↓
 
Home » One movie after another

One movie after another

The New Neo Posted on by

The Oscars are tomorrow, and about a week ago I watched the first half hour of the movie One Battle After Another, nominated for Best Picture and several other awards. I was visiting a friend who lives at one of those large complexes for older people, and they show a movie for free every week. She wanted to take a look at that one, and so I went too.

But after a half hour of the movie we both left.

Simply put, it was the worst movie I’ve ever seen, bar none. Let me count the ways in which it was bad – no, maybe that’s impossible, because it was awful in every way. Its terribleness was absolutely astonishing.

Since then, I’ve searched online for people who agree with me on this. There are many, but they seem to be outnumbered by those who loved the movie (at least, online). The movie’s box office hasn’t recouped its cost, and it’s considered a flop in that sense, although it’s gotten rave reviews from critics, and a slew of awards and nominations:

At the 31st Critics’ Choice Awards, it won three awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It was also nominated for nine awards at the 83rd Golden Globes, receiving the most nominations of any film that year and winning four, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. The film also became the most-nominated film in the history of the Screen Actors Guild at the 32nd Actor Awards, with a record-breaking seven nominations. At the 79th British Academy Film Awards, it led the nominations with fourteen overall, winning six, including Best Film and Best Director. Additionally, the film received thirteen nominations at the 98th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and four acting nominations (for del Toro, DiCaprio, Penn, and Taylor), the second-most of any film that year.

Let me repeat that it wasn’t just that I didn’t care for the film. It was that it was deeply offensive, stupid, chaotic, ugly, and boring all at once. It made me and my friend recoil in a combination of revulsion plus embarrassment that anyone would write such a thing, film such a thing, direct such a thing, act in such a thing. It was repellent within the first five minutes, with a sexual scene so outlandish and distasteful and preposterous that it seemed the goal was to offend everything and everybody.

Before I saw the film I had looked it up and learned the very general outline of the plot although no details. I knew it was about 60s-style revolutionaries but set much later in time, and that after the first forty minutes or so it advanced about sixteen years into the future – which would bring it more or less to today’s present. But when I saw the opening minutes I couldn’t figure out what the makeup department was going to do when these characters are supposed to be sixteen years older, because they already looked long in the tooth (DiCaprio is now fifty-one – a bit old for a revolutionary – and Sean Penn is sixty-five, past retirement age for a colonel, which is the role he plays). I didn’t end up sticking around to see the part of the film where they’re supposed to become sixteen years older, but I’ve read that the movie makes no attempt whatsoever to age them.

I guess that’s one way to deal with it. But it’s a very minor quibble indeed in a movie so very bad.

Prior to seeing the movie I had also read that one of the main characters, a black female revolutionary, was scripted in a demeaning and cliched way that was aggressively hyper-sexualized. I figured this was just one of those overreactions by the politically woke. Well, I’m here to say that it was not an overreaction. If anything, the criticism was an understatement.

The acting seemed ludicrous to me although it’s been highly-praised – over the top except for DiCaprio, who looked to be on tranquilizers (at least during the portion I watched), and cartoonish and cliched, and yet without a satiric edge that would make that approach all right. I read that the film is supposed to be some sort of satire, some sort of comedy, but there wasn’t even a hint of that perspective in the part I saw.

It was as though the denizens of the future world of Idiocracy had made a movie.

One of the things that struck me almost as soon as the Sean Penn character appeared was that he was supposed to make the viewer recall the Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper character in Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. And sure enough – at least, according to Google’s AI – “The character Colonel Steven J. ‘Lockjaw’ (played by Sean Penn in the 2025 film One Battle After Another) is described as a deliberate homage to Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove.”

That doesn’t even begin to redeem the film. All of the characters are offputting and deeply unlikable, whether they’re on the political left or right, although of course this being today’s Hollywood the ones on the right are even more evil and awful (and white) than the ones on the left. But who on earth wants to watch a two hour and forty minute movie with such characters and such action?

And it stands an excellent chance of getting the Oscar for Best Picture. Consider yourselves warned.

Just for fun, though, here’s one of my very favorite scenes from Dr. Strangelove. It features the Jack D. Ripper character, played by Sterling Hayden. He’s good, but it’s the brilliant Peter Sellers who shines here in one of his three roles in the film, that of RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake. The ever-growing panic in Sellers’ eyes combined with his efforts at exquisite British politeness in the face of the utterly mad and terribly dangerous Ripper never fails to get me with its edgy humor:

[NOTE: Here are some people who agree with me about the film.]

