New York Film Festival: The Geese frontman mesmerizes in a concert film that is both swoony and austere

One night last December, weary from a busy week and the impending doom of winter, I hurried into Carnegie Hall to witness Cameron Winter. The Geese frontman was marking the end of a breakout year with a series of rapturously received solo acoustic shows, drawing the penitent for whom the 23-year-old’s primordial voice struck some kind of destabilizing natural frequency. I had bought the ticket months earlier, after being hypnotized by Winter’s beguiling debut solo album, Heavy Metal, and sat transfixed in the rafters, far from the Brooklynite’s lanky, stygian presence before a single piano.

So far, in fact, that I assumed the maybe-camera that came on stage at one point was a bit, perhaps a jab at our incessant need to film things from a very deadpan celebrity whose only non-music interlude that evening was to wordlessly stand, stretch and mockingly fight with the stage door, as if trying to escape his own momentous show. I emerged from the event teary, charged by what felt like a communion across time, and confused by a friend’s text: “can’t wait for the cameron winter PTA doc”.

The writer-director’s second movie lacks some of the craft shown in his later work, but remains a stylish and energetic descent into the cocaine-fulled world of the 70s adult film industry

Masculinity was never more fragile than in Paul Thomas Anderson’s picaresque porn comedy from 1997, inspired by the life and times of 70s/80s LA adult movie star John Holmes. It’s a film that delivers the era’s jukebox slams on the soundtrack, though oddly not the Heatwave classic that provides the title. But Boogie Nights gives the male-gaze world of porn a taste of its own phallocentric medicine. How does it feel for a guy to be known and valued for just one thing, and then mocked and even hated when that one thing shrivels?

What happens, in fact, is that our detumescent hero symbolically turns to the more reliably priapic world of guns and crime, although not without first embarrassingly trying to make it as a singer. (David Foster Wallace, in his 1998 essay Big Red Son, about the Adult Movie awards in Las Vegas, compares the event’s musical interludes to the ghastly screeching in Boogie Nights.) Twenty-six-year-old Mark Wahlberg plays handsome young teen Eddie, or Dirk Diggler, as he is later professionally to style himself who, while working behind the bar in a nightclub in California’s San Fernando Valley in 1977 (where he supplements his income by jerking off in the kitchens at the bidding of paying voyeur customers) he meets silver-fox porn impresario Jack Horner, played with leathery assurance and style by Burt Reynolds.

The response follows social media footage of the One Battle After Another actor remonstrating with a member of security during the ceremony

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has responded to the complaint by Oscar nominee Teyana Taylor over the behaviour of a security guard who manhandled her in the closing moments of the ceremony.

In footage that circulated on social media after the telecast on Sunday, Taylor can be heard telling someone off-camera that they are “a man putting your hands on a female. You’re very rude. Very rude.”

The diversified Academy and a mutating industry have changed what many had come to expect from the stuffy, rule-following Oscars

Last year, as the major fall film festivals took place around the world, it was hard to make out the sound of audience applause. It wasn’t an attendance issue or that booing was heard instead (that’s solely a Cannes response), it was that, for many, hands were too busy wringing to find time to clap.

The trifecta of Venice, Telluride and Toronto was once seen as an inescapable fixture on a film’s road to the Oscars. Best picture winners such as 12 Years a Slave, Spotlight, Birdman, Moonlight, The Shape of Water and Green Book all rose within that circuit and cemented their reception at festivals and world premieres and often felt judged for awards potential over quality. But over the past few years, as the Academy has changed and diversified its voting body and as the industry has changed in so many other ways, something has shifted. Winning films have come from Cannes, Sundance, SXSW and, most shockingly, no festival at all …

In honouring One Battle After Another, Academy voters finally welcomed Hollywood’s prodigal son into the fold

