An Instant All-Time Classic: 'One Battle After Another'
#335: "One Battle After Another," "The Thursday Murder Club," "A Beautiful Mind," "The Big Sick"
Edition 335:
Hey movie lovers!
This week: The best movie of the year, and probably the last several, from Paul Thomas Anderson. Plus, a super charming Netflix cozy mystery, and a rewatch of a few well-known classics. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” another Frankenstein awards play??
One Battle After Another
One of the founding thesis of this newsletter is the battle between art and commerce, and how increasingly, it seems like the two things cannot coexist. Success is measured on one side by Oscars, and on the other by box office receipts.
But in the case of One Battle After Another, neither of those things matter to me. I don’t care if this movie makes back its reported $140 million budget, wins Best Picture, maintains the star power of Leonardo DiCaprio, reinvigorates the career of Sean Penn, launches a new star in Chase Infiniti, or finally gives director Paul Thomas Anderson some mainstream appeal.
This is an all-timer movie, one that will be talked about in the eternal film canon among the best of the decade. In the future when we talk about Leo, Penn, Chase Infiniti, or PTA, we’re going to cite this as one of the movies that proves their greatness. It’s not a stepping stone, it’s a destination.
That’s a grandiose description, but this movie lives up to it. While its storytelling is timeless, the story feels remarkably of the moment, following a fictional revolutionary group carrying out domestic terrorism operations against what they see as oppressive government policies. Those policies are not explicitly laid out (a genius stroke to keep it oblique), but the movie opens with them freeing detained immigrants from the Mexican border, so one does not need much imagination to fill in the blanks.
This 40-minute prologue shows off the prodigious filmmaking talents of PTA in a way he’s never shown in his career. Even in classics like There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights, or The Master, we’ve never really seen him do big action set pieces. But after the border escape there’s a full-on bank robbery and car crash, laying the pieces for a 15-year time jump that brings the real story into focus.
From there the spine of the story is the father-daughter relationship between DiCaprio and Infiniti, and a cat and mouse chase between the revolutionaries and authorities, led by Sean Penn’s buzzcut and a white supremacist group hilariously named the Christmas Adventurers. What’s great is that a viewer could set politics completely aside and get completely lost in the thriller aspects of this movie, including an absolutely breathless sequence with Benicio Del Toro’s sensei character that somehow sustains peak tension for what seems like 30-straight minutes, and then a car chase finale sequence in the desert that once you see you’ll never forget.
In most cases, the best version of this kind of story is impressive but cold—something like Sicario. But PTA’s specialty is finding the color in little moments and injecting the humor of ridiculousness anywhere he can.
That’s where DiCaprio really shines in this movie. He’s no action hero here, and in fact it’s admirable he’s now done several movies in a row playing a schleppy, washed guy realizing he’s over-the-hill. Tom Cruise is still doing action hero, Denzel is still doing action hero, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are still doing action hero. Leo has something, humility or self-awareness or security, that allows him to use his enormous fame and status to play against type. Which is good, because PTA’s protagonists are almost always longing losers. And DiCaprio is hilarious, just as he was in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, as a loser.
Despite its 2hr41min runtime, this movie doesn’t have that epic, exhaustive quality of his There Will Be Blood. The constant tension and action make the time fly by, and in the end there’s no sweeping conclusions or explanations for America. The story returns to being a dad, and there it’s hard not to see PTA’s own experience reflected as the father of a mixed race daughter.
I can’t wait to see this movie a second time in theaters (tip: my first experience solidified my opinion that the very best viewing format, at least in Los Angeles, is actually the Dolby Room at AMC and not IMAX), and I’m quite certain I’ll watch it several more times during the course of my life.
If you’re a subscriber of this newsletter and read every week, this is the movie you’ve been waiting for. I don’t care if you go to the theaters once or twice per year—this is the one. An all-timer.
Something New
Thursday Murder Club (Netflix): I believe they call this genre a “cozy mystery,” though I’m unfamiliar with what I’m told is a very successful series of novels about a group of old people at a nursing home in the UK who solve cold case murders. What I do know is that we’ve got Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan and Ben Kingsley together being charming and wholesome working their way through a twisty little whodunit plot. The entire entertainment value is all right there in the premise—isn’t it funny that these old people are still so lively? And look! They’re smarter and more competent than the police!
As obvious as that sounds, the movie actually delivers enough with the comedic chemistry between leads and unpredictability in its central mystery to keep a viewer guessing, especially because suspects are filled out by other recognizable faces (Jonathan Pryce, Richard E Grant, Naomi Ackie, Tom Ellis). Directed by Chris Columbus (Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, Harry Potter 1 and 2), the movie is just professionally constructed in every category, probably not sexy enough for box office appeal but a broad crowd-pleaser nonetheless.
Something Old
A Beautiful Mind (2001): It’s been several years since I’ve rewatched Ron Howard’s early 2000s Best Picture winner, and having seen this the same week as One Battle, my first reaction was honestly akin to how sports fans feel about the best NBA players of the 60s or 70s—you can’t minimize the achievements of a Bob Cousy, for instance, but compare his skillset to Steph Curry or Shai Gilgeous Alexander and it’s like watching a whole different sport.
This movie is just so…conventional. That’s not to say it’s not effective, with a twist that will still to this day make any viewer paranoid about their own life being truth or a lie. Russell Crowe attacks this movie with the same kind of sweaty intensity and charisma he brought to every movie of this era, and is thoroughly compelling. But this is a people-in-rooms-talking movie with remarkably low stakes, and by comparison to really any quality movie today feels like it lacks any real edge. Not as great as I remember but still very good and worth it for any aspiring cinephile!
Something To Stream
The Big Sick (Amazon Prime): One of the best rom-coms of the past 10 years, the thing I really appreciated about the movie on this rewatch was its authenticity. Not just because it traces the real-life story of Kumail Nanjiani and his wife, who goes into a surprise coma after the pair broke up, but in the dialogue and production design it doesn’t try to overly romanticize or dramatize or Hollywood-ize the situation. It allows the charm of Nanjiani and Zoe Kazan, and their parents played by Holly Hunter and Ray Romano, to take center stage with not only their comedy but also their humanity.
Despite its emotionally charged premise, the movie is still rom-com-y when it needs to be, with laugh-out-loud moments and the kind of happily ever after conclusion that leaves you with a big smile on your face.
Trailer Watch: Frankenstein
We did The Bride! last week, so I suppose it’s only fitting to highlight another Frankenstein adaptation this week, albeit one that’s less punk rock and appears to be a more classical interpretation. Director Guillermo del Toro says he’s wanted to make this movie for decades, which makes sense, because he kind of already has through his various other monster movies (Pan’s Labrynth, The Shape of Water, Hellboy).
Part of me wonders if this then is a little too on the nose, but with a filmmaker of his caliber, he’s certainly earned the benefit of the doubt, especially with a cast that includes Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz. Are we looking at an Oscars contender?