Paul Thomas Anderson meets the moment with ‘One Battle After Another’
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Leonardo DiCaprio in a scene from "One Battle After Another."
Warner Bros. Pictures via AP
Sean Penn attends a special screening of "One Battle After Another" at the Walter Reade Theater on Sept. 21, 2025 in New York.
Photo by EVAN AGOSTINI/Invision/AP
Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson tried to adapt Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland” for a few years before he made what would become “One Battle After Another,” a movie inspired by the novel that takes its own creative swings.
Even after all that development time, “One Battle After Another” feels like a movie made for this exact moment in 2025. Provocative, thrilling and often absurdly hilarious, the film stitches together the best elements from each of Anderson’s distinct eras as a filmmaker into one masterful, cohesive achievement. It carries the sprawling narrative ambition of “Magnolia,” the propulsive and precise editing of “Punch-Drunk Love,” the shaggy paranoia of “Inherent Vice,” the focused character work of “Phantom Thread” and the thematic heft of “There Will Be Blood.” Plus, bonus! A car chase that’s distinctly P.T. Anderson.
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