Hard Eight (1997)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
A stranger mentors a young Reno gambler who weds a hooker and befriends a vulgar casino regular.
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What critics compared Hard Eight to
Beyond having seen that far too many times - whether it's Hanks in "Cast Away," Ford and Heche in "Six Days, Seven Nights" or even the gang on "Gilligan's Island - that segment brings nothing new beyond the unappealing, chauvinism of what follows.
Hard Eight and Magnolia, the hunger for reconciliation.
En su primera incursión tras las cámaras, Hard Eight (1996), se adivinaba una preferencia por los dramas corales con una puesta en escena bastante dinámica en sus composiciones y ambientación, lo cual quedó confirmado en Boogie Nights (1997) y Magnolia (1999).
His first feature, Hard Eight (1996), a crime film reminiscent of Scorsese, remains his most conventional movie—an exercise in gangster existentialism in which a dapper, aging Reno cardsharp takes a dim-bulb drifter under his wing.
Paul Thomas Anderson ’s filmmaking swings between ambitions — sweeping riffs on history (“Boogie Nights,” “There Will Be Blood,” “The Master”) and peculiar, enlightening character studies (“Hard Eight,” “Punch Drunk Love”).
From Hard Eight through Inherent Vice, this artist has always dared audiences to dig deeper.
The theme of obsessiveness, already apparent in his first full-length film, “Hard Eight,” was pursued in the movies that followed: “Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia,” “Punch-Drunk Love,” “There Will Be Blood,” “The Master” and “Inherent Vice” – a list that includes some of the most important American films of recent decades.
I believe (and would still like to) that Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the most talented young directors in the business Id consider Boogie Nights and Magnolia to be in the top fifty films of the last ten years, and Hard Eight might just make the cut if I was asked to list a hundred.
"Punch-Drunk Love" is Anderson's most modestly produced movie since the underrated "Hard Eight," but it has enough unconventional touches ?
I couldn't ask any more from a mainstream romantic comedy than what I got from Punch-Drunk Love, a surprisingly uplifting gift provided by director/writer Paul Thomas Anderson ("Magnolia"/"Boogie Nights"/"Hard Eight").
Hard Eight, his first film, was under two hours, I know.
Anderson, whose three previous films -- "Hard Eight," "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" -- won awards for acting, directing and screenwriting, took home the best director prize from this year's Cannes Film Festival for "Punch-Drunk Love."
For its co-writer and director Derek Cianfrance, whose last film was the tortured love story “Blue Valentine,” “Pines” represents a step up in ambition similar to the one Paul Thomas Anderson took from “Hard Eight” to “Boogie Nights.”
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And there are wonderful touches here, endearing gags that remind you this is, after all, the same filmmaker who gave us perceptive, woolly delights like Hard Eight and Boogie Nights : the way Gary pretends to misremember the phone number Alana has just recited to him, even though he’s already committed it to heart; the appearance of Skyler Gisondo, a former child actor himself, in a small role as a suave teen heartthrob—his entrance, in a turtleneck-and-blazer combo, should light the Internet on fire, if the Internet had any sense; a tiny but smashing John C. Reilly cameo that’s best left undescribed, so you can discover it yourself.
The self-promoting Gary, too, could be a junior version to some of the hucksters of Anderson’s past films: Philip Baker Hall’s gambler in “Hard Eight”; Mark Wahlberg’s porn star in “Boogie Nights”; Daniel Day-Lewis’ oilman in “There Will Be Blood.”
After a relatively unremarkable debut (“Hard Eight”), writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson delivered the mighty one-two punch of “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia.”
Then there’s the group where I kind of fall: Someone who loves Hard Eight , Boogie Nights , Magnolia and, especially, Punch Drunk Love .
Think of Philip Baker Hall patrolling the casino floor in Hard Eight , or Adam Sandler’s desperate sprints through darkened streets in Punch-Drunk Love.
