PTA just released his tenth action-thriller, *One Battle After Another* (2025). The near-universal PDA (public display of affection) for it suggests that this might be his most loved film yet. But is it?

Firstly, for a writer-director, there are actually multiple PTAs. I mean this purely in terms of expanding his cleverly original writing and filmmaking, with a wider world-view and higher artistic ambitions. *Inglourious Basterds* (2009) was that pivot for Tarantino. Similarly, *There Will Be Blood* (2007) was that turning point for PTA — filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson.

I remember walking across Berlin in 2007, surrounded on every billboard by *There Will Be Blood*, wondering if that was the only film premiering at the Berlinale (film festival) that year! What explained this blitzkrieg? Sure, it was PTA’s first film in five years (since *Punch-Drunk Love*), but more so, it starred Daniel Day-Lewis — an actor famously frugal with his filmic output.

Auteurs achieve scale, or go mainstream, once best-known actors invest in them. Box office be damned. Studios naturally follow. And there are no greater fans of great directors and storytellers than fine actors. Their role is the annual bonus. How else to explain Bradley Cooper’s simply masculine monologue in PTA’s *Licorice Pizza* (2021)? Or where Joaquin Phoenix’s maddest performance in *Joker* (2019) emanated from, if not from PTA’s *The Master* (2012) first?

The same thought applies to Indian mainstream cinema. However, we’ve progressively consumed every ounce of collective acclaim—press, awards, plaudits, reviews—everything turning movies into sports, measured by numbers alone. Also, there is a perceivable bias towards films from the non-Western world that get accepted at top film festivals, making Indian mainstream actors wary of “closing their eyes and betting” on the same global stage, if at all. This will hopefully change eventually, just not yet.

What did a low-key surreal romcom like *Punch-Drunk Love* (2002), about a loser salesman with seven sisters, do for its lead, Adam Sandler? It showcased his staggering emotional range beyond his adorable clown persona. Daniel Day-Lewis could see that.

Where did PTA go with *There Will Be Blood*? He narrated the history of capitalism, religion, America, and oil through three to four main characters, all in under three hours! It sucks the blood out of your brain enough that you won’t rot it over Insta Reels for a while. Great cinema is our only protective antidote to senseless scrolling. The screen’s not going anywhere, anyway!

Did *There Will Be Blood* fit seamlessly into the director’s recurring, personal themes of greed, redemption, power, submission, and sexual repression? Hell, yeah. I guess PTA established his artistic obsession with characters on the fringe, anywhere on a scale between self-absorbed, flawed or frustrated, to fully messed-up, incel losers — right from his maiden cult classic, *Boogie Nights* (1997).

This syncs so well with Martin Scorsese. The San Fernando Valley in LA — where PTA grew up and often returned to — is what Little Italy in New York City is to Scorsese. And what’s *Boogie Nights*, if not *Goodfellas* (1990) of the porn industry?

You can also see how PTA figures the easiest way to place audiences into another world is by literally transporting them into another time; he makes the period his pièce de résistance. Once inside that time, often surveying vast wilderness, what holds you are truths that elevate his fiction without getting in the way of the story.

*Magnolia* (1999) may be his most personal film, about dying fathers, but you remember it most for Tom Cruise in the ensemble. That is—if you saw that character through the prism of misogynist seduction communities in the US that became the rage, at least around me, once we read Neil Strauss’s non-fiction book, *The Game* (2005).

*The Master* (2012), of course, makes the most sense if we equate it literally to Scientology — which Cruise incidentally follows in real life. Notice how the violence in the film stays off-scene? Cult and cruelty get conveyed through performances alone. They hit you harder.

Which is why PTA’s ninth film, *Licorice Pizza* (2021), about a 15-year-old hustler kid in love with a 25-year-old woman who is basically his groupie, seemed like Peak PTA: telling it like it is, so straight out of a novel, straightforward and shorn of obvious chops to show off.

What about *One Battle After Another* (2025), featuring Scorsese’s muse, Leonardo DiCaprio, killing it with that iconic phone scene — and the theatre laughing, as they did during *The Wolf of Wall Street* (2013) — while guns go off? The setting is both period and present. The wild zaniness reminds you of PTA’s earlier works, while the deep politics reflect what defined him later.

Such that Sean Penn should walk away with Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of a white supremacist soldier. It’s blended PTA’s most current movie.

I saw its irony and youthful rebelliousness as a love letter to Gen Z, who will hopefully burn through his filmography once done raving about possibly his most accessible picture ever!
https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/okay-some-more-pda-for-pta-23597682