Paul Thomas Anderson Movies: Ranked! (And discussion)

Autumnal · Oct 2, 2025

Hey’ Dude! Anderson can’t be wrong about his favorite of his movies. Maybe if he said it was also his best, but not as described here.

GM Lent · Oct 2, 2025

I tend to hold Magnolia as one of the best movies ever made; I totally get the "hey, it's Tom Cruise!" thing but Cruise made both Magnolia and Eyes Wide Shut specfically to play against his normal fare and they both worked well in that regard.

It's funny; I have a bit of an issue with Daniel Day-Lewis. I can't criticize his capability, but to me it always seems like he's just trying too hard to Be A Great Actor. So There Will Be Blood left me a bit cold despite its technical perfection.

I haven't seen Anderson's most recent films, so I can't really comment on your list overall, but aside from my Magnolia commment above I generally agree with your ranking of the films I have seen.

Snarf Zagyg · Oct 2, 2025

GM Lent said:
It's funny; I have a bit of an issue with Daniel Day-Lewis.

Woah. And I thought I wore the asbestos undies!

Clint_L · Oct 2, 2025

GM Lent said:
I tend to hold Magnolia as one of the best movies ever made; I totally get the "hey, it's Tom Cruise!" thing but Cruise made both Magnolia and Eyes Wide Shut specfically to play against his normal fare and they both worked well in that regard.

It's funny; I have a bit of an issue with Daniel Day-Lewis. I can't criticize his capability, but to me it always seems like he's just trying too hard to Be A Great Actor. So There Will Be Blood left me a bit cold despite its technical perfection.

I haven't seen Anderson's most recent films, so I can't really comment on your list overall, but aside from my Magnolia commment above I generally agree with your ranking of the films I have seen.

I get where you're coming from with DDL, but on the other hand he is a technically great actor, and when I'm watching one his films I'm not distracted by his celebrity the way I am with, say, a Tom Cruise. There's a bit of the Ben Stiller/Robert Downey Tropic Thunder dynamic to this debate (speaking of great Tom Cruise roles).

One of my dilemmas with trying to rank TMBB versus BN is that I feel like I shouldn't be holding up an astonishing Daniel Day Lewis performance against Marky Mark as Dirk Diggler (and yes, I get that the latter is in some ways similar to casting Adam Sandler). On the other hand, I feel like Wahlberg's limitations are kind of the point. I think BN might have held up better as a reflection on American culture. There's a lot of Gatsby to it.

Whizbang Dustyboots · Dec 21, 2025

Just saw One Battle After Another and loved it.

It's another film where I really wish I had been in the pitch meeting. Either he told them everything, to which I assume the money guys just stared at him, slack-jawed, or he told them nothing, and they stared at the final film, slack-jawed.

I've heard the film described as "not political," which feels technically true, in that it doesn't name check the current resident of the White House, but it is full of sharp satirical observations of both sides, even though one side is clearly the bad guys. It also does a great job of contextualizing political struggles with a single tossed-off line above the dojo, which was just a masterpiece of confident writing.

The way it bounces between action and comedy and family drama was also amazing. Just as I was marveling at how beautiful the skateboarders running across the rooftops, silhouetted against the reflected flames of a burning city, was we cut immediately to slapstick comedy without losing any of the urgency of the action. (There's an incredibly long sequence that's scored by essentially a single hand playing the same three or four notes on a piano until I was practically climbing out of my skin from tension.)

I have no idea what category this goes into at the Oscars, but it deserves a bunch of them.

Bonus: This also feels like a great, lowest possible tier game of Unknown Armies, with the various underground groups vying against each other in a shadow war.

FitzTheRuke · Dec 21, 2025

Hmmm... Sounds like I need to watch One Battle After Another. I hadn't been paying attention to it.

The Firebird · Dec 21, 2025

FitzTheRuke said:
Hmmm... Sounds like I need to watch One Battle After Another. I hadn't been paying attention to it.

It's been very popular and well regarded and worth the watch just for that reason. I didn't have a great response to it, but I also have idiosyncratic taste. If you like Dr. Strangelove or Verhoeven movies in general, I think you'll enjoy it.

(For me the problem was that it wasn't ambitious enough--making your villains look and act like that is the equivalent of 80s movies that put the USSR as the bad guys. Caricatures that will make your audience happy, but not sufficient to say anything original).

But, YMMV, and for a lot of folks it worked well. And its technically well executed.

Whizbang Dustyboots · Dec 21, 2025

The Firebird said:
(For me the problem was that it wasn't ambitious enough--making your villains look and act like that is the equivalent of 80s movies that put the USSR as the bad guys. Caricatures that will make your audience happy, but not sufficient to say anything original).

The protagonists were also caricatures. The stuff that French 75 members yell all sounds good in isolation, maybe, but doesn't add up to a coherent worldview or overall goal.

And the inability of the guy working the phones midway through the movie to give a straight answer in the middle of an active crisis because he felt obliged to do a bunch of performative stuff was a pretty sharp critique, for instance.

Older Beholder · Dec 22, 2025

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
Just saw One Battle After Another and loved it.

I have no idea what category this goes into at the Oscars, but it deserves a bunch of them.

Yeah, one of the better films in a solid year for movies. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Licorice Pizza or Inherent Vice (although, I did like Phantom Thread), so this felt like a return to form.

I saw it twice at the cinema the week it came out.
I think it’s suspected to win a lot of awards.