Key Insights

• Martin Scorsese praises One Battle After Another as “a fascinating and extraordinarily made film.”
• Steven Spielberg highlights the film’s intense action, claiming it surpasses all of his previous works combined.
• Paul Schrader notes the high-quality filmmaking but struggles to empathize with the lead characters.
• Francis Ford Coppola expresses a desire for a second viewing to fully appreciate the film’s depth.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is garnering some of the best reviews of the decade – and we’re not just talking about our own. We mean the praise is coming from absolute legends of filmmaking. So let’s check out what some of the titans of the New Hollywood had to say about PTA’s latest…

Leading off the praise for One Battle After Another is Martin Scorsese, who, at a recent Q&A, said in a blurb-style review that it was “a fascinating and extraordinarily made film [with] extraordinary performances everywhere.” Tying into that, Steven Spielberg – who, along with Scorsese and PTA, began working on revitalizing Turner Classics Movies a couple years back – went completely gung-ho. “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. Everything, it is really incredible. This is such a concoction of things that are so bizarre and at the same time so relevant, that I think have become increasingly more relevant than perhaps even when you finished the screenplay and assembled your cast and crew and began production. What was it about the Thomas Pynchon book that first sort of set you off?”

Paul Schrader took to Facebook to give his own review of One Battle After Another, singling out Sean Penn’s turn as Colonel Lockjaw. “ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER. FB friends have asked my opinion. Filmmaking at level A+, but try as a might I couldn’t muster up an ounce of empathy for Leo D’Caprio or Sean Penn. I kept waiting for them to die. (Penn’s performance, however, is a masterclass in peacock acting.) What held me in my seat for the better part of two hours was PT Anderson’s Joy of Filmmaking.”

But it wasn’t entirely praise from the New Hollywood giants when it came to One Battle After Another, with Francis Ford Coppola on the more conflicted side when it came to his review. In a lengthy post on Instagram, Coppola wrote that he loves the films of PTA but feels like this one requires a second viewing. “For me, after one audience viewing, I felt that just as things were getting going, there came a 16-year pause. Although now that I know that, for subsequent viewings, I will be able to enjoy focusing on the characters and all the memorable performances of Leo, Sean, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Tony Goldwyn and Chase Infiniti. It’s a film I want to see a second time: the problem with my hearing no doubt played a part in my confusion on certain things, but then the film emerged into the love story that it is; father and his one daughter, and as you can imagine, very moving to me.”

Which mini review of One Battle After Another from some New Hollywood directors do you most agree with?