Oscars season is about to turn every group chat into a courtroom again, and Paul Thomas Anderson's new one, 'One Battle After Another,' is already walking in like a frontrunner. It is not the only heat in the race, but it is the one a lot of people are quietly (and not-so-quietly) betting on across a bunch of categories.
Quick setup: what the movie actually is
Anderson directs Leonardo DiCaprio as Bob, a former revolutionary trying to rescue his daughter while outrunning the militant group on his trail. It is an action thriller with PTA fingerprints all over it: character-first but pulsing with momentum, political without turning into a lecture, and weirdly funny in spots. The cast around DiCaprio includes Sean Penn, Regina Hall, and Chase Infiniti. Jonny Greenwood does the score. Michael Bauman shoots it. Steven A. Morrow and Peter Grace are on the sound team. It is a big swing of a studio movie (Ghoulardi Film Company/Warner Bros. Pictures) with a reported $130 million budget via Variety, and even with some box office bumps, the reception has been excellent.
The temperature check
The film is sitting at 8.4/10 on IMDb and a 96% critics / 85% audience split on Rotten Tomatoes. It is long, but it moves, and it toggles between personal legacy stuff and present-day social friction without feeling like homework. That combo tends to play well with voters, even if the politics lean American in ways some rivals do not.
Where it could win: the categories (and who is in the way)
- Best Picture — Despite box office hiccups, the acclaim is loud. The movie threads timely themes with some genuinely funny, startling, and beautiful moments. The potential spoiler here is 'Hamnet,' which has already picked up a stack of notable awards and hits a universally resonant grief-and-loss nerve, versus Anderson's more U.S.-centric political terrain.
- Best Director — Paul Thomas Anderson has shaped modern cinema and somehow still does not have a win. This feels like the everything-clicks entry in his filmography: big canvas, multilayered storytelling, all under tight control. If voters go another way, keep an eye on Kathryn Bigelow for 'A House of Dynamite.'
- Best Music — Jonny Greenwood's score is all coiled tension and elegant restraint. Even the trailer tips the approach: a simple piano idea that builds like a metronome, turning into a character of its own. The hurdle: 'Arco' (yes, the animated film), which already nabbed a major Cannes award for its score and could charm this branch.
- Best Sound — This category wraps editing, mixing, and design into one trophy now, and the movie's sonic chaos is a feature, not a bug. Steven A. Morrow and Peter Grace (credits include 'La La Land' and 'Hacksaw Ridge') make the action sequences feel bodily. The competition: 'A House of Dynamite,' with Paul N.J. Ottoson, a name voters have rewarded before.
- Best Cinematography — Michael Bauman goes bold: blown-out daylight, handheld jitters, and a late-film car chase across arid terrain that drops you in the vehicle with the characters. That set piece alone will have craft voters talking. The visual spoiler is 'Sinners,' which is, by all accounts, a pure looker.
- Best Adapted Screenplay — Loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon's 'Vineland,' this is very PTA: honor the themes, remix the form. He has done it before with 'Inherent Vice' and 'There Will Be Blood,' and he has been nominated in this lane already. The headwind is 'Hamnet,' adapted by Maggie O'Farrell and Chloe Zhao, which could be the more traditional heart-tug.
- Best Actor — DiCaprio shed the 'overdue' narrative with 'The Revenant,' and he has been leaning into odder, more elastic roles ever since. He is sharp here: specific, eccentric, and un-needy in that way that often reads as confident to voters. Wagner Moura could complicate things for 'The Secret Agent,' where he plays Marcelo.
- Best Supporting Actor — Sean Penn plays the militant leader hunting Bob, a white supremacist who is somehow both chilling and darkly funny. It is his best work in years and feels like the kind of big, dangerous supporting turn that wins. Stellan Skarsgard ('Sentimental Value') is the heavy competition.
- Best Supporting Actress — Regina Hall is the film's ballast, stepping in to help the characters played by DiCaprio and Chase Infiniti, and giving you the steel and the soft spot without telegraphing either. Known mostly for comedy, she slides right into the drama without a hitch. Kate Hudson ('Song Sung Blue') is the main threat here.
The inside-baseball bit
Anderson drawing from Pynchon again is very him, and the movie's restless sound-and-image design is going to play well with the craft branches. Also worth flagging: PTA has never won Best Director. That narrative tends to get louder as voting approaches.
Final word
Oscars are chaos by design, but 'One Battle After Another' is not just another PTA entry — it is a big, collaborative flex that is going to stick with people. It is in U.S. theaters now. If you are handicapping the race, circle Picture, Director, Sound, and one acting win as realistic lanes, with Adapted Screenplay and Score right behind.
What category are you planting your flag on?