One movie after another
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.]
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.
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.
https://youtu.be/TNYsXs8jg_A?si=KstnQOyhUp-Uc7u2
David at Another Movie Channel on YouTube says you shouldn’t watch the Oscar’s.
He also has one on all Oscar winners and if he would vote for it or not. Actually he has quite a collection on Producers as well..
I thought The Color of Water was a waste as well
“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.
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,
“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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.