Paul Thomas Anderson isn’t losing sleep over people calling 2025 a weak year for movies. He’s heard the doom talk, the “sky is falling” chatter, the hand-wringing about originality. He’s not buying any of it. While chatting to Le Monde about his comedy-thriller One Battle After Another, he pushed back with a list of titles that would make even the grumpiest cinephile rethink things. “The whole industry is constantly complaining. The sky is always falling,” he said before rattling off highlights: Eddington, Weapons, Bugonia, two new Richard Linklater films, Sentimental Value, and Marty Supreme.
Anderson’s point is simple. Look around. Daring films are still being made, and audiences are finding them. He’s not ignoring the problems either. “Do I think things get put on streaming too fast? Yeah, I do. I think that’s a drag. I think a lot of things that happen in Hollywood are self-inflicted wounds.”
The data backs him up. A recent study shows the U.S. now produces around 2,500 features a year. That number was barely 800 in the 1990s. Global output sits somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 titles a year. Statistically, some gems will slip through—and 2025 has already delivered a few.
One Battle After Another leads the pack. Anderson’s Thomas Pynchon adaptation stars Leonardo DiCaprio as an ex-revolutionary hunting for his missing daughter after a long-buried enemy resurfaces. The film cost around $130 million and has pulled in $202 million worldwide. It just snagged best feature at the Gothams, where Anderson admitted, “I didn’t expect this, actually. I started to think I didn’t know what was going on.” The New York Film Critics Circle followed up by naming it the best film. Benicio Del Toro took supporting actor there too.
But a much older Paul Thomas Anderson is also in the news. Quentin Tarantino stirred the pot during a chat on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast. He revisited There Will Be Blood and went straight for Paul Dano. “It’s supposed to be a two-hander, but Dano is weak sauce, man… He’s just such a weak, weak, uninteresting guy.” Bold take for a performance that earned Dano a BAFTA nomination in 2007 and a SAG Award for Little Miss Sunshine. Fans weren’t shy about firing back. Some joked Dano must have rejected Tarantino at some point. Others dragged up Tarantino’s dislike for Batman and blamed that for the jab. Either way, people are talking about Paul Thomas Anderson’s films again.
Awards season hits another gear in January when the Golden Globes and Oscar nominations drop. Whether the sky is falling or not, Paul Thomas Anderson had a great year, and he’s busy making movies in 2025 that get people talking.
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