{"id":150937,"date":"2025-09-17T18:21:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T18:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/150937\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T18:21:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T18:21:07","slug":"pta-makes-a-resistance-masterpiece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/150937\/","title":{"rendered":"PTA Makes a Resistance Masterpiece"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThese are curious and perilous times we live in, the kind that call for courage and perseverance on all fronts. It can be exhausting, even if you\u2019re not trying to take down the establishment or have long since given up the righteous fight. Paul Thomas Anderson<\/a>\u2019s One Battle After Another is a lot of things: a parable about fathers and daughters, a conspiracy thriller for the ICE age, an ensemble comedy that encourages all-stars to get their best eccentricity on, the single greatest film of 2025, a movie that\u2019s less a VistaVision adaptation of Thomas Pynchon\u2019s 1990 novel Vineland than a passing nod to the author on the way to its own profound insights.<\/p>\n

\n\tAbove all, it\u2019s an act of resistance, both the lower-case and capital-R type, that suggests it may have an answer as to how we battle through this onslaught against our better angels. But first, a few things need to get blown the fuck up. <\/p>\n

\n\tLuckily, this woozy, winding epic has a handful of people on deck who are willing to do exactly that. They\u2019re the French 75, a loose organization of self-appointed urban freedom fighters led, more or less, by Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor<\/a>). The group has targeted an immigration holding center in San Diego, in what they hopes will be the first salvo in a revolution. They need to make an \u201cannouncement,\u201d which is where \u201cthe Rocketman\u201d comes in. He\u2019s Pat, a.k.a. Ghetto Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio<\/a>), and specializes in weapons, bombmaking, creating a big noise. After the 75 slip into the camp under the cover of darkness, he\u2019s tasked with providing the fireworks. It\u2019s a display of pageantry designed to complement Perfidia\u2019s war-cry mantra: \u201cFree borders, free bodies, free choices and free from fuckin\u2019 fear!\u201d You could say the same thing about the sequence itself, which Anderson stages like a spectacle in miniature, complete with a rallying, second-hand rush. We\u2019re only 10 minutes in, and already at a full gallop.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTeyana Taylor and Sean Penn in \u2018One Battle After Another.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWarner Bros<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, Perfidia needs to neutralize the person in charge, a military colonel named Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). He\u2019s a hardass with a hard-on for power \u2014 this is not a colloquialism; Lockjaw is in a priapic state when we meet him \u2014 and takes the indignity of being imprisoned in his own prison extremely personally. The gent with the bad alt-right haircut is also a Neo-Nazi who nonetheless recognizes a fellow warrior in Perfidia, and a mixture of contempt and lust envelopes the rat bastard like a shroud. Lockjaw vows that they will meet again, and makes good on his promise. He\u2019s one third of a triangle that will involve him, Perfidia and Pat. It ends with a baby, a bank robbery gone bad, and the French 75\u2019s leader being put in the Witness Protection Program before flying that particular coop to parts unknown.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is merely One Battle After Another\u2019s appetizer course, a way of setting the stage for the struggle and the stakes to come. Fast-forward 16 years later and, as the voiceover tells us, \u201cthe world has changed very little.\u201d Still, times moves forward. Perdidia remains in the wind. Pat has become an every-stoner named \u201cBob,\u201d having lived underground in the fictional Northern California town of Baktan Cross and raised his baby in peace for well over a decade. That infant is now a teenager named Willa (Chase Infiniti), practicing her martial-arts moves in a dojo as Steely Dan\u2019s \u201cDirty Work\u201d plays on the soundtrack.<\/p>\n

