Interview

Production Designer

“One Battle After Another” Production Designer Florencia Martin on Building PTA’s Three-Hour Action Thriller from the Ground Up

Paul Thomas Anderson’s action thriller One Battle After Another is loosely inspired by a section of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland,” but this three-hour epic is rooted in the present, a contemporary vision of a heightened clash between far-left and far-right, and, more intimately, a story about vengeance, desire, and family.

Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) are partners and active members of a far-left militant group,

By Susannah Edelbaum  |  October 20, 2025

Interview

Hair/Makeup

“One Battle After Another”: The Makeup Magic Behind Sean Penn’s Gasp-Inducing Third-Act Reveal

Spoilers below.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson wants audiences to see One Battle After Another‘s stellar ensemble cast, warts and all. As a result, makeup department head Heba Thorisdottir and special effects makeup artist and prosthetics designer Arjen Tuiten knew that less would be more, with the only exception being Sean Penn’s Col. Stephen Lockjaw, whose shocking third-act disfigurement is the result of a masterclass of makeup and prosthetics design from Thorisdottir and Tuiten. 

By Simon Thompson  |  October 8, 2025

Interview

Cinematographer

“One Battle After Another” Cinematographer Michael Bauman Breaks Down Filming the Chaos in El Paso

Spoilers below.

About an hour into Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson, a washed-up revolutionary living off the grid in Northern California, sends his teenage daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) to her first high school dance, lights a joint, and queues up The Battle of Algiers when the phone rings. “Bob, we have trouble ahead and the road isn’t clear…”

He might be a burnout perpetually be-robed in tattered leisure wear that would make Big Lewboski proud,

By Daron James  |  October 7, 2025

Interview

Cinematographer

Happy Accidents, Revolutionary Moments, & Killer Improv: Inside “One Battle After Another” With DP Michael Bauman

Spoilers below.

“That dude is unbelievable,” admits One Battle After Another cinematographer Michael Bauman to The Credits about Leonardo DiCaprio. “I mean, he’s a star and he brings people in [theaters] but his ability to expand the character is unreal.” Bauman has worked with Paul Thomas Anderson on five different features in one capacity or another, but it was the first time on set with DiCaprio on the acclaimed film,

By Daron James  |  October 6, 2025

Interview

Editor

Inside the Breakneck Cut of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” With Editor Andy Jurgensen

The best-reviewed movie of the season is also the most relentless. Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Oscar front-runner One Battle After Another races through its two-hour fifty-minute run time propelled by adrenalized performances from Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti, Teyana Taylor, Benicio Del Toro, and Regina Hall as revolutionaries in the French 75 (in the case of DiCaprio’s Bob, Teyanna Taylor’s Perfidia Beverly Hills, and Hall’s Deandra),

By Hugh Hart  |  October 1, 2025
“One Battle After Another”: How a Single California Road Became The Year’s Most Hallucinatory Effect

Spoilers below.

Let’s try to ditch hyperbole for a second and get to the heart of the matter, to something we might even call objective: Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is a movie that meets its moment head-on. The visionary writer/director doesn’t make uninteresting movies—this, too, feels like an objective statement—yet he has rarely worked in the present day. For a 19-year period, between 2002 and 2021,

By Bryan Abrams  |  September 30, 2025
Stripped Bare: A Few of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Most Devastating Portraits of Human Nature

Warning: This article contains spoilers

From the furious ambition of oil magnates to the quiet desperation of lonely souls, Paul Thomas Anderson’s films plunge into the dissonant symphony of the human experience with unflinching intensity. Across his eclectic filmography, Anderson crafts narratives that orbit around deep emotional truths, both exhilarating and unsettling. The hunger for connection, the burden of legacy, and the corrosive pull of obsession — whether in the drug-fueled haze of Boogie Nights,

By Evelyn Lott  |  September 26, 2025
“One Battle After Another” Review Round Up: Paul Thomas Anderson Delivers a Stone-Cold Masterpiece

A recent re-watch of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood reminded me—reconfirmed, really—that my experience in the theater watching his masterpiece, with an absolutely mesmerizing performance from Daniel Day-Lewis as the soused, ruthless oilman Daniel Plainview, had been exactly as transforming as I’d always remembered. It was and remains my favorite cinematic experience, and I’d waited years (decades, actually) to rewatch it. While finally sitting down and absorbing Anderson’s tale of carnivorous greed in America of the late 19th and early 20th Century on my couch wasn’t quite as transporting as being plastered to my seat in a New York City theater,

By The Credits  |  September 19, 2025
Leonardo DiCaprio’s Revolution has Begun in “One Battle After Another” Trailer

A week after Warner Bros. released the first teaser for Paul Thomas Anderson’s mysterious new movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another, we now have the full and fully unhinged trailer. Leave it to Anderson to follow Licorice Pizza, his lovely look back at the San Fernando Valley of the 1970s, where he grew up, with a tonal and subject curveball like this one.

By The Credits  |  March 27, 2025
Battle Tested: Leonardo DiCaprio Fronts First Look at Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another”

One day after Warner Bros. announced the official title for Paul Thomas Anderson’s mysterious new movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another, the studio dropped the first teaser.

While you won’t glean much from this brief 21-second blast, you will at least get a sense of the mood of Anderson’s latest. It couldn’t be further from his last film, Licorice Pizza, his dreamy look back at the San Fernando Valley of the 1970s (where and when Anderson grew up),

By The Credits  |  March 20, 2025
Unveiled: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Enigmatic Leonardo DiCaprio Film Lands Official Title & Date

We finally have some clarity—a keyhole’s worth—about Paul Thomas Anderson’s mysterious new film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Warner Bros. announced on Wednesday that Anderson’s film has gotten a slight bump in its release schedule from August 8 to September 26. This moves the film from the summer blockbuster season into the typical awards contender release window. This would make sense for an Anderson film, given how singular and lauded the auteur’s work is, from his most recent release,

By The Credits  |  March 20, 2025