Some movies arrive too late—please god let me never sit through another whose gimmicky hook is COVID shutdown—while others can end up more timely than its makers could have possibly imagined. You have to wonder just what emotions between excitement and panic are currently being experienced by the people behind One Battle After Another, which boasts considerable star power and is getting an aggressive push for a non-franchise release from Warner Brothers. It’s also the most action-oriented (as well as expensive) film from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson to date, by far. I did not much like his last couple features (Phantom Thread, Licorice Pizza), but “PTA” is a singularly adventurous American filmmaker whose path is utterly unpredictable, and whose movies can divide even his most devoted fans.
Under normal circumstances, Battle would seem pretty securely destined for success. But: This is a movie that could hardly be better designed to boost conservatives’ current talking points about “radical leftist terrorists,” however mythological those may be in real life. It also imagines a cabal of rich white supremacist puppetmasters, depicts US military invading US towns on bogus pretenses, and… well. Shot last year, this film might largely have been intended as a mix of satire and cautionary tale. Now, it’s like a torch thrown into the gasoline pool of today’s headlines.
I particularly winced during the first half hour or so, a giddy portrait of the fictive “French 75” guerrilla network, who conduct armed raids of immigrant detention centers, bomb fortresses of capitalist corruption, and so forth. They are sexed-up revolutionary caricatures not so far from the Symbionese Liberation Army, with Teyana Taylor as “Perfida Beverly Hills,” the most reckless among them, and Leonardo DiCaprio as Bob, the group’s incendiaries expert and her lover. Not exclusively so, however: She has the misfortune of making a big impression on ramrod-straight Army Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a thorough reactionary who nonetheless sees in her the living embodiment of some Pam Grier circa Foxy Brown wet dream.
He must have her, and he does, particularly after a bank robbery gone disastrously wrong dissolves the group. Those who aren’t killed go deep undercover, while still hunted as public enemies by the government. This initial section is outrageous, energetic, cartoonish, and made me squirm thinking how it might play right into this administration’s most fevered fantasies—which they’re already trying to pass off as justification for every anti-democratic policy.
The majority of Battle takes place 16 years later. Bob is now in perpetually stoned, paranoid hiding, sole parent to biracial teenage daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti). She’s been kept mostly in the dark about her mother, who is long gone—possibly dead, probably traitorous, perhaps in Mexico, definitely incommunicado. But shortly all hell is due to break loose again, thanks in part to a Bohemian Grove-type far-right organization called “The Christmas Adventurers’ Club”… as well as Col. Lockjaw’s permanent hound-dogging after any scent of Perfida. There are also forces of the resistance, including an emigrant “underground railroad” (one of whose leaders is played by Benicio del Toro), a desert convent of warrior nuns, and more. There are elaborate foot and car chases, scored to the skittery sounds of instrumentals by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.
One Battle After Another is close to three hours long, and occasionally it seems over-indulgent of its own quirks and actor riffing. But it is never dull or predictable, and often the on-a-limb craziness feels inspired. As do many of the performances, with DiCaprio in the same moving-comedic-trainwreck mode that served him well in Don’t Look Up. Del Toro’s deadpan is priceless, and a reptilian Penn is almost too much—albeit always, cannily “almost.” Newcomer Infiniti more than holds up her end of the deal, supporting a bulk of narrative focus that might’ve easily turned silly. (She is, admittedly, playing one of the world’s most lethally resourceful 16-year-olds.) Regina Hall, Tony Goldwyn, D.W. Moffett, and others contribute some memorable supporting turns.
Actually at times it feels like DiCaprio, who spends much of the film floundering about in a manbun and bathrobe, is playing a variation on Joaquin Phoenix’s protagonist in Inherent Vice a decade ago. That was based on a Thomas Pynchon novel, and this more ambitious enterprise is purported to be unofficially inspired by the same author’s Vineland. It’s certainly got his nervous, absurd, dark, spastic, pop-culturally-savvy vibe—suspended between conspiracy theory and cosmicomedy.
