One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, September 26, 2025) Movie • Page 46

I also enjoyed this movie very much and wanted it to win and was glad that it won.

I also enjoyed the other big frontrunner and wanted it to win as well so there was a good chance that either way I was going to be pleased and say that the movie deserved it.

 

why can’t it have nuance and room for interpretation though? We interpret the film similarly but I take it as a bittersweet ending—you take it as happy. Now we get to have a discussion about why. Isn’t that the point of good art?

 

and thats what makes it such a good movie.

 

The joke of that scene is that guy saying “safe space.” Like, that guy saying that is clearly framed to be the joke. Which, things about that scene are funny and thematically effective, but it’s also such a 2010s reactionary thing to have someone cartoonishly drop “safe space,” lol.

Cumulatively, that and the pronoun shit and other small choices really grated on me. It doesn’t make this impressive filmmaking accomplishment “a bad movie” or whatever, but it does help lessen how much I was able to immerse myself in it. And, imo, “it’s because Bob is out of touch” isn’t really an effective enough explanation to fully cover how those bits land for me.

 

Kind of surprising the Spinners publicists didn't try to re-litigate Licorice Pizza.

 

man, you can't help yourself, can you? had to go off to whine about it in your football thread

we are just having a conversation, I am happy for the different opinions being shared here

 

I need to watch again to get a feel for that last scene/what the movie might be trying to say.

 

I will say I think the needledrop is definitely tongue-in-cheek

 

Can we not do football thread discourse?

It’s bad enough we have to deal with discourse amplified by the Oscars.

Maybe attempting to actually talk about the movie instead of committing to retiring from annoying conversations was a mistake, idk.

 

I didn’t say it can’t be open to interpretation. I gave my interpretation of it lol. I’m sorry you disagree with it man.

 

Ehhhhh I kinda thought this right up until PTA calling Chase his American girl while winning best picture last night haha. It feels genuine now.

 

It is at least partially tongue-in-cheek. Petty was not talking about a revolutionary when he wrote the song.

 

maybe the real one battle after another is the one conversation after the other we have about the film.

 

Yeah I think including a song with "America" in the title has got to be at least a little ironic after watching the movie.

EDIT:
That is kind've a "no shit" statement, but it does have me questioning the tone of that final scene now that @OotyPa brought it up.

 

don't see why you feel the need to apologize. you mentioned it was weird to take on a more cynical interpretation of the end, so I was replying to that part of your post

 

Once again feels to me like an example of very questionable men simply making a really good and topical movie, partially intentionally (the filmmaking itself) and partially unintentionally (the well-intentioned but almost certainly occasionally misguided politics). That part actually seems so obvious to me that it feels kind of silly to litigate which parts were intentional and which weren't. At the end of the day, it came together for me and left a personal impact despite my opinions on some of the folks involved, and that's the extent of the discourse for me

 

i think its a coin toss given what i think is PTA's limited liberal politics.

 

imo it's a cool sounding guitar part

 

What is the implication if he puts the song in there unironically? I guess it becomes "this is what an American girl looks like/has to deal with" as opposed to the more ironic/bitter questioning what "America" is?

 

that in the end this is an American story of an American Girl.

 

Rare my fav movie of the year gets best pic, love to see it

 

I did not like how neatly wrapped the ending felt, so I think I took it at face value and it almost knocked the movie down a peg for me. Almost.

 

Best Cinematography was the heartbreaker category for me and the one that made me glad I was not one of the voters - usually I have the movie that I think deserves it the most set in my head, but this year and these movies & cinematographers had me split a few different ways