March 16, 2026 · Watch the official trailer
For many cinephiles, Paul Thomas Anderson – the mind behind “Boogie Nights” and “The Master” as well as his masterpiece oil drama “There Will Be Blood” – was the greatest living filmmaker never to win an Academy Award.
That all changed Sunday evening when PTA, as the veteran auteur is known among moviegoers, won three Oscars including Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture as his revolutionary thriller dramedy “One Battle After Another” took home six awards.
His tenth feature film, adapted from the 1990 Thomas Pynchion novel “Vineland,” speaks with conviction and presence to the division and isolation of modern times, following burnout ex-revolutionary Bob and his daughter Willa hiding conspicuously in the sanctuary city of Baktan Cross from an eccentric, obsessive military official hellbent on tracking them down.
As Bob, Oscar nominee Leonardo DiCaprio is a perfect extension of the recent character evolution that he began with the self-righteous mania of Jordan Belfort in "The Wolf of Wall Street," through the outlandish goofiness of Rick Dalton in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," to the alcoholic buffoon he portrays here.
While there are broad comic moments in his performance, DiCaprio grounds Bob with core principles of morality that stem from his revolutionary roots and unrelenting loyalty to family, most notably his daughter, Willa, played astonishingly well by relative newcomer Chase Infiniti. Audiences are transported through the world of “One Battle After Another,” largely through DiCaprio's bloodshot eyes and there's a deep, rich, layered texture to his work that is far more nuanced and considered than it might appear at first glance.
Opting to not even appear to accept his Best Supporting Actor award, Sean Penn turns in his best work in decades as the film’s primary antagonist – a morally repugnant and deeply conflicted version of Brian Dennehy’s sheriff from “First Blood” and General Ripper from “Dr. Strangelove.” The hyper-vigilant stoicism and militarism that Penn exudes in his performance is perhaps the most audacious of his entire career, with the actor building a textured performance from an overly chiseled and unmoving jaw, as well as a ridiculously over-the-top walking gait where his Lockjaw always maintains perfectly squared shoulders.
The film’s ensemble cast – which won “One Battle After Another” the first ever Academy Award for Best Casting – enhances the world Anderson seeks to create in every single moment of the film, from major stars playing secondary roles to relative unknowns coming in with truly mesmerizing and often terrifying portrayals.
Benicio del Toro, who could have arguably been a better Best Supporting Actor winner here than Penn, provides boundless levity in the film’s “Midnight Run”- inspired second act as a Zen sensei keeping a paranoid Bob from completely going off the rails, while Teyana Taylor’s brash, relentlessly self-confident turn as leader of the revolution Perfidia wonderfully sets the stage for the mania to come.
It is almost impossible to separate the social commentary this film makes from the horrific events of political violence happening in the real world. “One Battle After Another” does little in its first hour to lessen the discourse.
From a purely cinematic perspective, however, Anderson remains at the top of his game, both in narrative and visual aesthetic, bringing his elegant, sophisticated, and exacting eye to the world of modern action thrillers with a movie that truly looks the part of a pristine drama.
One climactic car chase scene is relatively straightforward, yet the intensity created by camera placement – as cars go up and down California’s rolling hills set to the beat of Jonny Greenwood’s impactful score – is beyond next-level moviemaking.
Using 35 mm film with vintage VistaVision camera that feels as if it is shot using almost entirely natural light, “One Battle After Another” is a tapestry of visual cinematic artistry, as Anderson teams with the cinematographer Michael Bauman to create the world of the film with a robustness that is more than meets the eye.
Moment by moment, frame by frame, Anderson and the cinematographer elevate individual scenes far beyond what’s on the page, using a constantly changing frame that showcases Anderson’s deliberate intentionality in giving the audience perspective – or keeping them from it.
The filmmaker makes the most out of every second of the nearly three-hour running time, slowly building visual and emotional moments of foreboding anticipation, with scenes demonstrating the organic, methodical ways the revolutionaries are hunted down and his partnership with Andy Jurgensen led to a Best Editing win, one of six Oscars won Sunday by the film.
“One Battle After Another” demonstrates an intense grasp of place and geography within the context of each scene, and the fluidity of the camera motions, cuts, and editing reinforces a foreboding presence of what’s right around the corner. Viewers are literally taken within layers and layers of hallways and corridors to visually showcase the depths characters go to maintain secrecy.
While the film will undoubtedly be polarizing from a narrative perspective, the technical and visual mastery that Anderson showcases in “One Battle After Another” as well as the original storytelling on display makes it one of 2025’s singular and signature films well worth of its place as the Academy’s top film and something worth revisiting on HBO Max.
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