We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us. — Magnolia
Bursting onto the scene at the end of the 1990s with big, brazen movies like Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson seemed like the prodigious scion of the movie brats — Altman, Scorsese et al — who stormed Hollywood in the 1970s. The heir apparent. But over time we’ve learned he’s no Tarantino clone. With nine features as writer-director under his belt (a tenth opens in multiplexes at the end of September) he’s forged his own path, retaining final cut, and brooking no compromise.
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Ranging from the birth of the Oil age (There Will Be Blood) to the oil crisis of the mid 1970s (Licorice Pizza) and beyond, Anderson’s films chronicle life in the American West across the 20th Century, but whether they’re extravagant ensemble pieces, oddball comedies or tragic psychodramas (and often they’re all these things), his films repeatedly hinge on the dynamics of family, errant fathers and unreliable mentors; angry and recalcitrant students, prodigal sons and daughters, each grappling to overcome the yawning spiritual void which is their (and our) generational inheritance. His is a risky, unorthodox cinema, flexing between grand gestures and hidden depths, but to rewatch his films is always to discover that fleeting, elusive but profound possibility of connection.
Hard Eight
Anderson's debut is a deceptively modest character piece about a veteran gambler (Philip Baker Hall) who takes a much younger man under his wing and teaches him how to play the system and win. Until things take a darker turn...
Boogie Nights
Being the rise and fall of a prodigiously-endowed performer on the seventies porno scene. Paul Thomas Anderson's flamboyant 1997 calling card movie revels in the wild success of xxxcess, before crashing to earth with a bump.
Magnolia
This deeply personal 1999 California opus is ripe for rediscovery. Mapping the emotional traumas of half-a-dozen major characters as they criss-cross the San Fernando Valley in search of either recognition or reconciliation, it's PTA's riskiest gamble.
Punch-Drunk Love
Anderson's surreal screwball romantic comedy has a wildly experimental edge, not least in Jon Brion's audacious score, but there's something euphoric about the entire irresistible project.
There Will Be Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson's lacerating epic about the birth of the oil age: Daniel Day-Lewis is extraordinary as the prospector entirely consumed with his own enterprise, a Trumpian figure of naked self-assertion; Paul Dano the evangelist who may be his nemesis.
The Master
Joaquin Phoenix as WWII vet Freddie Quell falls into the orbit of Philip Seymour Hoffman's self-styled prophet Lancaster Dodd in this tremulous 1950s psychodrama from Paul Thomas Anderson.
Licorice Pizza
PTA's oddball courtship comedy takes us to the San Fernando Valley in 1973. 15-year-old aspiring actor Gary Valentine has the hots for 25 year-old Alana. She's bemused but admires his self confidence. It's quirky, meandering, but it sneaks up on you.
Inherent Vice
PTA's most underrated movie is a melancholy stoner comedy set in 1970 about a hippie private detective (Joaquin Phoenix) drawn into multiple conspiracies (which may all be the same one).
Phantom Thread
Dressmaker Daniel Day-Lewis meets his muse and his match in waitress Vicky Krieps, in this immaculately tailored battle of the sexes black comedy from Paul Thomas Anderson.