From 'Hard Eight' to 'Punch Drunk Love,' 'There Will Be Blood' to 'Licorice Pizza,' Paul Thomas Anderson has built one of the most impressive CVs in American cinema over the last 29 years.
Anderson's movies are so distinctive in style and so rich psychologically, you can see why actors from Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Julianne Moore to Daniel Day Lewis, Emily Watson and Joaquin Phoenix have all been drawn to him.
His latest movie 'One Battle After Another' sees him finally collaborate with Leonardo DiCaprio.
But it also reunites him with Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro.
'One Battle After Another' is a refreshingly original tale of Californian left wing rebels battling right wing extremists in the US establishment.
Inevitably, given the extreme polarisation of contemporary US politics, it's a movie that will very much be interpreted as a film of its time.
But it is also a bravura demonstration of Anderson's skills as an innovative filmmaker.
Loosely based on Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel 'Vineland,' DiCaprio plays 'Ghetto' Pat Calhoun, otherwise known as "Rocketman", a bomb maker in a leftist group known as French 75.
At the start of the film, the group liberates undocumented immigrants detained in a camp beside a flyover in Ota Mesa near San Diego.
French 75 is led by Pat's girlfriend, Teyana Taylor's charismatic but reckless Perfidia Beverly Hills who sexually humiliates Sean Penn's commanding officer in the detention camp, Steven J Lockjaw while her comrades take control of the centre.
The group subsequently has a number of other successful operations, detonating devices in banks, politicians,' offices and knocking out the power grid by blowing up electricity pylons.
However Lockjaw, who is perversely smitten with Perfidia, is on their tail - monitoring their activities.
Eventually he catches Perfidia in the act of planting a device.
With Lockjaw agreeing to let her go in return for kinky sex in a motel, she is allowed to go about her business after delivering her end of the bargain.
However when Perfida later gives birth to a daughter, Lockjaw becomes obsessed that the child Pat believes is his might actually be his.
With Perfidia seemingly uninterested in being a mum, Pat is left to raise the infant while she continues to carry out paramilitary activities.
This is all fine and dandy until a bank robbery goes spectacularly wrong and Perfidia is captured.
Lockjaw however, arranges for her to go into witness protection in exchange for information about the whereabouts of her French 75 comrades.
As he guns her comrades down one by one in a series of raids, Lockjaw's reputation grows in the Army as a fearless hunter of left wing extremists and he rises up the ranks to Colonel.
Before Lockjaw can get to him, Pat decides to flee with his infant daughter under new identities - Bob and Willa Ferguson - given to them by French 75.
Pat/Bob is also given a set of unique digital chimes that only trusted members of the group carry.
Willa and Pat/Bob live off the radar in a Californian sanctuary city, Baktan Cross for the next 16 years, while Perfidia escapes witness protection and assumes a new life in Mexico.
Over the years, Lockjaw's reputation as an anti-immigration crusader brings him to the attention of the Christmas Adventurers, a secret society of wealthy white supremacists who get John Hoogenakker's Tim Smith and Tony Goldwyn's Virgil Throckmorton to sound him out about joining.
However in order to become a member, he must undergo stringent vetting to ensure he has pursued an ideologically pure life.
That includes ensuring he has never been involved in an inter-racial sexual relationship.
Desperate to join, Lockjaw redoubles his efforts to track down Perfidia's mixed race daughter in a bid to suppress evidence of their sexual relationship.
He captures Pat/Bob's old comrade Paul Grimstad's Howard Somerville and this leads him to Baktan Cross where he organises anti-immigrant raids by his ICE style troops as a cover for his efforts to track down Willa.
While Chase Infiniti's Willa thrives in high school, Pat/Bob has become a stoner.
As a result, when he receives sudden warning that Lockjaw's troops are about to raid his home, Pat/Bob fumbles around their home in a panic but still manages to escape through a homemade tunnel and go on the run.
In the intervening years, though, Pat/Bob has forgotten some of the passwords that will enable his former comrades to identify him and help him evade capture.
Instead he turns to Willa's karate teacher and the leader of Baktan Cross's undocumented immigrants, Benicio del Toro's Sergio St Carlos for help.
Meanwhile Willa is tracked down at a high school disco by Regina Hall's French 75 member Deandra who helps her flee.
Will Lockjaw nevertheless manage to track down Willa?
And what will he do if he captures her?
'One Battle After Another' is an occasionally ribald, often trippy, violent, satirical romp.
It's an inventive fusion of revolutionary acts of derring do, stoner humour and black comedy.
Over the course of the film there are nods to 'The Battle of Algiers,' 'Raising Arizona,' 'Bullitt,' 'Star Wars,' 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day' and 'Dog Day Afternoon' and it's all tremendous fun.
The film is also so loose and over the top, it shouldn't work.
Yet somehow it does, thanks to Anderson's tongue in cheek screenplay, Michael Bauman's superb use of 35mm VistaVision cameras and Radiohead member Jonny Greenwood's quirky score.
The cast have a blast, with DiCaprio, Penn, Del Toro, Infiniti, Taylor and Hall on top form.
But so are Hoogenakker, Goldwyn, Grimstad, Wood Harris as a French 75 member Laredo, Shayna McHayle as another revolutionary called Junglepussy, Eric Schweig as a bounty hunter called Avanti and DW Moffett as a Christmas Adventures veteran.
