As the excitement builds for the upcoming Oscars, the buzz surrounding ‘One Battle After Another’ is palpable. With a stellar cast and a renowned director, this film is already making waves in the awards circuit.
‘One Battle After Another’ Instant Oscar Odds
As Leonardo DiCaprio‘s rebel-with-a-cause shouts in the trailer: “Viva la revolución!”
Paul Thomas Anderson‘s much-anticipated One Battle After Another premiered Monday in Hollywood, and while critics have yet to officially weigh in, first reactions point to another heavyweight Oscar contender — with none other than Steven Spielberg leading the charge.
“It is really incredible,” said the Oscar-winning director, who moderated a Q&A with Anderson ahead of the film’s Los Angeles premiere, as reported by The Film Stage. “What an insane movie, oh my God. There is more action in the first hour of this than every other film you’ve ever directed put together.”
And the action doesn’t stop over the course of the film’s nearly three-hour runtime. One Battle, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Bob Ferguson, a counterculture radical-turned-pot-addicted recluse living under an alias, whose life is upended when his daughter, Willa (Presumed Innocent‘s Chase Infiniti), gets abducted by a revenge-bent, ultra-conservative Army colonel (Sean Penn). The cast also includes Benicio del Toro, Teyana Taylor, Alana Haim, and Wood Harris.
One Battle After Another skipped the fall festivals in favor of an L.A. premiere, ahead of its Sept. 26 release in theaters. But the film — and its cast and crew — still very much have a path to Oscars. When PTA makes a movie, the trifecta — Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay — usually follow. With 11 nominations to his credit, will his 10th film be the one that finally brings him a trophy? Read on for our instant Oscar predictions.
Best Picture
Three of Anderson’s last five films — There Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread, and Licorice Pizza — have earned a spot in the coveted top 10 Best Picture field. That’s enough to give One Battle seventh place sight unseen in our charts. There’s plenty for Academy voters to love here, with a heady mix of propulsive action, razor-sharp satire, stand-out performances — and a timely, pointed political point of view.
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Best Director
With three Best Director nominations to his credit, Anderson has to be considered a frontrunner for any directing race from the moment he announces a film. This year’s Oscar race includes powerhouses in the field — including Ryan Coogler, Kathryn Bigelow, Chloé Zhao, and Yorgos Lanthimos, whose well-reviewed films have them in solid footing — but for now, he’s holding steady in fifth place. Not to mention the film was shot on 35mm film using VistaVision — and we know how that worked out for The Brutalist director Brady Corbet last year.
Best Actor
DiCaprio usually has a reliable track record with Oscar nominations — he has been nominated seven times, and won for 2016’s The Revenant. But he was last nominated for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in 2020 — and he was notably snubbed for Killers of the Flower Moon. And as of now, he’s got an uphill battle even to get a nomination in the highly competitive race for Best Actor. He’s in 12th place in Gold Derby’s predictions, though he will undoubtedly move up as the film gets more widely seen. Worth noting, too: Daniel Day-Lewis is the only actor to win an Academy Award for a performance in one of Anderson’s films for There Will Be Blood.
Best Supporting Actor
Penn has two wins and five nominations overall — but the last time he was recognized was for 2009’s Milk. Will this be the performance that gets him back in the good graces of the actors branch? At No. 7 currently, he’s just outside of the top contenders. His entrance is a (ahem) memorable one — and his send-up of a right-wing Army man is a scene-stealer. “This is my favorite performance of his career,” said Spielberg in the Q&A.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Of Anderson’s 11 nominations, five alone are for best screenplay: 1997’s Boogie Nights (original), 1999’s Magnolia (original), 2007’s There Will Be Blood (adapted), 2014’s Inherent Vice (adapted), and 2021’s Licorice Pizza (original). So it stands to reason that his latest will also deliver a writing nomination for this adaptation. Indeed, our odds currently have One Battle After Another in a solid third place, just behind Hamnet and Bugonia.