Comments

One movie after another — 77 Comments

  1. This reminds me of when a few years ago my sister and her friend were visiting my wife and I at our vacation cottage, and we all decided to rent a movie. My sister and her friend recommended a movie called The Shape of Water. They had both seen it before, but said that it was one of the best movies they had ever seen and wanted to watch it again. My wife and I later agreed that it was one of the stupidest, worst and most idiotic movies we had ever seen. Yet apparently the critics loved it and it won an academy award that year. Go figure, maybe we missed something.

  2. The new movie has seemed bad to me since last fall when I saw a trailer. Sorry to hear it is *that* execrable.

    I’m no longer a fan of Dr. Strangelove. It seems sophomoric at best and harmful at worst. Somebody needs to prove to me that M.A.D. has been a failure. During the Cold War, only audiences in the free world were to see their nation’s strategic plan satirized. Thank God Kubrick was unable to deter our resolve.

  4. “The critics loved it” is all I need to know to be assured beyond a scintilla of doubt that the movie stinks. Hollywood is dead but the corpse just refuses to lie down and be still. I’d be happy to volunteer to beat it with a stick until it stops moving. Kind of like what those terriffic ROTC students did to the islamic shooter down at Old Dominion U.

  5. they did at least attempt satire, peter george’s red alert, the source material, is apparently more serious, General Ripper is supposed to be a parody of General Lemay, or his deputy General Power, with some blend of General Walker for good measure, certainly the Stavka, the Soviet high command had similar sentiments,’the doomsday device’ is derived from them, one might think it was an in kind contribution to Lyndon Johnson’s election that year

    Vineland the source material, which was my intro to Pynchon seemed to be enough of a parody on its own,* the Colonel is supposed to be Brock Vond, an overzealous Justice Department agent, with a vendetta against the protagonists,
    *Rushdie was late in reviewing Vineland for Granta, because of the fatwa,

    I generally am not keen on paul anderson’s work, since they are melodramatic and over indulgent, but this one seems to be a whole nother level

    one would think that Del Toro’s labour of love, Frankenstein, would have gained more plaudits, but logic is in short supply in hollywood

    *guillermo not benicio,

  6. “Since then, I’ve searched online for people who agree with me on this. There are many, but they seem to be outnumbered by those who loved the movie (at least, online). The movie’s box office hasn’t recouped its cost, and it’s considered a flop in that sense, although it’s gotten rave reviews from critics, and a slew of awards and nominations:”

    Perhaps this is as accurate a barometer of the percentage of virtue signaling, deny truth and reality at all cost… of the movie watching public as may be found. The message being that support for the narrative is the only thing that counts.

  7. Movies that win Best Picture absolutely do get a boost in viewership, which is why it is likely to win. The people voting actually think it’s important that people watch this move. “Especially now”, I can just hear them saying.

  8. Only movie I walked out of was the first Dune movie. A big Pile of – – – .
    Have not been to a movie theater for a very long time. Got too expensive. I wait for it on Amazon. I dropped Netflix, my Wife watched it for the Korean shows. Just saved me some money by dropping it.

  9. Neo, since you say so many of your friends are leftist or left-leaning, does this describe your friend who walked out of the movie with you?

  10. Thank you for your post. The “Here are some people” in your note did not work for me-no link.

    The Free Press Weekend Press summary had this to say:

    “First up: Liel Leibovitz takes aim at One Battle After Another, which, according to Polymarket, has a 75 percent chance of bagging the top prize. And yet, according to Liel, Paul Thomas Anderson’s blockbuster is an ugly action movie about some progressives going to war against a version of ICE, and deserves none of the accolades it has scooped up.

    He writes: “It feels like the sort of thing written by a committee of socialist college sophomores cracking each other up by casting the rapper Junglepussy—she plays a character by the same name—whose sole purpose is to deliver some silly speech about black power before disappearing from the action altogether 20 minutes in.”
    READ
    ‘One Battle After Another’ Is Irredeemable”

    I cannot see the article because I am not a subscriber, but that snippet told me enough.

  11. DisGuested:

    The problem with his review (which I read) and my review (which I wrote) is that no words, however pejorative, can do justice to how overwhelmingly awful the movie actually is.

  12. Kate:

    Yes, she is a Democrat. She totally agreed with me.

