Losing It Over Leo, Episode 20: One Battle After Another
October 1, 2025
It’s that time of year again! This week, our hosts are back with the annual episode devoted to the one, the only Leonardo DiCaprio! This time, we’re losing it over Leo’s first ever collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another!
Very loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Vineland,” One Battle stars Leo as Bob Ferguson, an aging revolutionary thrust back into the crosshairs of an anti-immigration anti-domestic-terror general named Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Fifteen years after the dissolution of Bob’s revolutionary group, the French 75, Lockjaw finally tracks down him and his daughter, Willa, and decides to wipe out the rest of the group once and for all.
One Battle might be PTA’s most explicitly political movie — and one of Leo’s — and couldn’t be more of the moment. Despite that, it’s far from a cynical political commentary, with just as much to say about what it means to age out of the counterculture. Or even if “aging out” is a viable way to exit the counterculture in the first place.
There’s a lot to say about Leo’s latest, and our hosts are going full spoilers for episode two-zero of Losing It Over Leo!
