According to IMDb, about 2,500 movies are produced worldwide every year. That’s 2,500 different stories told by 2,500 different casts every year. For the average American, you might watch about thirty movies every year. And unless you’re a total cinephile, you’re probably lucky if you get to the movie theater maybe five times a year. The choice is infinite, and a lot of whether or not you choose to watch a movie is up to what you like in terms of genre or intellectual property. But for some, like those cinephiles or just someone who pays attention to movies a little more than the norm, movies, or films, are watched because they spur from the mind of one person from beginning to end. Scorsese comes to mind. Maybe George Lucas. The auteur we’d like to examine this year has been in Hollywood for over two decades, and while he’s got a lot of fans, an Oscar has eluded him. We’re talking about Paul Thomas Anderson, and we want to know which of his movies you think is best.
Paul Thomas Anderson is a child of the San Fernando Valley (literally), the sixth of nine children. He was always making movies, even as a kid, and his artistry came to the mainstream when he released his first movie in 1996 with Hard Eight. Just a year later, he released the hugely successful Boogie Nights, a film adored by its fans and hated by its main cast (seriously both Mark Wahlberg and Burt Reynolds regret being in it). From the biblical Magnolia to the dramatic There Will Be Blood to the petty Phantom Thread, PTA has been serving up majorly flawed and occasionally hilarious characters in unique and intriguing stories for years. And just like anybody who does anything extraordinary, in our eyes, his work deserves to be ranked and then voted on.
So why now? Well, PTA’s ninth movie Licorice Pizza comes out next Friday, and honestly? We can’t wait to see it. But for now, he’s got eight movies, the perfect amount of movies to put into a bracket. The hosts of this podcast would like you to know that they’ve been fans of Paul Thomas Anderson for a long time, but it wasn’t until last week that we’d actually seen all of his movies. And now that we’re certified PTA FREAKS, we’d love for you to listen to our thoughts and then give us some (four then two then one) of your own by voting in this week’s tournament.
Listen to our latest episode (read: Daniel Plainview fancast) here:
Voting Schedule
Elite Eight: Monday 11/15
Final Four: Tuesday 11/16
Championship: Wednesday 11/17, 11/18
Winner reveal on a brand new episode on Friday 11/19!
Also, buy our merch, you sinners.