    I do have some leftist friends, but at least as many who are just Democrats. They follow the news but not very carefully. They’ve been Democrats their entire lives. Nearly all their friends are Democrats except me. I’m grandfathered in, as it were.

  13. Ah, so she’s a habitual Democrat but not a leftist ideologue. A “normal” person who found this movie repellent. Good.

    I was wondering what the true believer leftists might think of it, because of their commitment to “the struggle,” which this movie purports to idolize.

  14. Kate:

    One thing I forgot to add is that in threads where people are discussing how bad the movie is, and other people enter the thread to say they liked it, the latter don’t just disagree politely. They insult the others in a very nasty and condescending way, indicating that those who dislike the movie know nothing about the art of fine movies and are basically imbeciles.

  15. Thanks Neo. That said, I really don’t understand how this could possibly be the best picture. Why is it so highly rated? Is this some sort of psy-op? Or mass delusion; I fear the covid19 debacle and TDS has ruined some people.

  16. Erick aurelio:

    I thought DiCaprio was excellent in what I think was his first big role, in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?

  17. yes it does seem incoherent, from what i’ve read of it, somewhat like le carre’s absolute friends, that can be read as very dark comedy on those he claimed sympathy in the early years of the war on terror, (the one character who was the most authentic, by their own lights, was the government agent, he never went in that direction again,

    by contrast I’ve heard good things about project hail mary, which came too late for this round of awards, and besides doesn’t fit the tableau of utter darkness and depravity, the Academy is looking for

    material can be dark, like say Schindler’s List, there’s apapently a similar film about the Jasenovac camp, thats in the foreign entries, but have some moral center,

  18. miguel cervantes:

    This movie doesn’t just lack a moral center. It lacks a narrative center. It’s chaotic.

  20. DisGuested:

    I can’t explain. I find it shocking that anyone liked this movie at all. I can shed no light on that. But I do think that, once the critics praised it so highly, people wanted to go with the cool trend

  21. The Critical Drinker on YouTube is where I first heard about this movie, and he hated it, for all the reasons you listed. Then tonight on Instapundit I saw posted a article from The Free Press which seemed like they thought it was awful, but it’s paywalled, so not sure, but the headline said it was irredeemable. Edit: someone already posted that one – oops.

    But the fact that the critics loved it tells me all I need to know. If they like it, I am not going to. I prefer good storytelling, and that’s just not done much any more. I’m glad you gave it the old college try though – you are a better person than I.

  22. Only movie I walked out of was the first Dune movie.

    Ha, I’ve walked out of two: Being There and A.I. Artificial Intelligence. I seldom go to movies, the last time was 14 years ago, so I have a high percentage of walk outs.

  23. Quentin Tarantino calls David Fincher the best director out there.

    https://youtu.be/7Njakg0ZWNQ

    I agree. Zodiac and The Social Network are two examples of nearly perfect movies, though I think Seven is overrated.

    Movies are still, in my opinion, the art form of our time, despite a lot of crap out there. It should really come as no surprise that the media allow talentless poseurs to thrive as long as they tow the party line.

  24. @Lab Rat: The Critical Drinker on YouTube is where I first heard about this movie, and he hated it, for all the reasons you listed.

    Here’s the link:

    –The Critical Drinker, “One Battle After Another – Good, Bad AND Ugly”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Bn6eT7F-w

    Drinker is an excellent writer and an insightful observer of current film offerings. No fat. He gets the job done in eight packed minutes.

    This review is one of his best IMO. He is unsparing in his criticism.

  25. The poor reviews have tempted me to see One Battle After Another. I went to a movie theatre last year to see a movie about Israel and Hamas that a friend had recommended. Good movie. That was perhaps the first time in 20 years I had been to a movie theatre.

    I occasionally take movie DVDs out of the library, maybe a couple a year.

  26. Maybe it’s supposed to be horrible…

    …and those who served up positive reviews, fully aware that it fully achieved its purpose, gave it their enthusiastic approval.

    The current iteration of “Épater les bourgeois”?

    (IOW, the destroyer/nihilist cohort’s version…of “cutting edge artistic excellence”…AKA the aesthetic—frisson?—of chaos and destruction…and inhumanity…)

  27. Astounded (close to neo’s “absolutely astonishing”) is the word I’d use to describe the response MrM and I had as we began watching One Battle After Another on Amazon, and we too decided to “walk away” after about a half an hour of wonderment, perplexity and revulsion. That was several months ago, and I’d forgotten the title, but as soon as I started reading Neo’s description, I knew which movie it was, and the same feeling came back.

