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One Battle After Another
Jan. 2nd, 2026 10:41 pmMy first Fannish 50 post is about a film that I watched tonight, "One Battle After Another". It's written directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and inspired by the book "Vineland" by Thomas Pynchon. The film features wonderful performances by Leonardo DiCaprio, Benecio del Toro, Sean Penn, Regina Hall, and newcomer Chase Infiniti.
The book that the movie is sort of based on was written in 1990, but it felt eerily true to America in 2025. The fact that the film opens on an immigration detention center and that our protagonists are people actively working to help free the immigrants from the detention center and wage war for a number of social causes make them very easy to root for. Could they have chosen non-violence? Sure, but that might not have made for an interesting movie and as the catalyst character expresses, those other methods wouldn't have been as effective. There's also a shadow group of Christmas-themed (I don't know why) white supremacists that come in about a third of the way through the film and are mostly there to throw a wrench into things for the chief antagonist.
Like most of Anderson's films, the drama is balanced with a fair amount of comedy. DiCaprio's frustration when he's too high to remember all of the codespeak is a very funny moment. Benecio del Toro's character brings a lightness to the script in a buddy role. There are also absurd moments like the very visibly pregnant woman firing a machine gun and the whole "Hark the Herald Angels" song before a meeting with the white supremacists.
It's a fun movie, tense at points, but ends with what I think is a note of hopefulness for those of us in need of a little revolution.
The book that the movie is sort of based on was written in 1990, but it felt eerily true to America in 2025. The fact that the film opens on an immigration detention center and that our protagonists are people actively working to help free the immigrants from the detention center and wage war for a number of social causes make them very easy to root for. Could they have chosen non-violence? Sure, but that might not have made for an interesting movie and as the catalyst character expresses, those other methods wouldn't have been as effective. There's also a shadow group of Christmas-themed (I don't know why) white supremacists that come in about a third of the way through the film and are mostly there to throw a wrench into things for the chief antagonist.
Like most of Anderson's films, the drama is balanced with a fair amount of comedy. DiCaprio's frustration when he's too high to remember all of the codespeak is a very funny moment. Benecio del Toro's character brings a lightness to the script in a buddy role. There are also absurd moments like the very visibly pregnant woman firing a machine gun and the whole "Hark the Herald Angels" song before a meeting with the white supremacists.
It's a fun movie, tense at points, but ends with what I think is a note of hopefulness for those of us in need of a little revolution.
