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“This is the first shot of this movie that I think we should all unashamedly try to make a great movie. And don’t apologize, let’s just try and make a really, really, really fantastic movie. Cause there’s no shame in that.” Thus spake Paul Thomas Anderson on the first day of shooting “Magnolia” (as recorded in the “Making of” documentary from the DVD) and it’s a moment that has stuck with us ever since we first watched it. Who in hell announces that he wants to make a fantastic movie and then actually goes and makes a masterpiece? Paul Thomas Anderson, that’s who.

As we mentioned when running through the films of David Fincher recently, career retrospectives are something we’ve historically tried to reserve for filmmakers with a back catalogue that at least stretches into the double figures. But there are rare occasions we break that rule, and rarer occasions still when it feels like, far from being premature, we might actually be a little late. Anderson, at this point only the director of seven feature films, is one such case.

Where most filmmakers need a couple of movies to find their groove, and a few more years on them before they gain the experience to truly find their own voice, and often even take longer before they really gain the confidence to turn in career-defining work, Anderson made that leap pretty much in the single year that separated his debut film “Hard Eight” from his sophomore “Boogie Nights.” Since then, Anderson has honed and refined his craft, has experimented and expanded his visual repertoire, and has formed multi-film relationships with some of the most exciting and talented collaborators working today—Robert Elswit, Jonny Greenwood, and a virtual repertory of actors including Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Julianne Moore, Philip Baker Hall, William H Macy, and Joaquin Phoenix. But every single film from “Boogie Nights” on has been unmistakably Anderson’s; as much as we have ambivalent feelings about the usefulness of the term at this stage, the man is an auteur.

“Inherent Vice,” the seventh feature in his already illustrious career, while it’s just been announced as the Centerpiece Gala at AFI Fest on November 8th, won’t open for the public until its limited release on December 12th. In the meantime, having already ranked his music video output, we thought we’d get in the mood by mounting a retrospective assessment of his films so far. In chronological order, then, here are the seven films of Paul Thomas Anderson, with apologies for tardiness—he’s perhaps one of the only living filmmakers for whom we could probably have started a career retrospective three films in.

Hard Eight” aka “Sydney” (1996)

Retrospective appreciation is probably the main reason “Hard Eight” gets any play at all these days. Its original release was fumbled and precious few people saw it back then, though it did score a slot in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes. An expansion of one segment of Anderson’s second short film, “Cigarettes and Coffee,” his debut feature centers on Sydney (Philip Baker Hall), a mysterious low-stakes gambler. Befriending a seeming stranger, the despairing John (John C. Reilly), over the course of years Sydney becomes his mentor, father figure, and best friend, to the point of arranging his first date with his cocktail waitress/hooker crush, Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow). But once Clementine and John’s friend Jimmy (Samuel L Jackson) are on the scene, there are parts of John’s life that are beyond Sydney’s control and old secrets and new crimes threaten the peace of their existence. The film feels oddly sterile now, just these four characters swimming around each other like they’re in a casino-shaped fish tank, and the dialogue feels heavily Mamet-indebted and often rather stilted. But Anderson’s nascent style shows too, like where he tries out the tracking shots for which he’d become justly famous and uses to such effect in his next two movies. But it’s really in the performances and the performers where Anderson most obviously finds his level: Baker Hall and Reilly would become recurring players for him, and Philip Seymour Hoffman makes a lasting impression in just one scene as a loudmouth craps shooter. All the turns are deliberately understated, somehow tuned to a lower frequency that lends the neo-noir a certain lonely, tragic air. But let’s not oversell the film. In other ways it’s quite ordinary and, based on this beginning, Anderson could easily have become a kind of under-regarded indie director like a John Dahl, rather than the all-conquering arthouse titan he has become. In fact, these days, as solid as “Hard Eight” is, it’s most impressive for being the lower end of one of the most remarkable leaps of scope, ambition, and skill between a debut and a sophomore film ever. [B-/C+]