    We thought we’d try a half hour of Melania last night to see what it was like, and ended up watching the whole thing. It too was not what we were expecting, but there was a grace and dignity to it that drew us in. However we were also once again astounded by what we saw! Only this time it was over the amount of gold and expensive falderol present in the Trump’s New York home. It’s no wonder he continues to add more and more gold deco and flourishes to the Oval Office, as it’s not yet reached the point of being close what he has at home!

    We experienced Melania herself as gracious, elegant, loving, centered, and self contained, revealing a steady quiet strength and sense of autonomy that impressed us as good and made us wonder if her love and presence in his life might actually be something he values, alongside or perhaps even more so than her obvious beauty?

  28. Maybe it’s a scam.
    You know, like “The Producers,” only for real.
    Apparently, it works.
    It would explain the abundance of crappy movies these days.

    Full disclosure: I haven’t been to an actual movie in years so I have to rely on reviews to make my conclusions.

  29. Tom:
    Maybe it’s a scam.
    You know, like “The Producers,” only for real.
    ——————-
    The movie industry is vertically integreted, so the studios pay all the bills and absorb the loss.

    My guess is that the modern corporatized incarnation of Broadway is unlike the old-timey, semi-fictional theatre world portrayed in The Producers.

  31. Of course it’s going to win ALL the Oscars.

    It checks all the boxes…and none of those boxes have anything to do with questions like: “Is it good?” “Is it entertaining”? “Is it popular?” “Did it make money at the boxoffice?”

    Those aren’t considerations at all. The only questions in the self-congratulatory circle jerk that is the Oscars are: “Does it portray all ‘BIPOC’ people in a positive light”? “Does it portray all white males in a negative light?” Does it portray anyone to the right of Pol Pot as a Nazi?” “Does it portray all leftists as wholesome and good, even if they perform heinous acts, because they’re victims of society and they’re not responsible for their actions?”

    It’s already on one if our streaming services, but I’m not interested in watching even the opening credits, let alone wasting a half-hour on it, even out of curiosity. Not only do I not want to waste my time, but I don’t want to provide any data to the streaming service that might indicate I’m interested in tripe like that.

    I think the Hollywood propaganda machine must be starting to run out of steam. They’ve been coasting on the riches of the past, but after hundreds of millions (billions?) of dollars in losses over the past 10 years, they’ve got to be getting low on cash to burn. Surely they’re going to have to start trying something different soon and actually start creating some entertainment that’s…I don’t know…entertaining maybe?

    I’m not a big fan of the theater experience any more and pretty much all the theaters around us have now closed so we have to travel to the next city over to find one…but even so when a good, non-woke movie comes out I try to make an effort to reward them by seeing it in the theater. Two that should be released soon that I plan to see are “I Swear” about a Scottish Tourette’s sufferer. It’s already been out for a while in the UK and I hear really good things about it.

    Another is “Project Hail Mary” if you’re into Science Fiction. It’s in pre-release now and the critics I trust that have seen it says it’s well done, faithful to the source material (it’s based on a book), and entertaining.

    I’m just happy someone’s putting something out that isn’t a sequel, prequel, reboot or spinoff of something that’s already been done to death.

  32. Pingback:Instapundit » Blog Archive » NEO: One movie after another. The Oscars are tomorrow, and about a week ago I watched the first ha

  33. Hayden was a lefty. It’s always better when actors play against their own political convictions, as he does brilliantly here. Otherwise you end up with something like Alan Alda’s sanctimonious Hawkeye character in M*A*S*H*.

  36. Completely ignoring the movie at hand, the references to Strangelove are hackle-raising.
    Seeing that movie when it came out, awash in critical acclaim, I found myself made genuinely angry with it, and the several others of that ilk in those days.
    To me, it was a huge, expensive, gaudy, and infuriating parade of anti-Americanism and anti-American military-ism. Yeah, just like flood of similar-attitude movies the New Hollywood was coming to produce, it’s always America’s fault.
    It’s America’s fault the Earth is being destroyed. It’s the American military’s fault that humanity is being eradicated. It’s the American military that’s filled with hate-soaked crazies who act out on their own to destroy all that is good.
    In a way, Strangelove was the most insidious since it was so mainstream-looking and of such high quality. Of course, since it’s such a well-made movie, America is the bad guy and what’s bad on Earth.
    It’s been told that Slim Pickens had to be deceived about his part as the heroically determined B-52 pilot in order to secure his participation. That if he had found out that it was such an anti-American diatribe he would have refused the part.
    Incidentally, while the oily Sellers is cited as providing quality acting, I thought Pickens did a very fine job portraying something close to the most realistic, possibly-existing, character in the whole movie.
    Still mad about that thing.

