One of the wonderful things about ranking the work of Paul Thomas Anderson is that virtually any arrangement of movies is probably true – he is one of the defining auteurs of his generation and his movies always have a myriad of pleasures, even if you don’t wholly love them. (Owen Gleiberman, who described himself as “the most ardent critical champion” of “Boogie Nights,” before falling out of sync with the filmmaker.) Every list is right and every list is wrong and depending on your mood or the time of day, your rankings might shift dramatically. But hey, this is how it is.
Anderson’s latest, “One Battle After Another,” hit theaters this past weekend. His tenth narrative feature feels like a crescendo of sorts, but we’ll get more into that below. At the very least it provides an opportunity to look back at his work. And what a body of work.
10. “Inherent Vice” (2014)
There are few things objectively true about Anderson’s filmography. “Inherent Vice” being his worst film is one of them. Adapted from a similarly sprawling Thomas Pynchon novel of the same name, it stars Joaquin Phoenix as a hangdog detective in a goofily fictionalized 1960s California, who gets embroiled in a vast and impossible-to-follow conspiracy involving sinister real estate developers, cultists, Nazis and god knows what else. At a certain point you have to throw your arms up at “Inherent Vice.” That’s not to say there aren’t pleasures in the movie – the cast, as usual, is impeccable, with everyone from Josh Brolin to Owen Wilson to Martin Short putting in inspired, off-kilter performances. (This movie should have also turned Katherine Waterston into a household name; instead she’s playing the mom in crummy horror movies like this year’s instantly forgettable “Fear Street: Prom Queen.”) And we’re certain that the movie must have made sense in Anderson’s head, at least at some point. It’s one of the rare times when you can feel the movie getting away from him. It is also worth noting that it was the last film he worked on with cinematographer Robert Elswit, which is a shame considering how powerful their collaborative relationship had been up until that point. Maybe Anderson felt it too. The next run of movies is arguably Anderson’s greatest yet.
9. “Hard Eight” (1996)
Anderson’s debut feature, which originally went by his preferred title “Sydney,” sprang from a 23-minute short film called “Cigarettes & Coffee” (here it is in lousy quality on YouTube, there’s a perfectly PTA moment where the camera is watching two people at a table and when the waitress walks by it tracks alongside her to another table). The feature version follows John C. Reilly as a drifter who teams up with an older gambler (Philip Baker Hall, a holdover from the short). Together – wouldn’t you know it? – they get into a heap of trouble. “Hard Eight” boasts a tremendous cast, including Gwyneth Paltrow as a prostitute Reilly falls in love with and Samuel L. Jackson as a local hood, plus smaller roles essayed by future Anderson standouts Philip Seymour Hoffman and Melora Walters, but the movie often feels too slight and conventional. Still, Anderson’s mastery of camera (this was his first collaboration with Elswit) and his commitment to emotional truth inside of a heightened, genre-adjacent construct, is on full display. If you’ve never seen “Hard Eight,” you should definitely roll the dice. Rarely are filmmakers as fully formed in their debut as Anderson was here.
8. “The Master” (2012)
There are some that consider “The Master” to be Anderson’s magnum opus. Alison Willmore at Vulture put it at #1 on her list (she was particularly enchanted by Phoenix’s singular performance as post-war ne’er-do-well Freddie Quell). But it’s a difficult movie to wrap your arms around, remaining opaque and nebulous to a fault. Anderson’s films are always an intoxicating stew of influences and inspiration, and “The Master” was informed by a rough biography of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard (essayed here by Hoffman), stories Jason Robards told Anderson while on the set of “Magnolia,” snippets of Thomas Pynchon’s novel “V.,” and the looming shadow of Jonathan Demme’s “Melvin and Howard,” one of the key texts in Anderson’s life and an essential film in terms of parsing his filmography. (There are shots lifted directly from Demme’s film for “The Master.”) Unlike with other Anderson films, it’s hard to connect the dots, and the disparate parts fail to materialize into a singular whole. This might be because “The Master” was Anderson’s most tortured film to put together, as he heavily rewrote it when he failed to secure funding and was influenced by Hoffman’s note to make it more about Phoenix’s character, which ultimately diminishes both the power and the mystery of the narrative. It also doesn’t help that, for the second time in two movies, Anderson chose to end the film with a surrogate son pleading with a father figure while the father figure sits behind a desk. Somebody must have noticed this at some point? There are certainly pleasures to be had in “The Master,” chief among them Amy Adams’ slippery performance as the Hubbard surrogate’s wife, but it’s an easier movie to admire than love.