\n\t[A quick aside about the music: Johnny Greenwood\u2019s score could not be better suited to PTA\u2019s vision of a broken America or the constant forward momentum of the film\u2019s pacing, whether he\u2019s arranging symphonic bursts of strings or utilizing a single, insistent piano note plunked for maximum tension. These two continue to have the sort of divinely simpatico creative relationship that ranks up there with Spielberg and John Williams, or Hitchcock and Bernard Hermann. And yet, when you see this introduction scene set to the Can\u2019t Buy a Thrill track, you\u2019re reminded that this is same filmmaker who gave us that pitch-perfect \u201cHe Needs Me\u201d cue in Punch Drunk Love<\/a> and a whole K-Tel compilation\u2019s worth of hits to reflect the ever-changing moods of Boogie Nights. It\u2019s enough to make you weep. Nobody knows how to utilize a needle-drop better.]<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tChase Infiniti in \u2018One Battle After Another.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWarner Bros. Pictures<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd Lockjaw? He\u2019s trying to gain entry into the rancid elite via a group known as the Christmas Adventurers\u2019 Club, made up of millionaire string-pullers yearning for a world of racial purity and those \u201cAmerican-born by gentile,\u201d yadda yadda yadda. First, however, he has to track down Bob and Willa, and tie up loose ends. And blessed with a lot of soldiers and firepower that may be from one of many independent militias or may be from the U.S. government itself \u2014 six of one these days \u2014 Lockjaw is determined to see his mission through. The character\u2019s name is not just highly Pynchonesque but very well-earned, by the way; Penn plays this obsessive man as a walking, talking balled fist, with ramrod posture and a permanent expression of distaste. It\u2019s an expert portrait of self-loathing and redirected rage, and a reminder that though the actor has been more selective about taking on screen gigs, he\u2019s still a strong contender for GOAT status. Penn knows exactly how to walk the line between caricature and the truthful cracking open of someone determined to stay locked on target. This is best-in-show work.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe\u2019ve barely even skimmed the surface of this heady mix of father figures and bad dads, underground railroads and war machines, secret societies and state-sanctioned violence. One Battle After Another is truly one stunning, thrumming bit of business after another, blessed with DiCaprio\u2019s manic take on paranoid parental guidance, understated supporting turns from Regina Hall<\/a> and Benicio Del Toro<\/a> as allies to the cause, and enough detours through the source material to capture the literary giant\u2019s vibe. (A trip to the weed-growing convent run by the Sisters of the Brave Beaver comes straight from the text, with near-verbatim exchanges.) There\u2019s a serious flexing of chops on display, notably during some cross-cutting between two opposing camps before a raid and two different, equally kinetic car chases. Yet it\u2019s never virtuosity for virtuosity\u2019s sake. Anderson is intent on telling a story, not blithely showing off. If this ambitious tale of familial bonds and institutional might also offers a rebuke to the idea that the movies are a thing of the past and should just go gently into the night, that\u2019s a bonus. It\u2019s a giant, fit-to-burst attempt to be as intimate as possible. <\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tPTA has, of course, tackled T. Pynchon before, and nailed the writer\u2019s signature funky absurdism \u2014 one part motormouthed Fred Allen<\/a>, three parts the Furry Freak Brothers \u2014 with his 2014 film Inherent Vice. Here, he\u2019s using the book as a springboard for what feels like his own fixations and preoccupations, his personal feelings of empathy and outrage. Vineland takes place squarely in Reagan\u2019s 1980s, with burnt-out 1960s radicals. Battle is not tied to any particular era, any particular revolution. The filmmaker has both stripped the narrative down and somehow exponentially complicated things by unmooring it from the period \u2014 it\u2019s set in a timeless, perpetual present that feels uncomfortably like America circa right now. That\u2019s why the first half feels like a declaration of war, bustling with a sense that some sort of flip-the-bird action is needed, and the back half makes you sympathize with everyone\u2019s frazzled, desperate exhaustion.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd yet: there\u2019s hope in them thar Northern California hills, which brings us back to that aforementioned answer. In its sprawling attempt to partially wrap its arms around the Great-Step-Backward Age we find ourselves in, One Battle After Another shares a slight kinship with another shoot-the-moon auteur work of recent vintage: Eddington. Ari Aster\u2019s film stared directly into the abyss and, shuddering, worried about how we could or should fight back. Anderson\u2019s humanistic masterpiece of a movie says: You fight it with love. That\u2019s the end game. That\u2019s how you retain your decency and sanity. That\u2019s the only way you protect the future, and change it. That\u2019s how you live to battle another day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"These are curious and perilous times we live in, the kind that call for courage and perseverance on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[79967,17532,49,48,75,15462,15461,17533,17534],"class_list":{"0":"post-150937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-alana-haim","9":"tag-benicio-del-toro","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-leonardo-dicaprio","14":"tag-paul-thomas-anderson","15":"tag-regina-hall","16":"tag-teyana-taylor"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}