  38. Gringo commented: ‘I went to a movie theatre last year to see a movie about Israel and Hamas that a friend had recommended.’

    What movie was that? Screams Before Silence (the Sheryl Sandberg movie about 10/7)? Or something else?

  39. “Well, soothsayer. What say ye? The Ides of March have come.”

    “Aye, Caesar. But not yet gone.”

  40. Dr. Strangelove was a classic, Sellers was brilliant as was George C Scott. This movie? Meh, pure liberal pablum.
    I watched–endured?–the film for one reason…Borrego Springs scene at the end.

  41. There’s a videogame which came out this week called 1348. You play a young lesbian knight with a Moe Howard bowl cut, who goes around swinging a giant sword and sticking it to the patriarchy.

    Every game critic loved it. It had 250,000 wishlists. Then it released. 400 people bought it. The game sucks, and everybody knows it. But the media lied to cover it because they agreed with the agenda. Seems like exactly the same thing as this film.

  42. I started watching it on the plane and turned it off the moment Sean Penn’s character — itself a laughable parody — applied for membership of the white supremacist club. It was just beyond belief. Like Neo writes: as if a college sophomore wrote the script. Every character and every plot turn annoyed the hell out of me. I can’t stand stories without likable characters. Netflix’ House of Cards irked me for the same reason. I want to feel uplifted, inspired to a degree when watching a film or series.

    The fact that “One Battle After Another” was even nominated for best film tells you all you need to know about Hollywood and the Academy.

  43. Haven’t seen it, and don’t intend to. But I have trouble believe it can be worse than the movie of Mansfield Park that came out in 1999. That was truly appalling.

    Simply the fact that a movie is wrong headed doesn’t make it bad, though. One of the greatest movies I’ve seen is Battleship Potemkin. Combines being Communist with being historically inaccurate. But still great.

    BTW, it can’t be a Producers-type scam. That was supposed to make money by failing. This thing is failing unintentionally, at the box office. And do movie critics matter anymore? Do the awards?

  44. Leftists own Hollywood, and out to promote their agenda.
    Its often a Emperor’s new clothes, they tell you you like it because they like it.

  47. Here’s a darkly amusing Bloomberg video:

    –Bloomberg Originals, “Why Hollywood Is Facing a Very Unhappy Ending”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ_kPcLAKv0

    The piece points out the external difficulties faced by today’s Hollywood, which are real enough — streaming, social media, YouTube, CA taxes, Covid, the big Writers Guild strike, the Palisades fires.

    But it is curiously uninterested in Hollywood’s endless stream of crap movies plus DEI and anti-conservative virtue signaling that repels half of the American audience and much of the world’s as well.

    You can’t help an industry until it has hit bottom.

  48. they remade the toxic avengers with everyone’s favorite evil dwarf Peter Dinklage, who somehow made Snow White worse, but shutting out his dwarf colleagues, so they made a true ‘nightmare fuel’ of digital dwarfs he was kind of noble in GOT, but that was acting, he more likely is the villain as with X Men and most recently the Hunger Games,

    it might be one of those money laundering schemes like those behind the wolf of wall street, the IMDB Malaysian bank fraud, another decaprio vehicle, was that scorseses too (I believe it was) belfort the subject of the story, has reinvented himself,

    Charles Dance who has been playing villains for 40 years, since the Golden Child, who got his debut in the Palace Quarter, well he has shown his true colors in that open letter to Hamas, along with many other, (he played mountbatten in the Crown, in the nature of that supposed plot, against Harold Wilson)

    but when you have a terrible message, and terrible script and production values, that cost the studio 100 million dollars, and yet the Critics, rave

    thank heavens for small mercies, David Hare’s very left wing productions, that the BBC has put forward, the Worricker series and Roadkill, are very well done,

    *the latter takes House of Cards to the logical extent,

    Hugh Laurie being an engaging antagonist

    the more money you throw at them, the more they waste it,
    see the tentpole Marvel film of Last Year, Brave New World, where they waste Gian Carlo’s
    performance, maybe thats why he went on that leftwing rant,
    (no he’s been very near marxist since Bob Roberts, more than 30 years ago,

  50. Movies were at one time an “escape from reality” or at least a good way to pass the time. Many of the foreign films made in Asia for Asian audiences are still that – a way to entertain folks and help them live thru the fantasy of movies.