Oscar night climaxed with a metaphorical whiff of gunpowder and a defiant rebel yell as One Battle After Another broke late to claim the crowning best picture and director awards at the Dolby theatre in downtown Los Angeles. If it is true that Americans get the presidents they deserve, it follows that they should get the appropriate Academy Award winner as well.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s rambunctious counter-culture thriller is the perfect film for an imperfect USA, brilliantly reading the tea-leaves of Donald Trump’s second term with its tale of leftist activists in a proto-fascist California. One Battle After Another was the most overtly political of this year’s best picture nominees and that might have made the difference. But it was arguably the most ambitious, rousing and lip-smackingly satisfying too.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s revolutionary epic took home six awards while Sinners scored four including for best actor

• Oscar winners 2026: the full list

• In pictures: Jessie Buckley, Michael B Jordan and Jacob Elordi at the afterparties

Paul Thomas Anderson’s counter-culture caper One Battle After Another has won the Oscars war, taking home six awards after a hotly contested season.

The big-budget comedy thriller, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, was named best picture and also won director, supporting actor for Sean Penn, adapted screenplay, editing and the first ever Oscar for casting, a category long petitioned for within the industry.

While Academy voters are supposed to keep their picks secret, another batch of anonymous ballots have leaked – giving us some insight on a hard-to-call race

• Oscars 2026: how to watch, nominations, what to read and predictions

It took a great deal of blood, sweat and tweets, but in 2016 the Academy finally took notice and started to embrace both diversity and modernity. The #OscarsSoWhite furore over two straight years of all-white nominees (Michael B Jordan’s Creed snub was in my opinion the cruelest) led to a dramatic shake-up and one that has continued ever since with more women, people of colour and international voters added to what had been an overwhelmingly homogenous base.

It has all led to an Oscars race that is increasingly harder to predict using old-fashioned thinking in ways that have become rather thrilling over time, the idea of an “Oscar movie” now far more slippery. Films such as Parasite, Anora, Moonlight, Anatomy of a Fall, Nomadland, Get Out and The Zone of Interest have now found their way into the major categories in past years, and this year’s crop showcases further progression – from foreign language picks to outsider narratives to pricklier characters than ever before.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s capering clash between a demented repressive regime and ragtag freedom fighters is both cartoonish and deadly serious – and perfectly tuned to its times

Viva la revolution and don’t forget your password, your pronouns, your plaid gown and your gun. One Battle After Another, from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, is the brawling rebel insider of this year’s Oscar race; a state-of-the-nation Hollywood spectacular that feels as disunited and unstable as the country it depicts. The film hates America and it loves it, too. It’s on the side of the angels even when it’s not quite sure who they are. It lights a candle to curse the darkness, and prays to God it hasn’t picked up a stick of dynamite by mistake.

“We have to stay out of politics,” Wim Wenders advised his fellow directors at last month’s Berlin film festival, and yet One Battle After Another is political to its fingertips, hard-wired to the here and now and perfectly anticipating the tenor of Donald Trump’s second term. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob, the one-time firebrand turned burnt-out stoner, who belatedly hauls himself off the couch when his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) is captured. Freely adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, the film updates the book’s jaundiced post-60s hangover for the ICE-age 2020s as the plot careens from the migrant detention camp to the sanctuary city to uncover a Christian Nationalist cell within the US federal government. The self-styled “Christmas Adventurers” are on a heaven-sent mission to make America great again. They say, “If you want to save the planet, you always start with immigration.”

Warwick Davis takes a swipe at Tom Cruise’s height, best actor Robert Aramayo namechecks Ethan Hawke, and Prince William calls the night’s biggest winning film ‘weird’

• How the night went down
• Peter Bradshaw’s verdict on the Baftas’ winners and losers
• News: One Battle After Another defeats Hamnet and Sinners as Robert Aramayo takes best actor
• Find the full list of the night’s winners here
• The best looks from the red carpet

“I absolutely can’t believe it, I can’t believe that I’m looking at people like you, in the same category as you, never mind that I’m stood here. I honestly cannot believe that I have won this award. I really, really cannot. Everyone in this category blows me away.”
Robert Aramayo accepting the leading actor award

