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Film:  Punch Drunk Love

In the end, I'm not much of a PTA fan.  When you're talking about auteurs, I think you could break them into two basic categories:  genre filmmakers and fetish filmmakers.  PTA is a fetish filmmaker.  He is guided by his own fetishes and sensibilities.  Nic Refn is a fetish filmmaker.  Tarantino is a fetish filmmaker.  David Lynch.  All work within genre - at times - but the genre is secondary.  The fetish is primary.  In a lot ways, these kind of filmmakers are take it or leave it for viewers and polarizing.  That is to say, if you share in the fetish and the world and the sensibility, then you tend to enjoy the films.  Others will not and are generally puzzled by the reception.  These types of films tend to elicit the most passionate reactions from viewers - both defenders and naysayers.  They are riskier in nature than genre filmmaking which relies on story telling and cinematic traditions.  But they are more likely to be unwatchable and embarrassing.

In any case, even among the big fetish filmmakers, PTA is not one I've totally ever connected with.  Same with Jim Jarmusch.  In fact, I tried watching PDL before and fell asleep and turned it off.  I also fell asleep this time watching it.  My ranking of his films:

1.  Hard Eight
1.  Boogie Nights

Too hard to say.  On the one hand, I love the ambition of Boogie Nights and when it's good, it's great.  But it's overly long and depressing and I just don't think about it as fondly as I do Hard Eight, which I view as this incredible first movie made by a 25 year old.

3.  There Will Be Blood
4.  Magnolia
5.  The Master
6.  Punch Drunk Love

All this said about PTA, of all the living filmmakers, I think he has the best chance to go out and make one of the greatest films of all time.  If the guy could get the right material and the right state of mind:  look out.  In this way, I sort of view him like Kobe Bryant.  I don't like the style of play, I don't like hero-ball, but yeah, the guy had an 81 point game.

And just to round things out -- examples of auteurs who make genre films would be Woody Allen, Michael Mann, David Lean, Walter Hill...these kind of filmmakers.