What is Anderson’s ultimate point here? As ever, part of his allure is that you cannot be sure. There is a definite subversive political thrust, yet at the same time nothing here can be taken fully seriously. I’m not sure if One Battle will emerge the best movie of 2025, but it is alive and kicking in this particular moment in ways that nothing else is likely to surpass. If nothing else, it’s got the exceedingly rare stamp of a mainstream entertainment you just know the White House is going to feel it must “respond to.” It opens in theaters nationwide this Fri/26.
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There’s also a cabal of wealthy lily-white racists who turn out to be pulling the strings in Him, which opened last week. But if Battle can be criticized for being too sprawling and contradictory in its exaggerated satire-slash-critique of our political landscape, this quasi-horror thriller turns out almost laughably dinky in its ideas. It has the kind of script that feels like a one-sentence premise scrawled on a cocktail napkin, which the filmmakers hope will be elevated by the gallons of superfluous “style” they pour atop that scrap o’ paper. Ultimately, though, the effect is self-canceling in the worst possible way.
Model-handsome Tyriq Withers plays Cam Cade, a talented quarterback fulfilling his late father’s force-fed dream of not just gridlock glory, but being the GOAT—i.e. greatest [player] of all time. Four years of college football stardom portend a major career in the pros, but on the brink of a contract offer, Cam is brained by a mysterious assailant. While recovering, he’s invited to train at the rural manse/compound of Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), the sport’s reigning living legend. White once suffered his own serious injury, yet miraculously recouped to triumph in record-setting season after season. Still, he’s finally reached the point where retirement seems inevitable. Ergo his offer of mentorship to Cam feels like the passing of a crown, at least in theory.
In reality, though, White’s fortress-like property is more bizarre than welcoming, his “training regime” (abetted by Jim Jeffries as a shady doctor ever-ready with an injection) more invasive and brutal than healthy. Needless to say, there’s some dark conspiracy going on here, though the screenplay by Zack Akers, Skip Bronkie, and director Justin Tipping keeps that murkily undefined—at least until a ludicrous, blood-splattering climax whose indictment of good ol’ American racism and capitalism is on the Ken Russell level of crude, gaudy surrealism. Even before then, the film has shown itself as sophomoric to the shallow core when it shows Cam as about-to-be-betrayed Jesus in a “Last Supper” fantasy tableaux. Gee, no one’s thought of that symbolism before!
I can’t imagine how stoned you’d have to be to find Him profound, though I’m sure somebody will test those particular waters. For the rest of us, though, it’s a silly, flimsy movie whose excess of audiovisual flash goes from intriguing to fatiguing in a hurry. After half an hour or so we realize cinematographer Kira Kelly’s frequently striking compositions have no underlying substance to lend them gravitas, so they begin to grate. Likewise the showy editorial and soundtrack gambits. Dominique Dawson’s costumes are so conspicuous, the movie begins to feel like a fashion promo. Chiseled lead Withers’ body gets so much exposure, you might additionally think you’re watching a supersized Soloflex commercial.
The ever-shrinking appeal of these elements is a pity, because at the outset Him’s highly worked aesthetics do suggest we’re going to get something really interesting—until we realize all this filigree signifies nothing, in the mode of high-end advertising. Notably, Tipping’s one prior theatrical feature was the 2016 Kicks, which was fairly well-received but turned me off with its premise: The entire plot revolved around a teen’s dream of owning Air Jordans.
This also feels like an elaborately packaged product endorsement, only the product is Him itself. Its caricatured supporting figures (including ones played by Julia Fox and Tim Heidecker), gross-out elements, pop-culture riffing and “Deep State”-type paranoia offer the kind of commentary that makes you worry about the future, in an entirely different way than One Battle does: Just how fucked are we going to be if societal analysis is left in the hands of artists whose worldview is entirely shaped by consumerism and celebrity? Him is currently playing theaters nationwide.
