One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, September 26, 2025) Movie • Page 33

I think I will need to see it again to fully appreciate it.

 

I honestly enjoyed the prologue more the first time but still very much enjoyed it the second time. Just relentless.

 

It takes some guts to take the star of your previous movie and shoot her in the head after a few lines.

 

Like this take. Obviously PTA knows what he is doing so it's not like it was unintentionally rushed or anything. I also didn't dislike it...I'm just grasping at straws for something to criticize in a movie that I really loved.

There were also a couple attempts at humor that didn't quite hit for me but again, that can all be brushed aside in favor of how good everything else is.

 

must not have loved the new album

yeah i mean i definitely still don't know to make of it at all, it very well could be not that meaningful. All i know is i was really caught off guard in a sort of 'liminal world' way, which was a unique feeling

 

It’s basically what happens. His last thoughts are empty ones of self satisfaction in an undecorated office. In the end, Lockjaw is just another pawn that was disposed of as soon as it was no longer useful. I suppose you could say the movie is having its cake and eating in too in a way. We see the hollowness of Lockjaw’s efforts, but also get the satisfaction of him dying. But it’s ultimately just a reminder of who holds power.

 

This stuck out to me as well at first. Though I suppose we also see a white man break before that when he gives up Bob and Willa’s location. Everyone who breaks has some sort of personal threat put against them. In this environment, it’s not a stretch to think a queer person has a lot to lose, so it could be a commentary on how power preys on the most vulnerable.

 

My sticking point isn’t that a queer character broke, but that they’re the only queer character, and their friends aren’t shown to break, and the only other role they play is to show (off screen) how out of touch Bob is with the youths. Which is why I said it feels weird contextually. I don’t think it’s a transphobic beat or whatever, but it doesn’t land well for me and lingers as a question mark on the film’s politics/perspective.

I don’t remember, did the movie show them receive a specific, pointed gender threat? If it did, it’d feel more like how that guy relents when his family is threatened.

 

I also wasn't too interested in the prologue as it was first going on, but I think it works well for showing how the characters (both those who were and weren't there) would have rose-colored glasses about some previous era of revolutionaries that was never really true to how they were

 

i think it helped that i finished the novel just before leaving for the theater so i was kind of used to the disorienting time/flashback logic so i didn't think much of it while watching the prologue. plus the explosions were fun

 

Ahh I see what you mean now. They do feel like a device to enhance other characters and move the plot along rather than a character unto themselves. Looking back, I don’t remember them getting a specific threat. I remember the interrogation guy saying something to him right as he was about to leave that gave him pause, but I don’t recall what.

 

I went with my wife to see it for my second time.

She leaned over to me in the intro scene when they first show the French 75 going over their plan and whispered “she has the same Band-Aids that our daughter uses.” I didn’t even realize that Perfidia has Band-Aids on her hands in that scene. Lol.

Then when Willa‘s friends come over to the house and Leo is being needlessly hostile towards them, she leaned over to me again and whispered “this is an I think you should leave sketch.”

At the end during the car chase scene, after the 8th or 9th hill shot, I got a “we get it” and when I laughed she said “Hey. I’m trying to make this fun.”

My wife usually actively hates every PTA film we watch and she was very entertained by this one. We were in an empty theater and she was laughing the whole time. I think PTA tapped into more of a universal cinema experience with this one, where, even if you’re not a huge fan of the specific story or setting or characters, he’s chosen, they exist in a very entertaining and satisfying cinematic experience.

 

First viewing - had this thing I like to refer to as “opening night anxiety” which is that feeling I get when I’m seeing a highly anticipated movie for the first time and I have all these expectations and just feeling unsure about every choice that is made. I loved it but I wasn’t sure I could take it all in.

Second viewing - all potential worries swept away. Masterpiece perfect film

third viewing - again confirmed this is an all timer. Still had a blast and highlighted everything I was already feeling.

also every person I went with in these various screenings all came away loving it too so I felt vindicated in my feelings

 

I think the inherent context could be enough there.

Straight cis white kids can probably walk out of there feeling relatively confident no one will do anything to them or their family will protect them (whether that’s true or not with this rogue military crew who are not following norms or laws). It’s more likely that a queer kid is not going to have the same perceived social and community safety nets and naivety and any threat is going to feel more loaded.

I err on the side of PTA wanting to play that moment realistically and let that character behave and exist and let us connect the pieces of the statement in our mind instead of him saying the literal statement on film in dialogue/action at us.

It also can get tricky because well-meaning people sometimes will critique representation in a way where the suggestion is that underrepresented identities should only be in media if they are a fully fleshed out character or being highlighted for some kind of excellence or victimization, which can have the adverse effect of perpetuating underrepresentation. So, as long as the character isn’t being used to perpetuate negative messages about that identity, I don’t know if I view it inherently as a negative to have a background or side character, most of whom aren’t fleshed out in any movie or show, be an underrepresented minority and be flawed in their morality or opaque in their decisions. All that said, I’m open to having blind spots here that would affect my feeling that way.

 

the soundtrack and the pacing of the prologue and certain other scenes really felt like I was watching there will be blood again at points

 

the only real thing I didn’t like at all was Sean Penn walking away from the car wreck/shooting after clearly appearing dead when Leo came upon him only to be killed one scene later, as funny and absurd as his actual killing was. Semen demon had me rolling

 

Comrade Rob/Josh (?) talking about safe spaces and trigger warnings felt too heavy-handed and on-the-nose to me. He could have just kept acting like someone who felt that way without literally saying “I’m triggered!!!” I think that was the moment that took me out of it the most.

Leo calling the phone store guy “carnale” and then doing the whistle to the fruit vendors at the cross road brought me in the most. Lol.

 

im desperate to see that rooftop scene again lol

 

“your man fell off the roof and then got tased”

 

New books this week: Thomas Pynchon's first novel in 12 years, and much more

 

Streaming 11/25

 

go see it (again) on the big screen though

 

Well I hope it gets like 10 Oscar nominations and returns to theaters next year

 

a quintessential piece of PTA filmmaking