Best Paul Thomas Anderson Films, Ranked by IQ Score

Paul Thomas Anderson's filmography is the most sustained engagement with American masculine ambition — capitalist, religious, sexual, sartorial — in the medium since Scorsese's. The catalog returns repeatedly to a small set of structural commitments: ensemble cast as social-architecture argument, period-specific Southern California as recurring setting, and the protagonist whose specific obsession is the film's actual subject.

Anchor picks: There Will Be Blood is the canonical Masterclass entry — Daniel Day-Lewis's Daniel Plainview is one of the most carefully-rendered American-cinema protagonists. The Master is the structural sibling — Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman in the post-WWII Scientology-coded film. Magnolia is the ensemble-structure entry. Phantom Thread is Day-Lewis's final film. Inherent Vice is the only English-language Pynchon adaptation yet attempted.