choosing between boogie nights and blood is like trying to decide between chocolate and mint chocolate chip ice cream, i love both so much that it really depends on my mood.
my mood today says magnolia.
Blood is the most accomplished, most mature, and most profound, I’d say. But the daring, the beautiful, fraught, messy risks of Magnolia, is for me my favorite. If there was just Blood, I might say he’s terrific heir to Malick. There’s nothing like Magnolia, though.
Punch-Drunk Love since in that film he didn’t try to be any other director but himself. Blood was him doing Kubrick, Magnolia was him doing Altman with a little of the Scorsese camera swoons, and Boogie Nights was Scorsese. I haven’t seen Hard Eight, though…
I just realized how fond I am of all his films, and they are hard to rank against each other..
Punch-Drunk Love
There Will Be Blood/Boogie Nights
Sydney/Magnolia
Belmondo, as usual, is onto something there. Personally, I thought the Altman hat suited him best, and Magnolia is as well-worded a love letter to cinema as you are likely to find. That last smile Melora Waters permits us, that split-second of celluloid, affected me profoundly more than anything I saw in the gamecock strutting of Blood.
Within that smile lies the ambition of all great cinema: magic, truth, and immortality.
It is a fleeting dream, gentlemen. And one to be savored.
Punch-Drunk Love
I don’t think I could ever choose between Magnolia and There Will Be Blood
The way these past few days have gone
I would have to say Magnolia
@samuryan- that was worded wonderfully…a post to be savored
I think that Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood are all exceedingly accomplished and outweigh both his previous works. It is hard to choose between them, however whenever I have a sick day with time to kill Magnolia is the first DVD I reach for. His work may have become more refined since he made Magnolia, but it is to me the film that feels the most like he had this urgent need to express everything he loved about cinema all at once. He packs it all in and isn’t the slightest bit afraid of wearing his heart on his sleeve. Fortunately, his fearlessness has persisted through his work- but the joyful, youthful exuberance may have peaked (at least for now) with Magnolia.
Belmondo – you’re not quite right with Punch, it’s indeed his less ambitious film but in Punch Drunk Love Anderson’s being Godard just as his personal interpretation of the french amour-fou not necesarily the Rivette film but the whole idea of french grazy and goofy love. it’s his little homage to french cinema with a close feel to ealry Godard.
and also c’mon it’s not really like he’s trying to be some other director in his films, he has his influences but it’s always him, or wich one is his Ophuls film? or Altman is in Magnolia as in Boogie Nights or whatever… i personaly don’t think his films work that way i do believe he is a strong auteur with it’s own identity just as any of his influences, maybe his first three films are more like essays in wich he sometimes felt more comfortable being close to one particular director wich would be the case of magnolia but at the same time hismost Altman influenced film is his most personal and honest, though not his best at all. I on one hand see his pre Punch films like essays in finding himself being punch drunk love his first real full masterpiece.
and as for my favourite it’s a hard choice betwen Punch and Blood but have to go with There will be blood for it’s full power.
I would say that Punch-Drunk Love is more an attempt (and very successful one at that) to Tati than Godard. I would agree that the surrealism is there, however the kind of bumbling clown that Adam Sandler created in Barry is more of a sad version of M. Hulot and the extraordinary care to balance the environment’s voice as a character itself is very Tati-esque.
But as for my favorite, There Will Be Blood is it. Magnolia a very close second.
Gotta go with Magnolia.
@ Coronel
I guess I missed the Godard references the first time around, but I now definitely see it, and I also agree with the Tati comment. I’m still waiting for PTA to create a film fusing all his influences; throw in an Altman-style motif story, Scorsese’s camera swoons, Kubrick’s use of space and color, Godard’s eccentricity, and Tati’s bumbling protagonist. Maybe even throw in a Night of the Hunter reference (a la Punch-Drunk Love having “LOVE” carved into Sandler’s knuckles) and make it a noir-style crime drama, hell, maybe even add a little Bergman and Fellini to the mix.
I think we also need to compare Anderson with Welles in terms of epic ambition. Blood is one of the first great films of the new millennium. Boogie Nights and Magnolia were great films of the 90s. All have their place. I don’t think he’s ever made a bad film.
Boogie Nights is by far his best work, in my opinion. It’s not so much a cheesy film about the porn industry of the 70s as it is character studies of the people involved in the industry – people from broken homes, with lost dreams, ensnared in drug abuse, their fortitude tested by the superficiality and shallow, decadent and Romanesque world of the porn industry. One of the most powerful scenes in the film that illustrates this is when Mark Whalberg’s character is getting his ass chewed out by his mother in the kitchen, she’s telling him how useless he is, and you see the father just sitting there with his head down in shame, then you realize, “Whoa, the mother is actually talking about her husband, not her son.” She’s just projecting. Powerful stuff.
That mother is pretty much autobiographical. Anderson hates his mother (and some say, all women). I’ve always thought there was some kind of latent, covert incest going on in the way she is so profoundly jealous of Mark’s girlfriends and in her need to tear him down. After all, a mother knows when she has given birth to such an “amazing” phallus and would naturally feel possessive of it.
Probably there will be blood. The rest of his movies are severely flawed. Even “Blood” is a tad overlong and a tad boring. PT Anderson could stand to cut his films a bit. But yeah.
THERE WILL BE BLOOD, no question at all. All the more remarkable for having followed BOOGIE NIGHTS, a film I really detested when it was first released and have only detested more with repeat viewings and the bloated faux-Altmanathon MAGNOLIA.
THERE WILL BE BLOOD is one of the finest films of the decade. For Anderson to have made it after having made such stupid and uninteresting films only makes it more remarkable.
Well this thread took a turn for the worst with the last two comments.
Edited to tone down the annoyance. God I hate BOOGIE NIGHTS.
Magnolia for me, followed very closely by There Will Be Blood.
Punch Drunk was great – loved every minute of it – but I feel the two aformentioned titles were far more important.
Like many directors, I think PTA’s early films show him wrestling with his personal demons, paving the way for smoother, later work. The early films may not be to all people’s taste, for that reason, but I like them, and if you like Fellini or Cries and Whispers, I don’t think you can dismiss the emotion-laden bombast of Boogie or Magnolia.
Hey Justin – You’re absolutely right! That’s what I was getting at. The mother is not only sexually unsatisfied, but unsatisified all around because she feels stuck with this mediocre, milquetoast husband, kind of like Kevin Spacey’s character in American Beauty before he took his life back. It was one of the most cinematic things I had seen in awhile.
Love me some Fellini. What does that have to do with the idiotic BOOGIE NIGHTS or the bloated MAGNOLIA?
Joe, I agree, the cutting to the father in the other room tells you so much in such a simple and effective way. It’s the sign of a great director.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said a mother would “naturally” feel possessive of her son’s bigger-than-average phallus. That’s not a natural emotion, I guess.
I take it this thread I created is better than my Dr. Dre one…
There Will be Blood. Period. End of discussion.
Magnolia was one of the first movies I fell in love with. It helped inspire my passion for cinema.
It is so hard to put them in order… I’d probably say Magnolia, Punch Drunk, There Will Be Blood.
Also… one of the best uses of a song in a movie. The use of “One” by Aimee Mann is beautiful in the opening credits. Not to mention “Wise Up”. Punch Drunk Love also makes great use of the song “He Needs Me”.
There Will Be Blood
Nate the Movie Mate
My vote is for There Will Be Blood.