7. “Magnolia” (1999)
There’s a telling bit from the “Magnolia” special edition DVD where Anderson, internalizing the feedback from his latest magnum opus, is shaking then-girlfriend Fiona Apple. “’Sydney’ wasn’t too long,” he shouts, shaking her, “’Boogie Nights’ wasn’t too long.” She looks dazed, standing in for the movie that now, to Anderson’s way of thinking, was taking such harsh criticism. Looking back on it, “Magnolia” does, in some ways, seem like Anderson’s magnum opus – a three-hour, character-stuffed epic about fate and secrets and the singular power of the San Fernando Valley. It features one of the greatest Tom Cruise performances in history, as a self-obsessed self-help guru who is forced to reconcile with his dying father (Robards). He was Oscar nominated for the performance but didn’t win, which seems mind-boggling in retrospect, especially when you remember that Michael Caine’s sugary performance in “The Cider House Rules” was what won out. There are many petals on the flower of “Magnolia” – from the one following a cop (Reilly) who falls in love with a sexually abused junkie (Walters), inspired by weird, “Cops” spoofs that Reilly and Anderson would shoot for fun to another, with William H. Macy as a former whiz kid who ends up attempting to rob his employers. Not all of these bits work. The subplot with Julianne Moore, as Robards’ wife, running around and screaming and crying for drugs, is particularly grating. “Magnolia” is Anderson at his most intimate and unhinged; a telling New York Times profile of Anderson from the period described a man obsessed, almost to mania, with getting the movie right. Still, “Magnolia” is one of the director’s most dazzling films – its length and its complexity and its music (featuring a full suite of Aimee Mann songs and a twinkly Jon Brion score) lull you into a kind of hypnosis. And there’s Cruise. Man, he’s just never been better.
6. “Punch-Drunk Love” (2002)
At the time that “Punch-Drunk Love” was released, Anderson said that it was his first really-for-real film that felt like his own. He was stepping out from the shadow of Demme and Robert Altman and his other cinematic heroes to create something wholly his. He wanted to make a 90-minute romantic comedy (it wound up 95 minutes with credits), with Adam Sandler as his leading man, supposedly after watching a best-of DVD of the comedian’s best “Saturday Night Live” work. (Anderson would film some “Saturday Night Live” segments to warm up for “Punch-Drunk Love.”) Combine that with the true story of a man who amassed over a million frequent flyer points from just $3,000 worth of pudding, a subplot about a sex phone ring scamming customers and some flights of fancy (like the arrival of a disused harmonium) and you’ve got “Punch-Drunk Love,” Anderson’s swooning ode to the power of love. While the movie was a box office disappointment, despite its relatively low cost (even after Anderson ditched footage from the first two weeks of shooting, finding them unsatisfactory), it has aged tremendously in the years since. And bits of the movie – the archway where Sandler and Emily Watson finally connect, Hoffman as an irate mattress salesman and low-level crook who screams at Sandler on the phone, the use of a song from Altman’s “Popeye” – have become pop culture hallmarks all their own. Elswit said that he was instructed to shoot the movie like a sci-fi film, hence the light bleeds and lens flares and the arrival of a trio of Mormon brothers like visiting extraterrestrials, which gives it a look all its own. And it was the last film where Anderson collaborated with Brion, whose score (which also feels sci-fi influenced) has been aped countless times in the years since – just listen to the cue when Julia Garner leaves the school auditorium in “Weapons.” In some ways, “Punch-Drunk Love” was both the begin and the end of an era. In that sense, it is beautifully on its own island. It’s hard not to fall in love.
