-= TomFoolery =-

This one is very, very tough indeed. There are just so many fantastic directors out there. There’s David Lynch, and Stanley Kubrick, and Terry Gilliam, and Orson Welles, and Andrei Tarkovsky, and Quentin Tarantino, and Terrence Malick, and the Coen Brothers, and Alfred Hitchcock, and Woody Allen, and and so on, and so on. But there’s one director who has absolutely floored me beyond belief with two of his films, and that director is Paul Thomas Anderson. Firstly, Magnolia is the most underrated film from the past 20 years. It’s undoubtedly the most thrilling and beautifully done film ever made in the intersecting narrative genre. This I can say without any doubt in my mind. But the film that absolutely floored me and changed my expectations of what a film should be was There Will Be Blood. In my opinion, this film will go down as one of the greatest films of the 21st Century, unless something crazy happens (like Hollywood starts producing movies that aren’t total shit). Much of why I love this film is Daniel Day Lewis. His infallibly masterful performance in the role of Daniel Plainview is rivaled only by his performance as Bill “the Butcher” Cutting in Gangs of New York, and that is no short accomplishment. However, the film itself is a transcendent exercise in the art of filmic tension, which is why I love it so. Never, in all my days, have I seen a film build to such a climax. Never. It truly is masterful in every way, shape, and form. There are few other directors in contemporary cinema with as stunning a filmography and as promising a future as Paul Thomas Anderson, and for that reason he is my favorite director. Along with all those other ones…