Like the city of Los Angeles and its endlessly tessellating system of suburbs, Anderson’s films can be infamous for their sprawl. At their worst (and this leaky piñata of a Thomas Pynchon adaptation is the worst), they feel chaotic and over-crowded, if only because we get one-joke weirdos in place of the three-dimensional eccentrics that populate Anderson’s other group portraits — movies where the director succeeds in juggling dozens of characters without short-changing anyone. In what might have been “The Long Goodbye” by way of “The Big Lebowski,” Joaquin Phoenix’s self-medicating “Doc” pot-smokes his way through a SoCal conspiracy, ending up bleary eyed and disoriented as the audience.

For better or worse, Daniel Day-Lewis’ frothing oil-baron performance in “There Will Be Blood” loomed so large that it posed a nearly impossible act for anyone to follow, dwarfing PTA’s next project. This time, the director’s target was a real person — a cult leader inspired by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard (the meatiest role yet for frequent Anderson collaborator Phillip Seymour Hoffman) — which called for a degree of caution, lest he rankle the famously litigious “religion.” Trouble is, without a fair amount of outside reading and research, audiences were hard-pressed to make much of this rowdy critique, focusing instead on Joaquin Phoenix’s character, the kind of broken individual on whom false prophets prey.

This comedy proved to Adam Sandler’s fans and detractors alike that the man-child comedian had depths that were underused.

This sweet yet intense romance situates audiences in the high-stress personality of Barry Egan. Expertly deploying surreal touches, abstract kaleido-strobic interstitials and a nerve-ratcheting drums-and-strings score,

Anderson digs into what makes such a repressed character tick — or what makes him explode into a sliding door-smashing, soap dispenser-dismantling ball of rage.

As Barry tells the mattress man, “I have a love in my life. It makes me stronger than anything you can imagine.”

Anderson’s Reno-set debut — an expansion of his 1993 short “Cigarettes and Coffee” — included crime-movie elements, such as gambling, kidnapping and extortion.

However, it is ultimately a touching and tragic father-son tale about a shadowy older man (Philip Baker Hall) and the hapless lost cause (John C. Reilly) he takes under his wing.

Anderson demonstrated from the start that he had a voice, a vision and the ability to coax brilliant performances from large, unconventional ensembles.

5. Licorice Pizza 

Day-Lewis doesn’t act often–half a decade after “Lincoln” and precipitating his retirement, he reunited with Anderson for this portrait of a singularly obsessive fashion designer.

The film is as fastidious as its subject at times, resulting in a kind of elegant austerity.

Yet there’s irreverent humor that pokes wicked fun at its complex and weirdly self-destructive protagonist. A

Anderson has cited haute-couture figure Cristóbal Balenciaga as inspiration, though Olivier Meyrou’s Yves Saint Laurent docu, “Celebration” might have influenced the meticulously reproduced details in this film.

A free-wheeling coming-of-age comedy, Licorice Pizza is a companion piece ofLucas’ 1973 “American Graffiti” and Linklater 1993 Dazed and Confused.”

Yet, the gloriously retro “Licorice Pizza” proves to be one of the director’s most heartfelt movies yet. Shot during the pandemic, this affectionate time capsule allows the director to carry on the creative partnership with the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman by writing a role for his son Cooper, who plays an impossibly self-confident SoCal teenager intent on wooing a woman roughly a decade his senior (Alana Heim). Coming on the heels of Bradley Cooper’s gonzo leisure-suit cameo, the delivery-truck scene is hall-of-fame material.

Hollywood may be full of hangers-on and has-beens, but in the world of porn, everyone’s a star — at least, that’s the sense one gets from Anderson’s slick homage to the adult film industry of the 1970s, which turns toxic with the introduction of drugs and home video in the ’80s. Set in the San Fernando Valley, the film follows much the same arc as countless “A Star Is Born” narratives that’ve come before, but brings such heart to the equation that the usual showbiz cynicism takes a back seat to genuine interpersonal dynamics, as Mark Wahlberg’s gifted-if-not-especially-talented Dirk Diggler creates a kind of chosen family for himself.

The twin forces of commerce and Christianity go head-to-head in Anderson’s epic American showdown, set in the early 20th century, when opportunists like Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) could strike it rich overnight digging for silver — or that most precious of resources, black gold. Like a fresh oil well, the movie erupts with personality, pitting the seasoned capitalist against a self-righteous (if hypocritical) man of the cloth as Daniel spars with a country preacher (Paul Dano) over a lucrative claim. Much as there is to admire in the film — and this is one for the ages, like watching Elmer Gantry throw down with an Ayn Rand titan — it’s hardly a fair fight, but sets up the film’s incomparably cathartic “I drink your milkshake” finale.

It never rains in Southern California, or so the old song goes, though a weather forecast at the outset of PTA’s magnum opus gives it a 75% chance. Chance. That’s the operative word in this emotional merry-go-round of reckonings and reconciliations, which hinges on a central paradox en route to its torrential climax: Anderson muses about the freak factors that govern our fates, even as he plays god behind the scenes. Over the course of three-plus hours, he orchestrates this symphony-like ensemble piece as a series of dramatic waves, set in motion by Jon Brion’s carnival-ride score and the soul-shredding voice of Aimee Mann. Nine Mann songs, nine major characters, interwoven with a staggering degree of complexity. Inspired by Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts,” but pitched at a kind of doomsday intensity, “Magnolia” unfurls as if a biblical judgment day were looming and these people — parents and their damaged-goods kids, mostly — had only 24 hours to sort out a lifetime of regrets and unfinished business. As a Tony Robbins-like motivational speaker, Tom Cruise is toxic masculinity personified, though it’s Julianne Moore, as his dad’s teeth-gnashing trophy wife, who reminds that, even in a movie as perceptive as this one, we can never really know someone.