5. “Boogie Nights” (1997)
It’s hard to approximate the feeling of seeing “Boogie Nights” on the big screen and walking out of the theater with your hair blown back. Anderson’s second movie, made in his late twenties, follows the rise and fall of the porn industry through the 1970s and 1980s, with fictional star Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), based on the more tragic John Holmes. (It was based, in part, on a short film Anderson made about the character while still in high school.) Initially, Anderson wanted the movie to be three-hours and carry an NC-17 rating, with New Line Cinema exec Mike De Luca convincing him to making it R but consenting to the epic length, even though the final film came in well below the three-hour mark. Not that a three-hour cut would be frowned upon. “Boogie Nights” is so brilliant, so full of life and energy and character (with Don Cheadle, Burt Reynolds, William H. Macy and Heather Graham turning in standout performances), that it’s just infectious. And it says something about the hope and optimism, always nestled within even the darkest Anderson projects, that Diggler doesn’t go down the same path that Holmes did (he was implicated in a multiple-murder spree and died of AIDS before he turned 45), instead choosing something brighter for at least some of his characters. “Boogie Nights” announced Anderson as one of the most talented filmmakers of his generation, earning Reynolds an Oscar nomination despite, by all accounts, being an absolute heel and fighting constantly with Anderson and much of the cast. “Boogie Nights,” all these years later, remains a rush of adrenalized filmmaking power, even if you’re stumbling upon it on cable or streaming it on some godforsaken service.
4. “There Will Be Blood” (2007)
It makes sense that Anderson would follow up the bright “Punch-Drunk Love” with a pitch-black American epic about the cost of capitalism and the way greed corrupts absolutely. Loosely inspired by Upton Sinclair’s 1926 novel “Oil!,” “There Will Be Blood” stars Daniel Day-Lewis as ruthless oilman Daniel Plainview, who gradually becomes more corrupted by the power and money amassed in service of draining the earth of its resources. Throughout the movie, he must make an uneasy alliance with a local pastor (Paul Dano), confront a man claiming to be his long-lost brother (Kevin J. O’Connor) and deal with raising a surrogate son – the child of a man who is killed on one of his oil fields. It’s morally complex and sometimes suffocatingly dark (aided by Jonny Greenwood’s horror movie score) but its also breathlessly entertaining, with a quick pace and the feeling that you’re going on an adventure. An adventure that will end in the pit that once held America’s soul. But an adventure nonetheless. “There Will Be Blood” was an occasionally difficult shoot, with Anderson firing the original actor who played the preacher (this is also why Dano ends up playing both brothers) and staging complex outdoor set pieces. Fun fact: They were shooting at the same time as “No Country for Old Men,” in the same part of Texas, and the Coens had to suspend shooting one day before the smoke plumes from the “There Will Be Blood” set could be seen from their location. A towering achievement that won Elswit and Day-Lewis well-deserved Oscars, it’s unfathomable that Anderson was still able to create a handful of movies that were somehow more powerful. Astounding stuff, really.
