Opinion of Paul Thomas Anderson

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Absolute genius.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Very mixed - more misses than hits but some pretty darn good hits. No vote.

[vitoNova]

Great director.

There Will be Blood is probably the one I like the least, however.  Even though that's his most critically-acclaimed work.

[Kleine Scheiße]

generally good

[HisGrace]

There Will Be Blood, The Master, and Phantom Thread (and hopefully Licorice Pizza) are all among the greatest films of all time.

[Babeuf]

Phantom Thread is a masterpiece.

[Samof94]

His partner is funny

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Easily one of the most overrated filmmakers working today.  It's not even that his work is awful per se, but people act like he's some sort of artistic genius and he really, really isn't.  The Master was good and easily his best film to date, but far from a classic (despite phenomenal performances by Hoffman, Phoenix, and Adams) and There Will be Blood was fine, but those are the only movies he's made that aren't at least somewhat below average.  

Paul Thomas Anderson is a reliably competent if unremarkable director and a relatively mediocre screenwriter.  Certainly not one of the great talents of his generation by any stretch of the imagination.

Edit: That said, I know little about him as a person, but it’s definitely a mark against Anderson that Licorice Pizza treats the extremely toxic behavior of its male lead as sweet/romantic when he is pretty clearly a proudly self-centered, manipulative (and in at least one scene, low key emotionally abusive) stalker who likely suffers from narcissistic personality disorder.  

For example, it is not sweet/romantic to call the house of a girl you have a crush on because you’re mad she’s dating someone else and then start breathing heavily into the phone when she asks who it is before hanging up without saying a word.  The movie plays this for laughs and treats it as awkwardly cute behavior, when it is objectively creepy red flag behavior.  I mean, this is behavior I’d expect from the killer/villain in an early scene of some slasher or a thriller film that pits its female lead against a deranged stalker.  

Or there’s the scene where our “hero” basically tells the woman he’s supposedly in love with (albeit in not so many words) that she’d be nothing without him (during a scene where he also adamantly insists that the world revolves around him getting what he wants and that nothing else matters; the scene is written in such a way that it’s pretty clear Anderson intends for the audience to side with this creep rather than the woman he’s at least borderline emotionally abusing throughout said scene).  

On the bright side, Bradley Cooper is great in the movie though (and tbf, Anderson at least recognizes that his character - producer Jon Peters - was a horrible person).

Honestly, the more I write, the more I feel like Anderson likely has some pretty f***ed up views on things like the difference between stalking and being romantic*, the difference between being persistent and obsessive, and what constitutes controlling and emotionally abusive behavior.  As such, w/o knowing more, I’m inclined to vote HP.  

*Dear Licorice Pizza: It is not romantic to follow around and relentlessly harass a woman until she finally breaks down and agrees to go on a date with you so you will leave her alone for two seconds (our “hero” does this in basically the first scene), especially when she has literally just said you are making her uncomfortable and repeatedly told you that she’s not interested.  This is literally textbook stalker behavior.  

[Хahar 🤔]

Edit: That said, I know little about him as a person, but it’s definitely a mark against Anderson that Licorice Pizza treats the extremely toxic behavior of its male lead as sweet/romantic when he is pretty clearly a proudly self-centered, manipulative (and in at least one scene, low key emotionally abusive) stalker who likely suffers from narcissistic personality disorder.  

For example, it is not sweet/romantic to call the house of a girl you have a crush on because you’re mad she’s dating someone else and then start breathing heavily into the phone when she asks who it is before hanging up without saying a word.  The movie plays this for laughs and treats it as awkwardly cute behavior, when it is objectively creepy red flag behavior.  I mean, this is behavior I’d expect from the killer/villain in an early scene of some slasher or a thriller film that pits its female lead against a deranged stalker.  

Or there’s the scene where our “hero” basically tells the woman he’s supposedly in love with (albeit in not so many words) that she’d be nothing without him (during a scene where he also adamantly insists that the world revolves around him getting what he wants and that nothing else matters; the scene is written in such a way that it’s pretty clear Anderson intends for the audience to side with this creep rather than the woman he’s at least borderline emotionally abusing throughout said scene).

Yes, the character in question is 15. The movie is about the interactions between a precocious child and an emotionally stunted adult. That's the whole point.