Just so we’re clear, if the Oscars were to happen right at this very moment, it would be shocking if Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” did not win Best Picture. I believe its closest competitor, “Sinners,” simply doesn’t have the juice to compete at this point. Things could change between now and March, but for the moment, things are looking very good for PTA’s film.
It’s not just critics who are praising the film. Over the last few months, we’ve heard from the likes of Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, James Gunn, Jennifer Lawrence, and Kate Winslet, all praising the film.
And now, with what is quite possibly the glowiest rave yet, comes Zach Cregger, filmmaker of “Weapons,” who can’t seem to contain himself in expressing how much he loved “One Battle After Another” (via The Kevin McCarthy podcast).
Wow, what an amazing thing that movie is. Oh my God. Oh my God […] This guy has no business making a genre movie this good. I can’t stand how f*cking talented he is. Everything about that movie works top-tier. It’s wild, man. Leo is undeniably at his very best. It’s like ‘Wolf of Wall Street’-level shit for him. I just cannot believe that Paul Thomas Anderson can make something so hilarious as ‘Boogie Nights,’ so nuanced as ‘Phantom Thread,’ and then make an action movie that is like the greatest thing ever. What can this guy not do? Can he just make a straight-up pure horror movie so I can just see what the best horror movie would be? I mean, my God. If he just decided to commit and make a horror movie it would probably be like ‘The Shining,’ you know, it would be at that level.
When was the last time the industry collectively lost its mind over a film like this?
To put things into perspective, “One Battle After Another” is one of only four films in history to win the prestigious NYFCC, LAFCA, NBR, and NSFC awards. The other three films are “Schindler’s List,” “L.A. Confidential,” and “The Social Network.”
Of course, there’s the odd holdout here and there, a person who believes that the film is being severely overhyped, and will not stand the test of time. This type of pushback will inevitably happen as we inch closer to Oscar night, and I fully expect right wing outlets to start covering the film more substantially as well.
More recently, “American Psycho” author Bret Easton Ellis argued that the film had been inflated to near-mythical status in Hollywood—a sentiment he disagrees with, not out of contrarianism, but because of what he sees as a cultural moment that conflates art with ideology. Ellis says “One Battle After Another” has become a litmus test, illustrating how media can warp discourse around art. When a film becomes emblematic of a political or social worldview, criticism is judged less on aesthetic merit than perceived allegiance, and Ellis sees the film as a casualty of this system.
Ellis makes good points, and I’m not one to call the film a “masterpiece,” although it did end up on my 2025 list; the film is too commercial, at times too obvious, to compete with PTA’s greatest works, which range from austere (“There Will Be Blood”) to nuanced (“Phantom Thread”) to alienating (“The Master”). The main reason I ultimately like “One Battle After Another” is that, putting expectations aside, PTA remains an immensely talented filmmaker, and there are brilliant moments scattered throughout the film where his vision shones through.