20 Times Directors You Trust Totally Let You Down

The Director:

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the best directors working today. A relatively young talent, he's always shown a remarkable level of passion, intelligence and uniqueness in his films.

The Film:

This'll be an unpopular opinion, but Phantom Thread was by far his worst film.

What immediately makes this obvious is how energy-free it is compared to his earlier films. If you compare the powerful monologues and hammy madness of There Will Be Blood to this aggressively slow-paced and stagey period piece, there is simply no contest.

It looked handsome and everything, but it enormously lacks as a story. It's a film where nothing really happens, where we aren't told anything new and where there aren't any big moments. It just creaks along in a stuffy, utterly insufferable manner, and Anderson just explores familiar themes with none of his usual panache. As if all of that wasn't bad enough, it's also very boring.

The main character, Reynolds Woodcock, is not only a predictable and irritating cliche, but he's also an uninteresting final role for Daniel Day Lewis.

Has He Bounced Back?

Nothing's on the horizon yet, but he'll inevitably bounce back in the future. It's only a matter of time.