July 24, 2015 – September 5, 2015
Paul Thomas Anderson occupies a unique position in the American film industry: a cinephile auteur working within the confines of the major Hollywood studios but making his own brand of idiosyncratic, distinctive films with an eye for art over commerce. Anderson’s films cover wide dramatic terrain, from the inner workings of American pseudo-cults in Boogie Nights and The Master, to the sprawling interrogation of family in Magnolia, to the Southern California oil boom at the turn of the 20th century in There Will be Blood. A child of Los Angeles, his work has largely focused on the marginalia of the City of Angels, off the well-worn, glamorous path, shaping everyday lives into poetic meditations on modern existence. In addition to Anderson’s seven features we are pleased to offer 14 films that have influenced his work over the years. As all of Anderson’s films have been shot on film, most of the films in the retrospective will be screened on 35mm prints—an increasingly limited possibility in the era of digital cinema.
Bad Day At Black Rock
Directed by John Sturges
This hard, economical, hybrid Western noir follows one-armed WWII vet John Macreedy (Spencer Tracy) as he stops in the small …
Boogie Nights
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
With a script first developed in his teens and a story previously filmed as a short, Anderson delivered this wake-up …
Giant
Directed by George Stevens
Featuring James Dean in the final role of his mercurial career, Giant transcends it’s myth-laden reputation to be a key …
Goodfellas
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Scorsese’s masterpiece of late-American Dream excess and the decaying effects of a ceaseless lust for money follows Henry Hill (Ray …
Hard Eight AKA Sydney
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Anderson’s first feature announced a powerful new voice in American cinema at a time when Quentin Tarantino and the Coen …
House of Games
Directed by David Mamet
Having won the Pulitzer Prize for his play Glengarry Glen Ross, Mamet turned his attention to the silver screen with …
I Am Cuba
Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov
New 4k digital restoration! For a film ostensibly dealing with the Cuban Revolution, and produced essentially as Communist propaganda, I Am …
Inherent Vice
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Adapting a Thomas Pynchon novel for the screen is a task at which none have succeeded before Anderson, who sculpts …
Jackie Brown
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Tarantino’s perhaps underappreciated crime drama stars Pam Grier as Jackie Brown, a flight attendant for a small Mexican airline who …
Magnolia
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Anderson’s third feature takes the theme of chance and applies it to the stories of a cadre of Angelinos on …
Melvin and Howard
Directed by Jonathan Demme
Demme’s fifth feature and first major critical success is a film dealing with the peculiarities of American lower-middle-class life that …
Punch Drunk Love
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
With two sprawling, epic works preceding it, with this film Anderson sought to make a “Friday night film,” a short, …
Putney Swope
Directed by Robert Downey, Sr.
Downey, Sr., always the incisive provocateur, here fabricates a kind of fable in which the chairman of the board of …
Shoot the Piano Player!
Directed by François Truffaut
Truffaut, hot off The 400 Blows, his masterpiece of adolescent dread, completely changes directions with Shoot the Piano Player!, a …
Short Cuts
Directed by Robert Altman
Adapting several short stories by the Pacific Northwest author Raymond Carver and transplanting them to a bristling early-90s Los Angeles, …
Stray Dog
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Kurosawa’s neorealist, post-war tale of urban malaise follows homicide detective Murakami (Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune) during a sweltering heat wave …
The Band Wagon
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
This Technicolor extravaganza came at a time when MGM could do no wrong, especially the Freed Unit (named for producer …
The Big Sleep
Directed by Howard Hawks
One of the key noirs of the 1940s, The Big Sleep features several legends of the American page and screen—Lauren …
The Master
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
WWII veteran and consummate alcoholic Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), aimless and adrift following the end of the war and his …
There Will Be Blood
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Anderson’s features, while always sharpening their edges as they go, have never been hard-as-nails as this adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s …