Critics say this isn’t just one of the best films of the year, it may be one of the greatest of PTA’s career.
The latest from Paul Thomas Anderson, titled One Battle After Another, is headed to theaters this month, and the first reviews of the film have now arrived online. Loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, the nearly three-hour action thriller stars Leonardo DiCaprio as an ex-revolutionary on a mission to rescue his daughter. It’s being called not just one of the best movies of the year but among the greatest cinematic masterpieces in a long time.
Here’s what critics are saying about One Battle After Another:
Does it live up to expectations?
Despite the absurdly high expectations I set for this movie, Paul Thomas Anderson’s first $100M+ budget delivers an S-tier PTA flick.
— Michael Calabro, IGN Movies
I went into One Battle After Another with high expectations. It’s hard not to. What I didn’t expect was to be so thoroughly moved by Anderson’s saga of American activists.
— Esther Zuckerman, Bloomberg News
My expectations were on the lower side. I can confidently say that those expectations were completely blown out of the water.
— Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky
First things first: curb your expectations. The rumors that Paul Thomas Anderson has made one of the best films of the 21st century are, y’know, ever so slightly exaggerated.
— Nick Howells, London Evening Standard
How does it compare to PTA’s other movies?
He has made countless films that have stood the test of time, but he has never made a film quite like One Battle After Another… This remains easily one of Anderson’s most accessible and crowd-pleasing films to date.
— Matt Neglia, Next Best Picture
With his 10th film, One Battle After Another, Anderson makes his grandest project yet.
— Ross Bonaime, Collider
His filmmaking blends the formalism of The Master and the exuberance of Boogie Nights, yet it still feels like he is continuously mining new territory here.
— Sophie Ciminello, Awards Watch
Anderson shows a previously unseen aptitude for action and suspense.
— Richard Lawson, The Hollywood Reporter
[It] may not be Anderson’s most incisive work, but it is surely his most exciting on a visceral level…it might be Anderson’s best comedy since Boogie Nights.
— Matt Singer, Screen Crush
PTA crafts a bold, action-packed, and hilariously sharp epic that hits his once-a-decade masterpiece quota.
— David Gonzalez, The Cinematic Reel
One Battle After Another marks the first time in 26 years I’ve watched a Paul Thomas Anderson film that I felt was inviting me into its world as passionately as the film was creating it.
— Owen Gleiberman, Variety
Is this one of the best films of the year?
The best film of the year.
— Patrick Cremora, Radio Times
A complete cinematic package that stands as the very best of the year.
— Matt Neglia, Next Best Picture
The coolest, most consummately masterful movie you’re likely to see all year.
— Nick Howells, London Evening Standard
It is easily one of the best movies that has graced the big screen in a long while.
— Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky
One Battle After Another carries the same seismic force as seeing yesteryear’s classics on the big screen in their time…the movie of the moment, the movie of the year, and possibly the defining film of a generation.
— David Gonzalez, The Cinematic Reel
How should we classify this movie?
One Battle After Another is, essentially, a thriller, albeit one teeming with enormous ideas about the collapse and possible rescue of the country.
— Richard Lawson, The Hollywood Reporter
Oddly enough [it’s] best described as an action comedy on an epic scale.
— Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence
The surprise of One Battle After Another is that while it speaks with a big vision to the danger and anxiety of our moment, it’s also a drama that’s totally grounded and relatable.
— Owen Gleiberman, Variety
[It] works best as a moving character-driven thriller about the connection between a washed-up father and his teenage daughter.
— Matt Singer, Screen Crush
This film feels like several different genres mashed together.
— Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky
Is it an important movie right now?
It’s a call for our times. Few films manage to mirror the pulse of the present moment while transcending it; this one does so with fearless grace.
— David Gonzalez, The Cinematic Reel
It’s an incredible work that will likely go down as one of the important pieces of art for our troubling times.
— Ross Bonaime, Collider
Given the current state of the world today, it may very well go down as the film of our time.
— Matt Neglia, Next Best Picture
One Battle After Another is the rare American film released in these benighted times of ours to be clear and insistent in the target of its anger, its despair, and its prescriptions for what might make things better.
— Richard Lawson, The Hollywood Reporter
There’s something relatively shocking about the way One Battle After Another comments on This Moment In Time; it almost seems like production on the movie wrapped yesterday, as opposed to mid-2024.
— Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence
The film never expands from its carnivalesque surface to truly delve into the tangled sociopolitical murk of our moment.
— Keith Uhlich, Slant Magazine
How is the script?
Anderson’s script is hilarious, terrifying, and timely in equal measure.
— Ross Bonaime, Collider
As with all Paul Thomas Anderson films, the brilliance of One Battle After Another lies in its script…his screenplay situates itself in the fractured fabric of contemporary America without resorting to preachiness.
— David Gonzalez, The Cinematic Reel
Creating characters who manage to pull through no matter their circumstances is one of Anderson’s many specialties, but here he seems to evolve that into something more personal.
— Sophie Ciminello, Awards Watch
The sketchiness of the story’s main players undercuts its of-the-moment critique, as well as stymies the type of engagement which might lend its concluding moments a truly nerve-wracking or moving power.
— Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
Will it satisfy fans of the book?
Book readers hoping for a direct page-to-screen translation here should adjust their expectations…Anderson expertly borrows certain elements and crafts them into something uniquely his own.
— Patrick Cremora, Radio Times
Perhaps the most delightful surprise of his new work, One Battle After Another, is that in spirit, it is a perfect adaptation of the novel.
— David Jenkins, Little White Lies
Anderson has crafted an ambitious film that retains all the weird, quirky characteristics of Thomas Pynchon’s work, yet is still incredibly accessible to the masses as a straightforward dramedy-thriller.
— Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction
Anderson crafts a postmodern masterpiece that’s completely his own, synthesizing the ethos of our contemporary era with the timelessness of Pynchon’s words.
— Sophie Ciminello, Awards Watch
One Battle feels more along the lines of how There Will Be Blood is an adaptation of Oil! by Upton Sinclair (even while being a looser adaptation than that work was).
— Michael Calabro, IGN Movies
Is it funny?
The movie is often quite funny in a sidelong way, but it’s not some in-your-face didactic absurdist thing.
— Owen Gleiberman, Variety
It’s got some huge laughs, a lot of them at DiCaprio’s expense as he fumbles his way through a series of crises of his own making.
— Matt Singer, Screen Crush
There is a lot of comedy mileage to be had in the deadbeat dad archetype, and DiCaprio gets his tank’s worth (there’s a definite nod to Jeff Bridges’s The Dude, too).
— Miranda Collinge, Esquire UK
Does it also have a lot of heart?
At its core, it’s most surprisingly a film about the love between a father and a daughter and the need to fight for a better future. I left with tears in my eyes.
— Esther Zuckerman, Bloomberg News
The father-daughter arc is genuinely moving.
— Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction
[Anderson] also wisely puts front and center a touching father/daughter relationship, giving his film an undeniable emotional heft.
— Patrick Cremora, Radio Times
Framing their relationship as both refuge and battlefield, Anderson creates a dynamic where resentment and love exist side by side, crafting one of the most affecting and memorable relationships in any of his films.
— David Gonzalez, The Cinematic Reel
Through Willa, it’s as though PTA is showcasing his own love for being a parent, stating that our generation might not get things right, but there is hope to be found in the next one.
— Ross Bonaime, Collider