Paul Thomas Anderson’s political thriller “One Battle After Another” already boasts the filmmaker’s biggest-ever opening-week box office, along with the best reviews of any of his 10 feature films (currently at a 96% rating with critics on Rotten Tomatoes). It’s one of the most acclaimed movies of 2025 so far, and a major contender for awards season.
It’s also an exciting and often funny film starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a former leftist revolutionary who springs back into action to protect his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti) from government forces led by an unhinged colonel (Sean Penn).
If you caught Anderson’s ambitious epic in theaters and are looking for more movies like "One Battle After Another" while you wait for it to come to streaming, check out these five vital, creative, politically minded films (as well as my list of Anderson’s best movies).
‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’
While “One Battle After Another” deals with unfortunately timely issues, it’s also rooted in the activist tactics of an earlier era, thanks in part to its 1960s-set source material, Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Vineland.”
"How to Blow Up a Pipeline" engages more directly with modern eco-revolutionary tactics, weaving a fictional narrative from Andreas Malm’s nonfiction book. The propulsive thriller expertly shifts between the planning and execution of an oil pipeline bombing and flashbacks that explore the various characters’ motivations for taking such drastic action.
The heist-style plot is expertly constructed, with genuine suspense and surprises. The young stars give strong performances, the excellent score heightens the tension, and the gorgeous 16mm cinematography harkens back to the classic paranoid thrillers of the 1970s. It’s an urgent call to action that’s also a gripping character-focused drama.
Watch on Hulu
‘Night Moves’
Director Kelly Reichardt explores the personal cost of radicalism in this quiet drama about the fallout of an act of eco-terrorism. Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard play a trio of activists who plan and execute a bombing at an environmentally disruptive dam, only to turn on each other in the aftermath.
Reichardt is known for her slow, contemplative films, and she methodically examines how the commitment to a cause can waver in the face of personal doubt and guilt. The performances are equally subdued, even when the movie builds to a sinister outcome. The despair that the characters fight against in “One Battle After Another” creeps up all too easily on these isolated activists, who start out simply wanting to make a meaningful difference in saving the environment.
Watch on Prime Video
‘The Big Lebowski’
This Coen brothers comedy is much goofier than “One Battle After Another,” but its main character has a lot in common with DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson. Jeffrey “the Dude” Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) is also a former revolutionary with a fondness for bathrobes who now spends most of his time sitting on his couch and smoking pot.
The convoluted LA kidnapping case that the Dude investigates has much lower stakes than Bob’s ordeal, but he approaches it with a similar befuddled determination, reigniting some of his long-dulled convictions. The Dude casually reveals that he was involved with some of the most consequential activism of the 1960s, and while his idealism has waned, he still has a keen sense of right and wrong — even if that’s just as part of his bowling league.
Watch on HBO Max
‘Z’
Although it’s set in an unnamed country and tells a fictionalized story, this 1969 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film is based directly on events in filmmaker Costa-Gavras’ native Greece. Beginning with the assassination of a progressive politician, the movie depicts the cover-up by the authoritarian government, as activists, journalists and one upstanding magistrate make futile attempts to seek justice.
While the government in “Z” is more openly oppressive than the U.S. government in “One Battle After Another,” it’s only a slight matter of degrees. The activists in “Z” use similar clandestine tactics in order to organize and take action, with a similarly righteous cause. The era’s spirit of vital socially conscious filmmaking, embodied here by Costa-Gavras, carries forward with Anderson and “One Battle After Another.”
Watch on HBO Max
‘Judas and the Black Messiah’
There’s a betrayal at the heart of “One Battle After Another” that sets the main story in motion, and while Anderson makes it into a heightened, twisted undertaking, it’s still rooted in actual betrayals of revolutionary movements, like the true story depicted in Shaka King’s Oscar-winning drama.
LaKeith Stanfield plays Black Panther Party member Bill O’Neal, who became an FBI informant in the 1960s and aided in the killing of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya). King affords sympathy to a man whom many would brand a traitor, showing the impossible position that the FBI put O’Neal in, without making excuses for his actions. Stanfield and Kaluuya both give powerful performances, and King offers a fresh and vital take on a historical era that's been portrayed in dozens of movies.
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