Drive like crazy

Paul Thomas Anderson steers Leonardo DiCaprio into Coen Brothers territory as a desperate dad.

- Sarah Watt

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

At the heart of this driving tale of revolution and retribution is a motherless daughter and her once-feisty, now drug-drowsy dad played by a scruffy, bathrobe-wearing Leonardo DiCaprio. It's a story about how far you will go to change the world, and what you will sacrifice to save your loved ones. It’s also a Paul Thomas Anderson movie and his second one - after 2014's Inherent Vice, his only cinematic dud - based on a Thomas Pynchon novel. This one is a looser adaptation of Pynchon's 1990's Vineland, which was set in the Reagan era. He keeps the book's central father-daughter characters, but adds his own updates.