3. “Licorice Pizza” (2021)
While “Magnolia” was Anderson’s attempt to make the ultimate San Fernando Valley movie, he might have actually ended up doing that with “Licorice Pizza.” It’s easy to brush “Licorice Pizza” off for being too slight – it’s loosely based on stories that Gary Goetzman, a collaborator of Anderson’s idol Demme and Tom Hanks’ producing partner, told Anderson – and it’s also easy to get tripped up by the controversies that popped up during the movie’s awards campaign (including insensitive Asian representation and the age gap between the two main characters). And while it’s okay to feel weird about the movie, this is largely a distraction – “Licorice Pizza,” which Anderson has said was an homage to classic hangout movies like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “American Graffiti” (It also shares some DNA with Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused”), is at once one of his most accomplished and most underrated. Anderson chose to center the movie around two relative unknowns, Cooper Hoffman (son of Anderson regular Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Alana Haim (from the pop band Haim), who bring so much life and energy to the proceedings. The plot, a series of episodes set in the Valley in 1973, combines real-world characters (like closeted mayoral candidate Joel Wachs, played by Benny Safdie and producer Jon Peters, played by Bradley Cooper) with fanciful recreations from Goetzman’s childhood, like selling waterbeds and setting up a pinball arcade. It’s so lovable, so endlessly quotable, so beautifully shot and staged. In fact, an edge-of-your-seat moment involving a moving van and an oil shortage, set the stage for the big car chase that concludes “One Battle After Another.”
2. “Phantom Thread” (2017)
It’s also fascinating how the consensus has solidified in the past few years around “Phantom Thread.” When it was released, it made money and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress and, of course, Best Costume Design, which Mark Bridges won (this was the night he also won a waterski – supposedly). At the time it wasn’t regarded as one of Anderson’s best, exactly, but in the years since, it has become one of his most well-regarded (that same Vulture ranking also has it at #2). Taylor Swift referenced it in a song for crying out loud, as did The Weeknd. The story of a fussy London fashion designer (Day-Lewis) and his romance with a younger waitress (Vicky Krieps) is arguably Anderson’s most romantic movie and it’s because of the more twisted elements of their relationship, not in spite of it. Day-Lewis won for “There Will Be Blood” but it’s really “Phantom Thread,” which builds its entire world around his carefully curated tastes, that is the true defining accomplishment of his two-movie collaboration with Anderson. The fact that the movie can be both claustrophobic, with just a handful of locations and even fewer characters, but also feel so expansive, encompassing an entire spectrum of emotion, is what makes “Phantom Thread” so special. If for some reason you only watched it once or haven’t watched it at all, consider this your encouragement.
1. “One Battle After Another” (2025)
Anderson’s latest is – incredibly – his greatest achievement yet. Loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland,” it follows a former revolutionary named Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is attempting to raise his teenage daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) in a modern world that he barely understands. Sure, he’s paralyzed by paranoia and maybe rightfully so, since back in the day he was part of a violent antiauthoritarian group known as the French 75. And one day, the demons of Bob’s past come to haunt him when a white supremacist colonel (Sean Penn) reenters his life and abducts Willa. It’s brilliant and bracingly now, full of imagery of detention facilities and fascist maneuvering that we have been bombarded with over the past year, but it’s also Anderson’s most out-and-out entertaining movie, the kind of thing that plays well on Imax screens (and other premium large-format options) and was filmed in VistaVision, a largely forgotten format. It’s not a surprise, exactly, that Anderson is so good at action set pieces, considering the sequences in “Boogie Nights” and “Licorice Pizza” that have you on the edge-of-your-seat, but it might be a shock to see how well he is at so many of the sequences, crammed into the same movie, together. It climaxes with a car chase that feels like an all-timer and, like the rest of the movie, is rooted in the characters and what they are going through. The cast is full of colorful characters brilliantly brought to life, including superb performances from Benicio del Toro and “Saturday Night Live” writer Jim Downey, plus the first-ever DiCaprio/Anderson team-up (DiCaprio was previously offered Dirk Diggler and was briefly attached to the Jon Peters role in “Licorice Pizza”). But it’s Infiniti, in her first feature-film role, that truly steals the show. The fact that she’s able to handle acting opposite Penn and DiCaprio in scenes that would make more seasoned professionals wilt is just one aspect of her miraculous performance. Anderson seems to have taken pleasure, later in his career, in finding young stars like Haim and Infiniti. He has said that part of the reason the movie took so long to complete, when he started it two decades ago, was finding the right Willa. She was worth the wait.
