One Battle After Another

Leonardo DiCaprio plays an ex-revolutionary who just wants to raise the daughter he had with a fellow left-wing revolutionary sixteen years ago. But members of their former direct action group are being swept up by a corrupt and racist immigration officer and executed, and the father and daughter are next on the list. She is captured, and he has to dive headlong back into the life he left behind in order to rescue her. It’s intense, shockingly funny, and being absolutely raved about by critics. Alongside Leo are Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, and Teyana Taylor, and visionary director Paul Thomas Anderson leads the way. It currently has a 95% Tomatometer and an 85% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes.

“It’s impossible to overstate how much fun this thing is, with twists and welcome detours along the way.” -Max Weiss, Baltimore Magazine
“This is a difficult film to describe or synopsize. It’s easy to recommend, however, so long as you know you’re about to watch an appropriately R-rated movie where nothing is sacred. Kudos to Paul Thomas Anderson for crafting a truly great movie.” -Leonard Maltin, leonardmaltin.com
“A beautifully choreographed fever dream of resistance and reckoning, blending absurdist satire with a poignant meditation on parental legacy.” -Adam Kempenaar, Filmspotting
“The film never flags, bounding from moments of high tension to ones that are sublime. The comedy, meanwhile, always feels integral.” -Deborah Ross, The Spectator
“The whole movie is amazing.” -Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic
“One Battle After Another, as great an American movie as I’ve seen this year, doesn’t simply meet the moment; with extraordinary tenderness, fury, and imagination, it forges a moment all its own, and insists that better ones could still lie ahead.” -Justin Chang, The New Yorker
“It won’t be an escape from the awful, absurdist realities we’re living with now, but will serve as a reminder that Anderson knows how to make a damn good movie.” -Aisha Harris, NPR
“Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another — the most entertaining, exhilarating movie you’ll see all year — is an incision into a raw nerve. A thrilling, tense portrait of modern life, it’s Anderson’s most urgently relevant work yet.” -Chase Hutchinson, Seattle Times
“Anderson has made the film of the year with the incendiary, incisive and frequently quite funny One Battle After Another, which just happens to be a searing indictment of this particular moment in American history.” -Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
“Paul Thomas Anderson’s fun and fizzy adaptation views its Molotov cocktail as half-full. Yes, it says, the struggle for liberation continues. But isn’t it inspiring that there are still people willing to fight?” -Amy Nicholson, Los Angeles Times
“A character study full of action, comedy, familial strife, and social and political commentary, the film is a magical tapestry of an America stalled at the center of a perilous crossroads.” -Sara Michelle Fetters, MovieFreak.com
“There are sequences here so fluid and lucid that remaining skeptics may feel obliged to bend the knee. The messaging is basically: Start polishing that overdue Best Director Oscar now or don’t give it out at all.” -Adam Nayman, The Ringer

One Battle After Another will open at The Clyde on Friday, October 24, and play Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday at 7:30.