An old gambler looks for his last chance to teach a young man what he knows. A dishwasher becomes a porn star and destroys his career. A group of people in Los Angeles bump into each other without knowing their connections. A man with no future and seven annoying sisters finally finds the love of his life. An oil tycoon does whatever he can to keep the business running. A man with no future or past stumbles into a cult.

These are the loglines for the six previous films by Inherent Vice writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson. The filmmaker arrived on the scene fully formed, with a clear sense of style and storytelling with 1996’s Hard Eight. His movies each have one central figure or concept that they revolve around, with pieces coming together in ways unexpected.

PTA's films are at times unique in their own right, but still obviously made by the same man. He has a splendid visual sense, makes incredible use of long takes and gets incredible performances from his actors. It helps that he built up a rapport with many of the actors who star in his films. Philip Seymour Hoffman was in all of PTA's films except There Will Be Blood. Philip Baker Hall was in two films and even starred in his short film Cigarettes & Coffee. Julianne Moore has been in two films as well. Joaquin Phoenix is now the latest member of the team, giving a stunning performance in The Master and is now the star of Inherent Vice.

Inherent Vice is PTA’s seventh film and opens in New York and Los Angeles this weekend. With that in mind, this is the perfect opportunity to rank his previous films. They’re all really good, so this will be hard.

[new page = Punch-Drunk Love]

Punch-Drunk Love (2002) sort of has to be the default sixth-best PTA film. Following the three-hour epic Magnolia, PTA decided to make a 90-minute romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler. The director proved that Sandler could actually act if he tries, but that’s not what we should be focusing on here. Anderson turns the romantic comedy on its head, making one of the darkest films in the genre. If you were told that PTA once made a romantic comedy, Punch-Drunk Love is exactly what you would think the result would be.

Check out the camera work in this scene with Hoffman. (Features STRONG language)

[new page = Hard Eight]

Anderson’s debut feature, 1996’s Hard Eight, announced that he was going to be big. Philip Baker Hall plays Sydney, an ageing gambler who takes John (John C. Reilly) under his wing. But John gets in desperate trouble, forcing Sydney to fix the situation. This is a moody, dark neo-noir and is so well done that it should make us happy that Anderson made another noir. Inherent Vice’s trailers reveal that it is a very different style noir, though.

[new page = The Master]

It’s safe to say that anticipation for The Master was at a fever pitch by the time it finally opened in the U.S. in fall 2012. The film earned awards at the Venice Film Festival and it sounded like a sure thing at the Oscars. But it only wound up getting three acting nominations for its stunning cast, Hoffman, Phoenix and Amy Adams.

Of course, all that proves is how pointless awards are, because The Master is still a chilling, monumental character study. Desperate men populate PTA’s films, but probably none more so that Freddie Quell (Phoenix). The film isn’t just a meditation on cults, but how a troubled man will remain troubled if he doesn’t fall in with the right crowd to help him.

[new page = Boogie Nights]

Probably one of the best films of the 1990s, Boogie Nights (1997) essentially acts as a master thesis for Anderson’s subsequent work. Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) is the ultimate Anderson character, who falls into ultimate success only to lose it. The film is jammed packed with intense performances and it takes a surprisingly frank look at the pron industry.

[new page = There Will Be Blood]

My first experience with Paul Thomas Anderson was seeing There Will Be Blood in a theater in 2007. It was a stunning piece of work that I still can’t get out of my head. The performance by Daniel Day Lewis is extraordinary and, even though it is a loosely adapted version of Upton Sinclair’s Oil!, it is still a film that touches on the themes that have interested Anderson throughout his career. It truly is one of the great films of the previous decade.

[new page = Magnolia]

The jewel in Anderson’s crown will always be Magnolia. Made just two years after Boogie Nights, the film is an ode to coincidence and Los Angeles itself. In just a day, a web of characters weave into and out of each other’s fractured lives. The genius of Magnolia is that it’s not an episodic film at all. You can’t take one character’s story out of it and expect to completely understand it.