Paul Thomas Anderson has released some of the best movies of the last four decades, but one of his lesser-appreciated films remains much better than a movie some call his masterpiece. Anderson has worked with several actors more than once and one of these men is Joaquin Phoenix, who he directed in both Inherent Vice and The Master.

Of the two movies, most critics labeled The Master as one of the director’s masterpieces. The film, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix, has an 82% Rotten Tomatoes score, but it also has a much-lower 62% audience score. Both of Inherent Vice’s scores are lower, but it remains the better movie of the two.

Paul Thomas Anderson Adapted An ‘Unfilmable’ Thomas Pynchon Novel Into A Minor Masterpiece

P.T. Anderson DId The Impossible With Inherent Vice

In 2014, P.T. Anderson released the neo-noir mystery movie Inherent Vice. Anderson adapted the film from the Thomas Pynchon novel of the same name. However, it was never supposed to happen. While it was Pynchon’s most accessible work, the author’s novels are often called unfilmable. However, Anderson was able to pull it off.

This should come as no surprise, as Anderson proved he could do weird when he directed Adam Sandler to one of the best performances of his career in Punch-Drunk Love. Both Inherent Vice and Punch-Drunk Love share a common theme, as they are both about men who seem directionless but end up having to deal with the world piling up obsticles against them.

Joaquin Phoenix stars as Doc Sportello, a private investigator stoner in Los Angeles in 1970. When Doc’s ex-girlfriend asks him to investigate a scheme with a land developer, he ends up engulfed in a myriad of conspiracies, all while dealing with a police detective with a grudge against him. It sounds a lot like Chinatown, but with a lor more marijuana.

Despite the lower critical reviews, Anderson’s stoner noir mystery was praised during awards season, with Joaquin Phoenix receiving acting nominations at the Oscars and Golden Globes. The rest of the cast was great too, with Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio del Toro, Martin Short, Eric Roberts, and more.

Anderson hired Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood to do the score, and he recorded it with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. It was Greenwood’s third time to score an Anderson film, following There Will be Blood and The Master. However, out of those three films, Inherent Vice is considered the weakest, despite being better than The Master in many ways.

Inherent Vice Was A More Impressive Movie Than Anderson’s Overrated The Master

The Master Was Praised Mostly For How Anderson SH๏τ It

When The Master was released, most of the talk was about everything other than the story. The biggest lure for film fans was that Anderson sH๏τ almost the entire movie in 65 mm film stock and released it in 70 mm, the first time this had happened to any movie since Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet in 1996. This was something many critics mentioned in their reviews.

Thanks to Anderson’s reputation as a filmmaker and the love for 70 mm, critics praised the look of the film, which might be the best-looking film that the director has ever made. Phoenix rightfully received high praise for his performance, much of which he improvised, and Philip Seymour Hoffman was as great as usual.

However, at the same time, that did not make for a great story. The Master was a direct sH๏τ at Scientology, although it was never called that by name, and this was only an influence on the story. While The Master looked great, the story mostly meandered and little happened outside the tremendous acting showcase.

However, Inherent Vice was a movie that had acting on par with The Master, and its story was more entertaining. Both are masterclasses in filmmaking, but Inherent Vice is by far the better movie in most ways. It leaves fans very excited about P.T. Anderson’s next Thomas Pynchon adaptation, One Battle After Another.