Tag: Sean Penn

One Award After Another for Warner Bros. | 98th Oscars – Recap and Review

On Sunday night, Conan O’Brien hosted the 98th Academy Awards — Hollywood’s biggest night. It was time to celebrate the great movie year that 2025 had turned out to be, and, though there were many great, deserving films, much of the online discussion surrounding the event was about building it up as a battle between Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another. Fortunately, one film didn’t steamroll the other, as they together accounted for 10 wins of the night’s 24 categories, and both films picked up a handful of wins. It ended up as a celebration of Warner Bros.’ slate, as One Battle After Another, Sinners, and also Zach Cregger’s Weapons took home 11 awards, including in 7 of the 8 above-the-line categories. When the show came to a close, it was One Battle After Another that won Best Picture, but thankfully, both PTA and Coogler went home as winners.

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One Battle After Another (2025) | REVIEW

Leonardo DiCaprio trying to figure out a rendezvous location over a payphone call in ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER — PHOTO: Warner Bros. Pictures (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread) — Screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson.

One of the most anticipated major auteur works of 2025 has been released. Inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s postmodern 1990 novel Vineland, One Battle After Another marks the 10th narrative feature from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (often abbreviated as PTA) and the first team-up with the renowned and immensely popular thespian Leonardo DiCaprio. The film follows Bob Ferguson (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), a paranoid ex-revolutionary, who has gone into hiding from the government to protect his now-teenaged daughter, Willa (played by Chase Infiniti), who has yet to fully understand what he and her mother went through when they quarreled with the government during their time as prominent members of the far-left revolutionary group the French 75, who, among other things, broke out detained immigrants from militarized detention centers. However, on the day of a school dance, it becomes clear that the government — personified by Colonel Steven Lockjaw (played by Sean Penn), who has personal reasons for seeking out Bob and Willa — has finally found them. When Lockjaw and the military’s presence becomes known, Bob goes in pursuit of his daughter, with the hope of getting to her before Lockjaw can, but he needs the assistance of the cool-headed local community leader, Sergio St. Carlos (played by Benicio Del Toro), if he is to have any chance of navigating both the chaos around him and the paranoia inside of him, as well as getting to his daughter before it’s too late. 

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