totally in conversation with punch-drunk love

I like the "in conversation" idea.

Don't mind me, I'm just a stubborn defender of those guys' earlier films.

Adam Sandler is The Hungry Boy

inherent vice > phantom thread > there will be blood = magnolia = the master > punch-drunk love > boogie nights

No Hard Eight?

i haven't seen it yet!

oh man -- can't wait

Magnolia is my least fave by now, I agree w/ PTA that it should be cut way down.

it was my favorite movie of all time when i was in high school/college and i rewatched it last week and its effect has not diminished, i have no objectivity about it. it is just this cascade of scenes and dialogue and performances i love building up to catharsis. though this time i noticed how the deletion of the worm plotline essentially makes some characters fully disappear from the plot (stanley)

(deleting an entire plotline is still one of the smartest choices pta made with that film)

I saw Magnolia last year for the first time and while it didn’t land the way it would’ve if I were in high school there’s some stuff in it that really landed for me. Much of it to do with Tom Cruise’s hollow-eyed performance.

Still his best movie.

Well yeah. Also a much better version of The Power of the Dog imo.

I've never watched a film in which a director's absolute mystery of visual and sound design and cinematography had me vacillating in sympathy from one character to the other.

lol mastery

It’s interesting to me that altho I have adored PTA’s work since Boogie Nights, nearly all his films have felt incomplete to me. BN and Phantom Thread probably the most complete. But there’s always something unresolved or not quite tucked in. Don’t know if it’s a flaw or a signature.

something unresolved or not quite tucked in

I think he senses it too, which is why his endings can seem like he's wrenching to put all his meanings in order.

he removed an entire story thread from magnolia, he’s def got the impulse

i don’t agree with the sentiment about his endings tho. did the ending of the master give you the feeling he was trying to put all his meanings in order? far from it imo

https://media.giphy.com/media/26DN5ayYLdN6bK62I/giphy.gif

Yes, I think The Master is his most successful film with, no coincidence, his most successful ending.

haha fair! but i love the way inherent vice and phantom thread end too, and neither of them feel like a late massing of the film's themes

I'm shocked a picture as dialectically subtle sprung from the mind of an American writer-director.

John Simon is cheering that post; I am not.

what -- mine?

Simon wouldn't write a thing without a passing gibe at a person's looks, using strained alliteration, or lamenting how even good American movies fall short of a European tradition he's got lodged in his head, which means he's like me.

as an aside my ranking upthread is not correct but i had only seen the master once at the time

Yes; subtlety in American films is hardly rare (maybe dialectically subtle is a distinction I'm missing). Funny you say "from the mind of," though, because Phantom Thread to me very much belongs to the From the Mind Of genre, where you get some portentous voice announcing "From the mind of _________" (Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, etc.--David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick in a previous lifetime) in the trailer.

I mean, it's also a movie about closeups of Welsh rarebit, martinis with a twist, and mushrooms in butter.

now that I think about it Boogie Nights ended with something not quite tucked in

Inherent Vice works because it's somewhat built in that putting everything neatly away by the time it ends was not ever really on the table

rewatched this before christmas, best film hollywood has produced since john ford died

(xxpost) I started to defend Boogie Nights' ending...then I got the joke--nice!

xp hey now devvv, I'm with KJB that A.I. is that movie

rewatched this before christmas, best film hollywood has produced since john ford died

No American film in the last few years makes me more uncomfortable. Letting someone "in your life" is a risk: you look like a manipulative Hitchcock-esque svengali like Woodcock, and that's the benefit of telling the story through Alma's POV; but I'm also annoyed that she won't respect his boundaries, especially since she lives in his house. Scraping the toast, throwing a surprise party for him -- it's clear he's on the spectrum when we see his reactions to them, and I cheer her hilarious, sadistic, cheerfully willful attempts to break him...but why shouldn't he expect (at his age!) to go on drinking his tea at a certain hour and not be disturbed? He's so hateful, and she's so right, and yet.

That scene in the rural inn where he patiently, meticulously, smilingly requests a traditional breakfast, and PTA cuts to Krieps' hungry expression (she's thinking, "OMIGOD he gets it!") is just perfect.

i don't have a fully formed thought on it, but thinking through the relationship dynamics in this and licorice pizza is really interesting bc there are some things that are strikingly similar and some things that are very much not

Also: he's the worst gaslighter in movies since Charles Boyer.

I didn't like anybody onscreen, which is fine because I dislike 98 percent of the people I watch or read about. But the film is sharp about the delusions of men who experiment with the feelings of women but expect solitude to work on their art.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, January 24, 2018 8:57 PM

still stand by this

Didn’t Morbs say this movie was about “a closet case with a poisoning fetish”? I think about that phrase a lot.

alfred otm

I just love this movie so much

his best movie

incredible

Saw it for the first time on New Year's Day, 10/10 masterpiece