One Battle After Another (2025)

No fear. Just like Tom Cruise. This week we're going all in on One Battle After Another (2025) — Paul Thomas Anderson's thundering, dizzying, deeply American epic that has critics calling it his masterpiece, awards voters showering it with nominations, and audiences either completely electrified or walking out in the first five minutes. This is the most talked-about film of the year, and we have a lot to say about it.Written, directed, and produced by Paul Thomas Anderson and loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland, the film follows washed-up ex-revolutionary Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) — a stoned, paranoid recluse living off-grid with his fierce, self-reliant teenage daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) — whose carefully hidden world explodes when his evil nemesis, the unhinged ultra-conservative Army Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn), resurfaces after sixteen years to hunt them down. Teyana Taylor plays Perfidia Beverly Hills — Bob's revolutionary former partner and Willa's mother — in a performance that has generated more awards buzz than almost anyone else in the film. Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Alana Haim, and Wood Harris round out an extraordinary cast.We're going deep on everything: Anderson shot the film in VistaVision — the large-format 1950s filmmaking technology that had barely been used since the 1960s — giving it a raw, painterly, almost overwhelming visual richness, Jonny Greenwood's propulsive and eclectic score featuring xylophones, marimbas, and what critics described as controlled chaos, Sean Penn's villain performance as Lockjaw which has been called one of the great movie villain turns of recent years, and why this film — two decades in the making — might be the most politically urgent American movie in a generation. It was nominated for 13 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for DiCaprio, and two separate Best Supporting Actor nominations for Penn and Del Toro — and it won Best Supporting Actress for Teyana Taylor.We're also asking the big questions: is One Battle After Another PTA's greatest film — better than There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights, and The Master? Is this the film America needed right now? And where does Teyana Taylor's Perfidia rank among the great supporting performances of this decade?Whether you're a Paul Thomas Anderson devotee, a Leonardo DiCaprio completist, a Sean Penn fan, a Teyana Taylor enthusiast, a Thomas Pynchon reader, a film awards obsessive, a lover of ambitious American cinema, or just someone who wants to understand why everyone is arguing about this movie — this episode is essential.Topics covered: One Battle After Another 2025 | Paul Thomas Anderson | Leonardo DiCaprio | Sean Penn | Teyana Taylor | Benicio del Toro | Chase Infiniti | Regina Hall | Alana Haim | Jonny Greenwood score | VistaVision filmmaking | Thomas Pynchon Vineland adaptation | best films of 2025 | 2025 Oscar nominations | Best Picture 2025 | PTA filmography ranked | best American films | revolutionary cinema | political films | best villain performances 2025 | Sean Penn villain | Teyana Taylor Oscar | best film scores 2025 | movie review podcast | film analysis | epic films | best director 2025 | There Will Be Blood vs One Battle After Another | Warner Bros 2025 | most controversial films 2025 | American political cinemaSubscribe, rate, and leave us a review — and tell us: where does One Battle After Another sit in Paul Thomas Anderson's filmography? And was Teyana Taylor robbed of a bigger moment at the Oscars?YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/@RegularorMentholContact us: [email protected]