Paul Thomas Anderson

2025 · Paul Thomas Anderson · 161 min · Drama / Thriller

One Battle After Another is Paul Thomas Anderson finally aiming his full powers at a chase movie, and the collision produces the most acclaimed American film of its year. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a burned-out ex-revolutionary in a bathrobe who must remember sixteen years of forgotten tradecraft when his daughter is hunted by the deranged colonel from his past, played with career-peak menace by Sean Penn. It's funny, furious, and staged with a rolling-hills car chase already being called one of the greatest ever filmed. The politics run hot and the length runs long, and neither slowed its momentum toward instant-classic status.

1997 · Paul Thomas Anderson · 155 min · Drama

Boogie Nights is Paul Thomas Anderson's sprawling love letter to misfits who found family in the most unlikely industry. The ensemble cast delivers career-best work, the 1970s-to-1980s transition serves as both backdrop and metaphor, and Anderson's camera never stops moving with a confidence that borders on reckless for a filmmaker who was 26 when he made it. The film's empathy for its characters is its secret weapon. It never condescends to the people on screen, even when their choices are self-destructive, and that refusal to judge is what elevates the whole thing from spectacle to something deeply moving.

2017 · Paul Thomas Anderson · 130 min · Drama / Romance

Phantom Thread is an exquisitely crafted film about a relationship between two people who should be terrible for each other and somehow aren't. Daniel Day-Lewis's final screen performance is as precise as one of Reynolds Woodcock's dresses, Vicky Krieps matches him with a quiet ferocity, and Paul Thomas Anderson directs the whole thing as a love story told through power dynamics, poisoned mushrooms, and the particular cruelty of creative genius. It's funny, strange, and deeply romantic in ways that take time to reveal themselves.

1999 · Paul Thomas Anderson · 188 min · Drama

Magnolia is Paul Thomas Anderson at his most emotionally unguarded, a three-hour film that feels like it's trying to contain every form of human pain and connection in a single story. The performances, particularly Tom Cruise's Oscar-nominated turn and Philip Seymour Hoffman's quiet devastation, are among the best of their era. The film's ambition sometimes outpaces its editing, and the famous climactic event will either seal the deal or break it for you entirely. But Anderson built something here that operates on pure feeling rather than logic, and for audiences willing to surrender to that approach, nothing else in American cinema from this period hits quite as hard.

2002 · Paul Thomas Anderson · 95 min · Romance, Comedy

Punch-Drunk Love is a strange, beautiful romantic comedy that proves Adam Sandler can act when given the right material, wrapping genuine emotion in Anderson's most visually inventive and compact package.

2021 · Paul Thomas Anderson · 133 min · Comedy / Drama

Licorice Pizza is Paul Thomas Anderson's most joyful and loose-limbed film, a sun-drenched hangout movie set in 1970s San Fernando Valley that runs on the chemistry between its two leads and the sheer pleasure of being in its world. Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman are magnetic together, and Anderson's direction captures the restless energy of youth with a warmth he hasn't shown before. The episodic structure and the age-gap dynamic have sparked legitimate debate, but the film's emotional momentum is undeniable.

2014 · Paul Thomas Anderson · 148 min · Comedy, Mystery

Inherent Vice is a shaggy, deliberately confusing stoner noir that rewards viewers who surrender to its haze, though its commitment to bewilderment alienates just as many as it charms.