By the time he packs in a political campaign with dark undertones, it’s become a movie that has as many moving parts as “Magnolia” when it might have held together better in “Hard Eight” territory.
I am no real fan of the man's work - There Will Be Blood is a miscast Paul Dano away from being a masterpiece, and Hard Eight is one of the best of the mid-'90s character-driven indies, but his three intermediary films leave me various shades of cold - and if I wanted to be snippy & not engage with the work at all, I'd accuse The Master of being a movie made by a man who took the Kubrick comparisons too much to heart, and has made the film he perceives A Great Filmmaker would have made, resulting in all sorts of self-aware narrative disjunctions and deliberately unfriendly gestures, a self-conscious "look how smart I am" movie.
His first four films — “Hard Eight,” “Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia,” “Punch-Drunk Love” — were notable for their mania, for the way both the camera and the story would tornado around until he found a moment of biblical postmodernism; until, say, it rained frogs; until you wanted to prescribe him something.
(Anderson fans will recognize this first meeting and the relationship that follows as an echo of the Philip Baker Hall-John C. Reilly father-son/ mentor-student connection in the director's first feature, 1996's "Hard Eight." ) Philip Seymour Hoffman apparently watched a lot of Orson Welles in preparation for his powerful yet playful performance here, but Dodd and his "Cause" -- despite various protests to the contrary -- clearly were inspired by L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology.
Philip Baker Hall schooled John C. Reilly as a Vegas gambler in Hard Eight; porn auteur Burt Reynolds promoted well-hung amateur Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights; TV mogul Jason Robards tried reconnecting with his sex-guru son Tom Cruise in Magnolia; and oil baron Daniel Day-Lewis battled preacher Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood.
Starting with the little seen "Hard Eight" in 1996, he made a huge splash with "Boogie Nights" a year later, followed by subsequent releases of "Magnolia," "Punch-Drunk Love" and the eight-time Oscar nominated "There Will Be Blood" from five years ago.
The first sequence, in his first feature, “Hard Eight” (1997), consists of Philip Baker Hall giving coffee and a cigarette to John C. Reilly, in a diner, and making him an offer he can’t refuse.
The Films of Paul Thomas Anderson Hard Eight (November 24/07) Paul Thomas Anderson's feature-length debut, Hard Eight is a low-key yet sporadically fascinating drama revolving around Philip Baker Hall's Sydney and John C. Reilly's John.
If his lackluster half-film “The Master” didn’t you put you off the director responsible for such instant classics as “Hard Eight,” “Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia,” and “There Will Be Blood,” then his latest effort will make you doubt if he is capable of ever returning to the height of his former glories.
Expectations: Director Anderson is behind “Hard Eight,” “Boogie Nights” and my favorite of his, “Magnolia.”
All of Anderson’s films thus far have featured main characters plagued by loneliness, eking out somewhat isolated existences and making plays at connection, whether it’s Hard Eight’s small-time gambler (Anderson’s original, still-avowed title, Sydney, emphasizes his solitary nature); Boogie Nights’ surrogate family of emotionally downtrodden porn stars, rejected by life and finding solace in each other’s company and bodies; Magnolia’s wildly dissatisfied bunch of sad sacks, searching for tenderness and/or redemption; or Punch-Drunk Love’s social misfit Barry Egan, living alone in a drab LA apartment, calling phone-sex operators to temper his lust.
The thrill of Paul Thomas Anderson's more recent pictures lies in watching him rediscover the calm of Hard Eight, his exceptional 1996 debut.
Anderson started out as an independent filmmaker, with “Hard Eight” (1996) and “Boogie Nights” (1997).
It’s also a bit of a thematic 180, as Anderson’s Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love were all essentially optimistic tales of lonely outsiders finding solace in others, forging makeshift communities where they’re least expected.
I preferred his grittier debut, Hard Eight (well, it was gritty as any movie that stars Gwyneth Paltrow as a cocktail waitress can be) partly because it was more vague in its numerous antecedents.