DiCaprio's performance is full of mischief and reminiscent of Jack Nicholson's collection of shambolic, counterculture drifters from the 1970s.
Del Toro has the same vibe, while Penn delivers his best performance in years as a pumped up, unhinged, seedy fascist.
In terms of tone, 'One Battle After Another' constantly confounds audience expectations.
While it definitely feels light hearted and free forming, that masks themes that are much more weighty than they initially seem.
After the laughter subsides, viewers are struck by how much the US has been weakened by decades of indulging extreme political beliefs and crackpot conspiracy theories.
Anderson also makes one hell of a point about the selective rewriting of US history.
In terms of narrative style, the film also feels like a revolutionary act itself - thumbing its nose at conventional Hollywood storytelling and breaking many rules.
A dizzying desert car chase redefines what movie car chases should look like.
The film's pace is frenetic and tone is unsettling from the off and it remains relentlessly so to the extent that even in its quietest moments you feel on the edge.
If anything, 'One Battle After Another' feels like the film Anderson was aiming for with his quirky, interesting but flawed 2014 adaptation of Pynchon's novel 'Inherent Vice'.
Some viewers may recoil from its violence and bawdiness and it will definitely not be their cup of tea.
But in our view, it is one of the most accomplished movies of 2025 and it reaffirms Anderson as the most exciting and innovative American filmmakers of his generation.
Like it or lump it, it will have you muling over it for weeks.
('One Battle After Another' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on September 26, 2025)
In the past we've reflected on this blog on great movies about journalism.
And if you're compiling a list of the best movies about the profession, there's no doubt that Billy Wilder's 'Ace In The Hole,' Alan J Pakula's 'All the President's Men,' David Drury's 'Defence of the Realm,' Oliver Stone's 'Salvador,' Tom McCarthy's 'Spotlight,' Steven Spielberg's 'The Post' and Maria Schrader's 'She Said' would all be in the top ten.
Now we can add another movie to the list.
Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum's 'September 5' is a taut 94 minute examination of how a sports crew working for the American ABC network at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games found themselves covering one of the biggest news stories to unfold on live TV.
Working in a studio located near the Olympic village, the team are stunned to hear gunshots ring out during the night.
These turn out to have been fired by the Palestinian Black September group during the storming of apartments occupied by Israeli athletes.
Realising they are witnessing a major news story and are actually ahead of their competitors in the scramble for information, ABC's news and sports crew smuggle Benjamin Walker's reporter Peter Jennings and a cameraman into the village to witness the hostage siege at close hand and relay events back to the studio and via satellite back to the United States.
Written by Fehlbaum, German screenwriter Moritz Binder and Alex David, 'September 5' is a superb ensemble piece that celebrates the determination of reporters to do everything they can to get to the heart of the story.
But it is also a tremendously honest depiction of the confusion, doubt, giddiness and tension that can erupt in a newsroom when a story is breaking as stressed out journalists try to decipher facts that are not always clear.
John Magaro and Ben Chaplin are superb as Geoffrey Mason, the producer in the ABC control room and Marvin Bader, the head of operations at ABC Sports who both wrestle with the enormity of the events unfolding near them, the fear of inaccurate reporting and the morality of relaying a story back to the US where one of the Israeli hostages' families are watching.
Peter Sarsgaard is also terrific as Roone Arledge, the ABC Sports president who senses the importance of the story and leads a determined effort by his team to get the best footage and be the first to report unfolding events.
The three principals are fantastically supported by Walker as Jennings, Zinedine Soualem as a French Algerian member of the ABC crew, Corey Johnson as another member of the production team tasked with infiltrating the Olympic village to bring back footage and Leonie Benesch as a translator who finds herself transcribing the words of German police to the makeshift news team and who then literally follows the story as the hostages are transferred to an air base.
Fehlbaum's cinematographer Markus Foderer creates a claustrophobic environment, using handheld cameras to follow the cast, zooming in on them and giving his images a grainy 16mm film quality.
A 10 person sound team, including sound designer Frank Kruse, do a wonderful job recreating the crackle of gunfire and the tinny quality of Jennings relaying events in the Olympic village back to a live TV audience over a phone.
Film editor Hansjorg WeiBbrich intelligently blends Foderer's images with archive footage of the real ABC broadcast fronted by the sports anchor Jim McKay.
Some may quibble that the film doesn't interrogate deeply enough the roots of the Palestinian Israeli conflict but that feels like an unfair critique.
Like Paul Greengrass 'Bloody Sunday,' this is a cinema verite recreation of how horrific events unfolded.
The film understands the profound impact those events had on TV reporting of live news stories and also on the West's perception of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
But it cannot take time to examine the roots of the conflict because it simply isn't that kind of movie.
To do so would be to disturb its pacing and it would take the film out of its keen focus on recreating events.
'September 5' is a tragic tale that is superbly told.
Unfortunately it's another example of how awards season gets its celebration of great movies wrong.
Fehlbaum's movie didn't get the adulation it deserved, whilst less substantial fare was trumpeted.
But in the long run it will be remembered for its searing depiction of broadcast journalists operating under the most extreme pressure and rightly so.
('September 5' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on February 6, 2025 and was made available for streaming on April 14, 2025)
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