I went into One Battle After Another with high expectations. It’s hard not to: The new feature is by Paul Thomas Anderson, maybe the only filmmaker working today whose material is of such a consistently high quality that even his lesser movies would be anyone else’s best.
What I didn’t expect was to be so thoroughly moved by Anderson’s saga of American activists. Yes, it’s heart-poundingly thrilling and includes one of the greatest car chases I’ve ever seen on screen. It’s also a whip-smart satire with Leonardo DiCaprio running around in a bathrobe, stoned out of his mind. And at its core, it’s most surprisingly a film about the love between a father and a daughter and the need to fight for a better future. I left with tears in my eyes.