5 Movies To Watch If You Like One Battle After Another

In some ways, you could argue that there's nothing out there quite like "One Battle After Another." Paul Thomas Anderson's bravura American masterpiece, which took home the top prize of best picture at the 2026 Academy Awards — and finally won Anderson his first-ever trophy for directing, which is just astonishing in and of itself — is a bold, brash, tense, and distinctly funny portrait of people who try (and, in a lot of cases in this movie, fail) to fight back against the powers that be. With Leonardo DiCaprio at the helm, the movie focuses on his would-be revolutionary, who begins his life as Pat Calhoun but changes his name to Bob Ferguson when he goes on the run to protect his newborn baby daughter, rechristened Willa (outstanding newcomer Chase Infiniti), after Willa's mother Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) is arrested.

With unbelievable supporting turns from Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro — the former of whom won the Oscar for best supporting actor for his terrifying oddball villain Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw and the latter of whom earned a nomination in that same category as the underground leader Sensei Sergio St. Carlos — "One Battle After Another" is truly exceptional. So what should you watch next if you loved Anderson's first-ever Oscar winner? We've got some ideas.

You might not know that "One Battle After Another" is based, pretty loosely, on a 1990 novel by one of the literary world's most famous recluses — Thomas Pynchon. You also might not know that "One Battle After Another" is not Paul Thomas Anderson's first attempt to put a Pynchon story on the big screen. Though Anderson's 2012 film "The Master" did take some inspiration from "V." by Pynchon, we're going to talk about "Inherent Vice," Anderson's first real crack at adapting one of Pynchon's larger-than-life tales.

Anyone who's even remotely familiar with Pynchon's work knows that the author's stories are often inscrutable, to say nothing of his extremely complex language — but in 2014, Anderson tried to bring one of Pynchon's most famous novels to the masses with "Inherent Vice." The first-ever Pynchon novel to be directly adapted into a movie, "Inherent Vice" stars Joaquin Phoenix as Larry "Doc" Sportello, a private investigator living a solitary life in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Gordita Beach in the 1970s. One day, his ex Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston) pays Doc a visit asking for some help freeing her new squeeze Michael Z. "Mickey" Wolfmann (Eric Roberts) from his wife and handlers, and Doc agrees to help. From there, it's an understatement to say all hell breaks loose. As far as Anderson's canon goes, "Inherent Vice" is more than a little uneven, but he gave it a good shot — we'll just have to see if the Oscar-winning director ever tries to adapt one of Pynchon's even weirder workers like "Gravity's Rainbow."

Partway through "One Battle After Another," Willa attends a high-school dance with a few of her friends and her dad, Bob, settles in for a night of adult beverages and substances. While indulging in those ... substances, he turns on a very specific movie — the 1966 war movie "The Battle of Algiers" — before receiving a phone call revealing that Willa may be in danger. So why this movie? In a list of films to watch before seeing "One Battle After Another" for Turner Classic Movies, Paul Thomas Anderson specifically listed "The Battle of Algiers" as an influence, and it fits perfectly in this scene where Bob is reminisicing about his adventurous days as a revolutionary.

Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo and based on real events that occurred during the Algerian War (a conflict from 1954 to 1962), "The Battle of Algiers" ostensibly centers around the character of Ali la Pointe, a French Algerian man who began his life as a criminal before going to prison and undergoing major political radicalization. Beyond that, it focuses on other Algerians and French Algerians as they fight for their independence from mainland France. Recognized as a particularly brutal and realistic war movie, "The Battle of Algiers" is a must-watch if you loved "One Battle After Another," but prepare yourself: it's much more intense than Anderson's film.

When you compare two movies released in 2025, you might be tempted to compare "One Battle After Another" to Ryan Coogler's Southern vampire drama "Sinners" — only because they were both frontrunners for best picture at the 2026 Oscars. You should be comparing "One Battle After Another" to "Eddington," Ari Aster's political drama that is, if we're being completely honest, not as good as "One Battle After Another."

"Eddington," set during the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests in mid-2020, centers around Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), a county sheriff who's hoping to be elected the mayor of the titular town of Eddington, New Mexico. Amidst lockdowns and mask mandates, Joe wants to go against the system, but instead he just ends up battling with the current mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), and trying to manage his deeply troubled home life with his reclusive wife Louise (Emma Stone) and her deeply erratic mother Dawn (Deirdre O'Connell). With the utmost due respect to Aster, "Eddington" just isn't at successful as communicating its many, many ideas as "One Battle After Another," but the two still make a good pairing.

Another American masterpiece that just so happened to win the Academy Award for best picture (albeit back at the 2008 ceremony), Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country for Old Men" actually competed against Paul Thomas Anderson's other American masterpiece from 2007, "There Will Be Blood," for the top award. ("No Country for Old Men" took home best picture, while Anderson's star and frequent collaborator Daniel Day-Lewis won the award for best actor for "There Will Be Blood.") Something fans of "One Battle After Another" vividly recall is Anderson's use of remote, sprawling vistas and deserts; "No Country for Old Men" does something similar, telling a gripping and all-American story amidst the backdrop of rural Texas as it adapts its story from Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name.

As the movie opens, we meet Javier Bardem's utterly fascinating and bewigged villain Anton Chigurh, pronounced like "sugar," as he kills two policemen and escapes arrest — and as he goes on the run, local man Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) finds a briefcase containing millions of dollars. From there, it's a cat-and-mouse game like we saw in "One Battle After Another" as Chigurh, sent to collect the bounty, hunts Llewelyn, all while sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) looks for Chigurh. Bardem also won a well-deserved acting Oscar for his villainous role, and frankly, one can imagine that Sean Penn's Lockjaw was faintly inspired by Chigurh.

Widely recognized as one of the most thrilling crime dramas ever made, Sidney Lumet's 1975 movie "Dog Day Afternoon" certainly feels like it inspired "One Battle After Another," based almost solely on the way that both movies effortlessly blend high-stakes drama with funny and incredibly human moments. Based on a Life Magazine article titled "The Boys in the Bank" by P. F. Kluge and Thomas Moore (with Frank Pierson adapting the story into a full screenplay for Lumet), "Dog Day Afternoon" tells the story of a bank heist and hostage situation that goes terribly awry.

On a summer day, two friends — Sonny Wortzik and Salvatore "Sal" Naturile, played respectively by Al Pacino and John Cazale — stage a daring bank robbery in Brooklyn alongside their buddy Stevie (Gary Springer), only for Stevie to make a run for it after he gets scared. Not only do Sonny and Sal realize that they hit the bank after its cash sums were picked up for the day — meaning their haul would be a paltry $1,100 — police have already surrounded the bank itself, and it sure seems like there's no way out. Pacino and Cazale are electric in "Dog Day Afternoon," and even though Lumet is one of Hollywood's all-time best directors, this entry in his canon sticks out as one of his best ... and feels like an obvious influence on "One Battle After Another."

"One Battle After Another" is streaming on HBO Max now.