We’ve got a double feature of great movies in the theater right now. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another and a new project from Aziz Ansari called Good Fortune. The only similarity between these two movies is that both had me cracking up.
Let’s take a look at previous work by both writer-directors that you can watch with your friends for more of those same vibes.
This was Aziz Ansari’s first major project with Netflix. Aziz has a style of storytelling that feels modern in all of his projects in the best of ways. When you sit down to watch one of his movies, you will see the modern world reflected back at you from the conversations the characters are having to the technology and economic reality that we are in. There’s a bit of sadness and bitterness coated in hope and positivity.
What’s unique about this relatability is that it doesn’t date a project the way it can in popular media. Aziz has a way of anchoring a series or project firmly in its time, without leaning on pop culture crutches. You won’t find celebrity cameos and jokes that don’t land a decade later because no one knows who that person is and why what they said should be funny. The humor and story engine operate within its’s specific narrative.
You can see this played out expertly in Aziz’s first series with Netflix, Master of None. There’s something evergreen about the stories this series covers you will recognize and enjoy.
Paul Thomas Anderson is iconic even if you aren’t too familiar with who he is. There are many movies that he has done that have gotten critical acclaim and luckily we happen to have many of them in our collection.
What’s distinctive about PTA as a writer-director is that his characters always feel like they were custom fitted to the project. There are some movies out there where you can tell that certain actors play the role like they are in an entirely different movie.
Sometimes this is for the benefit of the project, other times it just seems odd. Every character, every moment feels so purposeful and unique that the sum is easily greater than its parts.
Another thing about PTA’s projects is that the world itself is always educational. In his work, you will walk away learning something more about the internal mechanisms that make that world run. Whether these mechanisms are fictional or real, they are necessary for the story to coalesce. There’s never a lot of fluff in his movies that don’t pay off.
Here are some of the movies we have by PTA in the collection and many of them have no wait and you can watch now through our streaming service Kanopy.
