By James Hibberd October 7, 2025
Paul Thomas Anderson’s propulsive, nearly three-hour loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland starring Leonardo DiCaprio has been the rare grown-up drama that’s drawn enormous critical praise, high audience scores and solid box office — crossing the $100 million mark worldwide to score the biggest opening of Anderson’s career.
Given that the film is also intensely political — telling the tale of a burned out revolutionary (DiCaprio) who endeavors to save his daughter (Chase Infiniti) from a white nationalist military officer (Sean Penn) — it’s perhaps surprising there hasn’t been more noise so far from those on the right. The film opens with a celebratory raid on an ICE facility to free detainees, and shows government agents coldly executing unarmed suspects and sending an undercover agent into a peaceful protest to throw a Molotov cocktail to justify increased force.
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“You can make excuses for it, but basically the [film is] an apologia for radical left-wing terrorism, that’s what it is,” said Ben Shapiro, who predicted the film will win “all the Academy Awards” due to its politics. “It has the subtlety of a brick … The basic suggestion is a conspiracy theory in which the United States is run by white supremacist Christian nationalists and all people of color and a few nice incompetent fellow travelers like [DiCaprio’s character] are going to take on that entire system. And that system must be taken on at the cost of family, at the cost of friendship, at the cost of decency, at the cost of basic human capacity for success. It is better, in other words, to be a complete loser who wastes your life bombing things randomly in order to free illegal immigrants to run willy-nilly across the border than to be a productive citizen.”
“For this movie to make any sense at all, one has to believe the United States, today, right now, is a fascist dictatorship,” wrote David Marcus at Fox News, under a headline that dubbed the film an “ill-timed apologia for left-wing violence.” He continued, “That is not only a dangerous fallacy but, as we have found out recently, a deadly one … The whole movie made me a little angry, but then I remembered that the Trump administration is cracking down on Antifa — today’s very real domestic terrorists — and maybe this will be a fun movie for them to watch once they are all in jail.”
“It’s a macabre coincidence that One Battle After Another opens so soon after the assassination of peaceable conservative debater Charlie Kirk,” wrote The National Review under a headline predicting “there will be bloodlust” provoked by the movie. “The film undeniably romanticizes political assassination … Anderson intentionally provokes the bloodlust of his woke confreres (and Gen Z viewers who know nothing about the Sixties) by celebrating the insipid, heretical, and violent activities of the liberal past and present. Anderson’s title lacks Pynchon’s pith but daydreams a culture of never-ending political obstruction and pandemonium. It is the year’s most irresponsible movie.”
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Joe Scarborough tells Dem candidate Jay Jones to leave race over violent comments against GOP lawmaker
Virginia attorney general candidate Jay Jones faced another stern rebuke from a fellow liberal after being caught discussing the hypothetical violent death of a Republican lawmaker.
A National Review report exposed text messages in which Jones fantasized about shooting a Republican colleague in the head and harm coming to his children in 2022. Since then, some liberal commentators have condemned the candidate and his rhetoric.
While some Democrats have stood by the embattled candidate, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough wrote a lengthy X thread calling him out.
“We have all said things that may have reflected poorly on our character—perhaps even unfairly. Virginia’s Democratic AG candidate’s life should not be judged solely on his past horrific texts and statements. But he should [withdraw] from the Attorney General’s race at once,” Scarborough implored.
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