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Paul Thomas Anderson. Director: Punch-Drunk Love. Anderson was born in 1970. He was one of the first of the "video store" generation of film-makers. His father was the first man on his block to own a V.C.R., and from a very early age Anderson had an infinite number of titles available to him.
- January 1, 1
- 1.79 m
- Studio City, California, USA
Paul Thomas Anderson is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. He has directed nine feature-length films, five short films, twenty three music videos, one documentary, one television episode as a guest segment director, and one theatrical play.
5. There Will Be Blood. 2007 2h 38m R. 8.2 (643K) Rate. 93 Metascore. A story of family, religion, hatred, oil and madness, focusing on a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early days of the business. Director Paul Thomas Anderson Stars Daniel Day-Lewis Paul Dano Ciarán Hinds. Widely touted as a masterpiece, this sparse and sprawling epic ...
- Inherent Vice
- Hard Eight
- The Master
- Licorice Pizza
- Magnolia
- Punch-Drunklove
- Boogienights
- Phantomthread
- There Will Be Blood
One viewing of Inherent Vice won’t suffice. Even if you’ve read the Thomas Pynchon novel on which it’s based, this rambling tangle about a perpetually stoned private investigator (a mutton-chopped Joaquin Phoenix) drifting through a Manson-paranoid Los Angeles can feel as hazy as a cloud of pot smoke. It is, as the kids say, a vibe—and a dense one ...
Anderson got a rude awakening about Hollywood egos when the production company behind Sydney, his directorial debut, recut the film and named it Hard Eight. He acquiesced on the title but not the edit, ultimately convincing the powers that be to release his version. Even with Anderson’s thinnest plot, Hard Eightis pretty great. The movie has early ...
The first thing you notice in The Master is Jonny Greenwood’s score, a propulsive ticktock that hypnotizes the audience before a single word has been spoken. The second is Joaquin Phoenix’s hunched posture. The arch in his back, combined with his unwitting snarl, makes him at once diminutive and imposing, childlike and depraved. His Freddie Quell i...
Unfolding like a series of ebullient vignettes, Licorice Pizza roams through Los Angeles alongside a precocious 15-year-old showman (Cooper Hoffman, son of Philip Seymour Hoffman) and the slightly older apple of his eye (Alana Haim of the rock trio Haim). It’s a coming-of-age frolic about a bunch of schemes taking place amid the encroaching chaos o...
Following the success of Boogie Nights in 1997, the suits at New Line Cinema gave Anderson carte blanche. What resulted was a three-hour mosaic of psychological freak-outs inspired by his stint as a PA on Quiz Kids Challenge, Aimee Mann’s music and the San Fernando Valley. Magnolia, with its feverish performances (Julianne Moore! Tom Cruise! Jason ...
After the unfettered sprawl of Magnolia, Anderson was determined to cap his next project at 90 minutes. Out of that came Punch-Drunk Love, at once, paradoxically, Anderson’s most fantastical and most grounded movie. To label it a romantic comedy feels limiting, though it is technically a love story about a jittery neurotic named Barry (a career-bes...
Boogie Nights established Anderson’s sense of scale. It’s a saga about family—the chosen kind, or at least the happened-upon kind—filtered through the disco-inflected California porn scene of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Anderson isn’t interested in trite ideas like “growth,” that gingerly Hollywood fixation that requires characters to change or m...
Anderson came up with Phantom Thread while sick in bed. “My wife”—that’s Maya Rudolph, though they aren’t technically married—“looked at me with a love and affection that I hadn’t seen in a long time,” he said. “So I called Daniel [Day-Lewis] the next day and said, ‘I think I have a good idea for a movie.’” That idea birthed one of the strangest an...
There Will Be Blood is the moment Anderson went from an exciting director to an essential one. At the time of its release, antiheroes weren’t as unusual in movies as they were on TV, with Tony Soprano’s influence trickling its way through prestige programming, and yet Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) feels almost unmatched in his brand of hyper-articul...
- 2 min
- Matthew Jacobs
Feb 16, 2024 · Entertainment. Guides. All of Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies, ranked. By Alex Welch February 16, 2024. Paramount Vantage. Paul Thomas Anderson has never made a bad movie. He’s...
His fifth film, There Will Be Blood (2007), is often cited as one of the greatest of the 21st century. It was followed by The Master (2012), Inherent Vice (2014), Phantom Thread (2017) and Licorice Pizza (2021).
Nov 27, 2021 · Paul Thomas Anderson Films Ranked — From Worst to Best. Set in 1973 and named for a beloved SoCal record chain, “Licorice Pizza” brings writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson nearly...