    But, now (really for several decades) the stuff coming out of Hollywood is garbage to me. I view all the critics who “love” a movie as really nothing more than the town folks who praised the Emperor’s new clothes refusing to see that the new clothes were nothing at all.

  51. is it a tax dodge scheme,that would explain the Bride then, which cost ninety million dollars and will probably not recoop its cost, of course the Gyllenhaal’s mixed up mindset, has been illustrated here before, re that melodrama about the Arab Israeli conflict

    Christian Bale needs to fire his agent, the last few projects have been disastrous, maybe his range was always limited, Ford vs Ferrari was an exception, and the Prestige was so long ago,

    they fail at good character study and also at spectacle whats left

  52. After the P T Anderson “classic” (from Ebert to Critical Drinker says so!) “Boogie Nights” — about the disco era — I was done seeing anything else by him. It was banal, boring, and tedious. My neighbor with whom I watched it, agreed. So, we stopped after trying to connect around one hour later. Another hour of P T. A. I’ll never get back! Thus, that biting line has stuck with me ever since.

  53. Re: PT Anderson

    TJ:

    I didn’t care for Boogie Nights either. Nor his other films I’ve seen — Magnolia, The Master. I didn’t like his characters. I often didn’t even understand them as real people.

    There’s a smell to Anderson’s films which puts me off. One Battle After Another sounds like more of the same.

  56. IrishOtter:

    Never saw any of PTA’s other films. But some of the people who panned this film LIKED the others, which should tell you something about the awfulness of this one.

  58. I would hate reading a review of a terrible movie, almost as much as I would hate watching a terrible movie. Unless the review is very witty and humorous.

    I stopped reading the movie reviews in the newspaper, when I figured out that the reviewers seemed to mostly be people with very warped values and taste – maybe an occupational hazard of watching the trash that Hollywood and other filmmakers produce (?) If the reviewers gave it a good review, the movie usually sucked.

    IIRC, the late Gene Siskel (whose reviews I thought had some value), at one point was not invited to a press party or some such event by Woody Allen. It seemed like from that point on, Siskel panned Allen’s films.

    BTW, Siskel bought John Travolta’s white suit from Saturday Night Fever. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Neophiles took up a collection and bought it for her?

    I saw Dr. Strangelove ~ 35 years ago and thought it was lame and unfunny.

    The new Elvis movie has been in the local mall theater for weeks now. I’m tempted to see it. The trailer looked like crap, but the movie must be doing something right to last so long. I saw his Loving You (1957) last night. Typical Elvis-movie bad acting (he was the best actor in it), but the dude had great music, persona, and crazy dance moves!

  59. Speaking of bad movies, I heard that the Sgt. Pepper movie with the Bee Gees was pretty bad!

  60. Anybody have an opinion on Sinners? Something I read about it the other day left me with the impression that it’s strikingly racist toward white people.

    Don’t know why I’m asking as I almost never watch Hollywood productions anymore.

  61. Huxley @ 2:30, about a Bloomberg piece on Hollywood’s woes:

    “… But it is curiously uninterested in Hollywood’s endless stream of crap movies plus DEI and anti-conservative virtue signaling that repels half of the American audience and much of the world’s as well.
    You can’t help an industry until it has hit bottom.”

    And even then, an industry can’t be helped if it can’t or won’t free itself of the deniers who cater to each other in their echo chambers.
    Reminds me of the late night, so-called comedians.

  62. Selfy:

    The Bee Gees themselves said that movie was awful. They wanted to get out of it but were contractually obligated to do it.

  63. Mac:

    The friend with whom I saw this movie had seen Sinners recently, too. She disliked it and said it was anti-white but also just strange. And remember, she’s a Democrat, not a conservative.

  64. So, Best Picture/Best Director:

    “One Battle After Another” by Paul Thomas Anderson.

    I find it reassuring that Hollywood has enthusiastically embraced another losing position, a literal flop.

    When will they ever learn?

  65. 2 hours and 40 minutes is a sign before you even consider going to see it that it is way to long and going to be boring!

    Sean Penn actually is a very good and versatile actor.

  66. “Some just want to burn it all down.”