“Kylie, have you ever had your gums around a giant Jammie Dodger?”
Host Alan Cumming distributes snacks to Kylie Jenner

Six wins for US director’s ICE-baiting film of American resistance recognised Anderson’s commitment to complex drama, while best actor win for rising British star was thoroughly deserved

• News: One Battle wins six Baftas

• Full list of winners

• The night as it happened

• Best quotes from the 2026 Baftas

• The best looks from the red carpet

This turned out to be a very British night for the Baftas, a smidgen more British than usual in fact. It started out with the Hollywood A-listers in the audience being presented with hilarious British snacks, of whose existence they had no more idea than they had of life forms on the moons of Saturn. Emma Stone got some Hula Hoops, Timothée Chalamet had a bag of Scampi Fries and Leonardo DiCaprio got his laughing gear around a Hobnob flapjack.

The other intensely British thing was the red-carpet appearance of the Prince and Princess of Wales (the former being Bafta’s president); their presence enforced that other terribly British tradition of everyone, as if in a Mike Leigh film, avoiding the subject. Everyone trying not to talk or think about the elephant in the room or the elephant slumped and stricken in the speeding car on the way home from the police station. Well, at least William never liked him.

Every prize as it happens from the ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall in London

• How the night went down
• Peter Bradshaw’s verdict on the Baftas’ winners and losers
• News: One Battle After Another defeats Hamnet and Sinners as Robert Aramayo takes best actor
• The best quotes of the night
• The best looks from the red carpet

Avatar: Fire and Ash – WINNER!
F1
Frankenstein
How to Train Your Dragon
The Lost Bus

Will Paul Thomas Anderson’s ICE age conspiracy thriller sweep the board, or will Sinners and Hamnet share some glory? Our critic places his bets
Full list of Bafta 2026 nominations

Will win One Battle After Another
Should win Hamnet
Shoulda been a contender The Secret Agent

Few UK nominations this year as industry tries to balance attracting global attention and celebrating homegrown projects

It may be billed as Britain’s premier film awards, but when nominations for the Baftas were announced last month, the lack of British representation in the top categories was hard to ignore. Just one British actor, Robert Aramayo, appeared in the leading actor category, while there were no British nominees at all for leading actress (the UK-based Irish actor Jessie Buckley notwithstanding).

Peter Mullan was the only Briton in the supporting actor category, while representation for best supporting actress fared better, with Emily Watson, Carey Mulligan and Wunmi Mosaku nominated.

The picture, taken with Paul Thomas Anderson at this year’s Oscar nominee lunch, recalls the eerie image that closes Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic

Frankenstein director Guillermo del Toro’s “jazz hands” pose in the Oscar nominee luncheon photo was part of his and fellow director Paul Thomas Anderson’s attempt to recreate the celebrated group shot, featuring Jack Nicholson, that appears at the ending of The Shining.

Del Toro responded to a post – in which he and Anderson had been inserted into the image from the 1980 horror film directed by Stanley Kubrick – by saying: “[Y]ou got it! PTA and I said: Let’s do the Shining pose and we tried.”

Director and composer of 2017 drama allege breach of agreement after score reused in controversial documentary

Paul Thomas Anderson and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, the director and composer, respectively, for Phantom Thread, have requested that music from the 2017 film be removed from the controversial new documentary on Melania Trump.

“It has come to our attention that a piece of music from Phantom Thread has been used in the Melania documentary,” the pair said in a statement to Variety. “While Jonny Greenwood does not own the copyright in the score, Universal failed to consult Jonny on this third-party use which is a breach of his composer agreement. As a result Jonny and Paul Thomas Anderson have asked for it to be removed from the documentary.”

