Not every movie about an artist is a self-portrait of its director, but “Phantom Thread” almost offhandedly lays out intriguing analogies between Reynolds’s métier and Mr. Anderson’s. (This may be the place to note that the editor of “Phantom Thread” is Dylan Tichenor. Mr. Anderson served as his own director of photography.) Over the years, especially since “There Will Be Blood,” Mr. Anderson has repeatedly manifested his indifference to the fashions and conventions of contemporary filmmaking. But whereas Daniel Plainview in the earlier film was a vector of pure, demonic ambition, Reynolds Woodcock bemusedly discovers himself to be one leg of a complicated emotional triangle.

Source: New York Times December 24, 2017 17:06 UTC