Concluding my countdown of last year’s best films…

Best Films of 2025
#1. One Battle After Another

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of my guys — one of a handful of filmmakers I consider among my very favorites. I consider him a modern American master, somebody whose name should and will be listed alongside Scorsese, Hitchcock, Welles, Spielberg, Coppola, and Kubrick.

That said, it had been four years since his last release, and 2021’s Licorice Pizza (despite its many charms) is probably my least favorite of his films. Before that, it’s all the way back to 2017 and the brilliant Phantom Thread. So when One Battle After Another was announced, I’d been waiting nearly a decade for a new PTA masterpiece with no guarantee I’d get one.

Well, I got one.

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