Counterculture comedy One Battle After Another wins four awards, including best picture, director, screenplay and supporting actor for Sean Penn

Paul Thomas Anderson’s counterculture comedy One Battle After Another continued its march to Oscars glory at the London Critics’ Circle film awards on Sunday evening, taking four awards, including best picture, director, screenplay and supporting actor for Sean Penn.

In his speech to pick up the screenplay award, Anderson said he wanted to share the award with the Guardian’s Xan Brooks for his review of Brett Ratner’s Melania, which was published on Friday. “It was one of the best pieces of writing,” said Anderson. “Pretty damn good.”

Coogler’s vampire thriller swept the Oscar nominations over Chloé Zhao’s tearjerker and Paul Thomas Anderson’s counterculture thriller. This genre-defying drama about the black experience could now rule awards season
• Full list of nominees
• Sinners becomes first film in history to earn 16 Oscar nominations

Agree with them or not, these Oscar nominations deliver a pert slap to the accepted assumptions of awards season. The industry had been expecting landslides for classy upmarket fare such as Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, and also for Josh Safdie’s delirious comedy Marty Supreme. And that’s what they got.

But perhaps no one expected these titles to get quite as colossal a smackdown as they got from Ryan Coogler’s vampire drama thriller Sinners: a violent, high-energy fantasia about racism, music and the black experience, which has soared ahead with 16 nominations – the most for any film in 97 years of the Academy Awards. Whatever happens on the night itself, Ryan Coogler has made Oscar history.

• Ryan Coogler’s ghost story breaks records

• One Battle After Another in second with 13 nods

• Marty Supreme, Sentimental Value and Frankenstein score nine apiece

• Mescal, Clooney, Paltrow and Wicked snubbed

• Full list of nominees

Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s critically and commercially acclaimed supernatural thriller, has become the first film to be nominated for 16 Academy Awards.

The film starring Michael B Jordan as twin brothers setting up a blues club in 1930s Mississippi while battling racism and vampires has so far taken $368m worldwide. It is nominated for trophies including best picture, director, leading actor, supporting actor (for the British actor Delroy Lindo), supporting actress (for British-Nigerian actor Wunmi Mosaku) and the Academy’s inaugural casting prize.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another looks unstoppable ahead of the Oscars, despite Timothée Chalamet’s triumph over Leonardo DiCaprio for best actor

The biggest backlash brewing concerns Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, lauded by critics and embraced – especially in the US – by audiences as one of 2025’s key cultural landmarks. The thriller did win two Globes – for cinematic and box office achievement and original score – but both wound up not really counting. The first is the Globes’s consolation prize (it was won by Barbie in 2023 and Wicked last year); the second wasn’t even broadcast on the telecast. Coogler missing out on screenplay to One Battle After Another was perceived by some as a slap in the face – the Oscars and Baftas separate the category into original and adapted, however, so a corrective could come.

One Battle After Another engages with the tense climate of the second Trump administration unlike any other contender

Now that the political scene in the contemporary United States looks like an unending string of military PR coups for the Trumpian right at home and abroad, it’s appropriate that Paul Thomas Anderson’s spectacular, mysterious counterculture epic One Battle After Another – with Leonardo DiCaprio as a clueless, dishevelled ex-revolutionary – should consolidate its current position as one of the leading movies of this awards season: winning four Globes including best musical or comedy and best director for Paul Thomas Anderson – whose fluency, productivity and pure technique and ambition are arguably making him America’s pre-eminent film-maker. The excellent Teyana Taylor got best supporting actress.

This is a movie scene in which no mainstream is directly attacking the Trump regime head-on (such as, say, Ali Abbasi’s satirical Trump biopic The Apprentice) but there is something in Anderson’s film that inhales and intuits both the current febrile mood of reactionary hysteria and the tension and depression of those opposing it. Sean Penn wasn’t up for any Globes last night for his role as the bullish and yet pathetic Col Lockjaw in One Battle After Another, the oppressor despised by his masters, but I see a great deal of Lockjaw in Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, the disposable courtiers uneasily standing ramrod straight behind the president at public events.