Few filmmakers have as striking and unique a style as Paul Thomas Anderson, who serves as one of the rare auteurs whose movie releases still feel like big events. He’s in that rarified air with Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Jordan Peele, and a small handful of others who are able to drive audiences off of their name recognition alone.
Now having seen each of his nine feature length films – Magnolia being a recent first-time watch to round out the group – I wanted to indulge in an incredibly difficult exercise: ranking the Paul Thomas Anderson movies from worst to best. A hard task to say the least, because he doesn’t have a single “bad” movie, and after the select couple that elevate above the rest, this list could change on the daily. I could wake up tomorrow and rank PTA’s movies in a completely different order.
And odds are I’ll return to a few of these over the next few months, either due to the new Paul Thomas Anderson playlist on The Criterion Channel in August, or because of my increasing excitement for his upcoming movie (collaborating with Leonardo DiCaprio in a big-budget blockbuster rumored to be an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland). There’s an idiosyncratic style and rhythm to each of his movies that I vibe with, and another Pynchon adaptation (after 2014’s Inherent Vice) seems right up my alley. It may even get me to read a book!
Regardless, I’ll be sure to update this film ranking once that movie hits theaters – potentially in 2025, but I’m preparing myself for anything – but for now, here’s how I’d rank Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies (as a preface, I like them all, just something has to be ranked towards the bottom):
10. Hard Eight (1996)
9. Inherent Vice (2014)
8. Magnolia (1999)
Magnolia might feel a bit like the film that got away from Paul Thomas Anderson (because it kinda is), but it’s the sort of big-budget passion project that up-and-coming filmmakers rarely get to make nowadays. The ensemble cast of Magnolia is littered with A-listers and common Paul Thomas Anderson players, from Julianne Moore and Philip Seymour Hoffman to Tom Cruise and John C. Reilly, each actor adds their own weight to this shotgun blast of characters.
7. Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love is the rare romantic comedy that hums like a live wire. The movie finds Anderson collapsing love and rage into the same nervous system, paring down the sprawl of Magnolia to something smaller, stranger, and sharper. The film’s scale is modest compared with Boogie Nights or There Will Be Blood, but its voltage is unmistakable—an anxious fairytale painted in glowing blues and reds, propelled by Jon Brion’s jittery, percussive score and bursts of abstract color.
6. Licorice Pizza (2021)
Licorice Pizza is a love letter to Paul Thomas Anderson’s childhood experience. The movie is overflowing with teenage emotional drama. One of 2021’s best films. Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman both give extraordinary first leading performances.
5. The Master (2012)
4. Boogie Nights (1997)
3. One Battle After Another (2025)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is a movie of firsts that never feels tentative. It is his first modern-set feature since Punch-Drunk Love, his first collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio, and his first film of this scale, reportedly in the $130 to $175 million range. What is not new is the command. From the first explosion to the last chase, this is PTA in full control, turning a feverish political thriller into one of 2025’s most purely thrilling big-screen experiences.
2. Phantom Thread (2017)
1. There Will Be Blood (2007)
Calling this a canonical masterpiece is almost redundant, yet revisiting Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood still feels shockingly alive, starting with Daniel Day-Lewis, whose Daniel Plainview might be the defining screen portrait of American ambition curdled into misanthropy. From the wordless, pickaxe-and-broken-bones prologue to the baptism humiliation and the “I drink your milkshake” finale, Day-Lewis maps a soul corroded by competition until there is nothing left but the will to dominate.