    Hollywood, that is.

    The last good movie I recall was “1917.”

  67. also ford vs ferrari, the previous mission impossible film, oppenheimer, even though it was a scotch too long

    yeah staying alive, could not be saved by finola hughes, then again it was a different director, john badham had gone on to political thrillers like wargames and blue thunder,

    the lead vampire is irish, and he commisserates with the blacks, technically the klansmen are worse than the vampires, (i’m spoiling the thing a little) its cleverer than some of coogler’s other work, I grant him that, there is no saving grace in this version of the 20s, only a devils bargain, (so the title is ironic)

    a few years it would have swept the oscars, because white guilt, but this other post modern pastiche is what get rewarded

    the highest grossing film, was k pop demonhunters which is an korean import

    F1 came close except the marketing budget probably put it at break even points,

    mission impossible, probably sank itself, for similar reasons, and one of the worst plots that mcquarrie cobbled together,

  68. As huxley points out above they actually gave it the Academy Award for Best Picture along with a couple other awards.

    This is astonishing. And utterly revealing. At this point it has been proven multiple times beyond all reasonable doubt that the entertainment industry – in the United States at least – truly thinks its primary purpose is not to create art or to entertain. It is to propagandize. To express genuine hatred and contempt for more than half the population which does not share its collective social-political-cultural views.

    A regular refrain on the internet over the last decade has been we must stop giving our money to people who hate us. Yes I know boycotts are often tacky and distasteful. Several years ago I thought the more-than-half-the-American-population which does not share the views of our elites should take a one year break from news and entertainment.

    One year.

    I recognize it’s easy to say that. Because my wife and I do like to watch one episode of something each evening around dinner. (Our children are grown and no longer at home.) The news and entertainment industry are like a bus on the edge of a cliff. They’re struggling. Many are losing money. One year in which more than half their customers and/or audience say we’ve had enough, we’re not giving a dime to people who hate us and want to destroy what we think is true, good, and beautiful.

    I recognize that some who don’t hate us and want to destroy will be caught in the blast. Perhaps the one year sabbatical can be somewhat selective.

    One year.

  69. As a movie buff I feel the instinct to defend Hollywood a bit. I intended to prove om wrong by producing a list of really good movies that have come out since 1917 (released in 2019).
    I couldn’t do it. Oppenheimer wasn’t bad, and neither was Nomadland, but I was shooting for more than “pretty good”. Five years is quite a long time to go without a really good movie being released. Sad.

  70. “1917” is in my top 5 list of best war movies of all time. Absolutely stunning. Right along with “White Tiger” and “Come and See”, both Russian-made movies.

    Dr. Strangelove is, IMO, one of the funniest movies ever made. I mean it. I guess there’s just no accounting for taste.

  71. And originally Peter Sellers was going to have 4 roles. Allegedly, he originally was scheduled to play Major “King” Kong. They’d shot most of his other shots and started to work the Kong scenes with the bomb drop scene being early in those sequences. Apparently, Mr. Sellers fell off the bomb from a moderate height and injured himself pretty severely (rumors of broken arm or badly twisted knee/hip) so they had to get someone else and got Slim Pickens.

  74. The Strangelove scene I was thinking about has some current relevance. More than once during Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury, a military guest has responded to the CNN/BBC/NBC questioning along the lines of “won’t the magnificent Iranian antiaircraft forces just shoot down all our planes and parade the pilots like Blackhawk Down?” The contrary responses by some their military guests reminded me of this scene: https://youtu.be/UxLe8MWdWe0?si=jy8JfB95scJpdA-k.

    Each time the network went to a commercial break immediately.

  75. Re: Dr. Strangelove

    I watched half of it again and it holds up splendidly. Immaculate cinematography (Kubrick, after all). Great well-drawn characters. Tight funny writing — Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room! Original concept. Cultural significance. Serious questions about nuclear war underneath.

    Then there’s Sellers’ triple threat performance as Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, President Merkin Muffley and Dr. Strangelove.

    There are many reasons people are still talking about this film. It is a satiric black comedy which may rub some viewers’ fur the wrong way, but that goes with the territory.

  76. Dr. Strangelove was excellent, despite its political elements.

    I’m not the least surprised that One Battle After Another is getting awards. Look at how the left acts these days.

  77. I believe I’ll always love Dr. Strangelove. To tell the truth, I’m pretty sold on nearly every Kubrick film.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Web Analytics
↑