Anderson orchestrates ambitious Battle
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another comes fully freighted with great expectations. Proclaimed by critics as the front runner for the Oscar for Best Picture, it seems preordained to deliver the director recognition from the Academy that’s long overdue. Yet, much like Martin Socrsese’s The Departed, this is far from Anderson’s best work. It pales in comparison to Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood and The Master or Phantom Thread, all far more complex and assured movies that showcase the filmmaker at his best. Still, the wheel has turned, it’s been ordained Anderson is due and Battle will likely take the top prize, and he the Oscar for best director.
That’s not to say Battle is a bad film, far from it. It is, at times, riotously funny, contains some of the year’s best acting, and moves briskly, its elaborately plotted story breezing by confidentially, sweeping the audience along with it. And while many are touting its daring politics, Anderson’s intent and position are obvious. He’s not making a grand statement here, so much as picking low hanging fruit. To be sure, the theme of political injustice and the sway of a totalitarian government is timely, but Battle plays better as an absurdist comedy, Anderson’s cast obviously relishing the opportunity to lampoon our mad, skewed world.
Based on the novel Vineyard by Thomas Pynchon, Anderson’s script is a sprawling, at times ungainly construct that features a myriad number of plot strands which will keep viewers on their collective toes. Starting in the late 2000s, the story focuses on the domestic terrorist group the French 75. Intent on freeing jailed immigrants, robbing banks to fund their revolution and addressing racial injustice, they go about brazenly enacting their manifesto, led by the charismatic Perfidia Hollywood (Teyana Taylor). Inexplicably, she gets involved with Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio), a union that on the surface makes little sense, but ultimately leads to the birth of their daughter, Willa.
All seems well until they cross paths with Col. Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a morally constipated military man, tasked with bringing down the French 75. He’s passionate about completing this task, driven by his attraction to Perfidia, which excites and disgusts him in equal measure. He succeeds in part, which leads to his target leaving the country, forcing Bob to raise Willa on his own.
This comprises the movie’s first act, the bulk of the story taking place 16 years later. Willa (Chase Infiniti) has become a belligerent teen, Bob has killed countless brain cells through alcohol and drug abuse, and Lockjaw is still intent on tracking down the remaining members of the terrorist group. As a result, a great deal of mayhem ensues. Bob and Willa find themselves on the run, aided by old and new colleagues (Regina Hall and Benecio Del Toro), while Lockjaw is sponsored by a shadow group of conservative zealots to continue his oppressive operations.
Anderson’s approach to the material will likely leave viewer’s breathless, as one bracing incident trips on the heels of the next. But unlike most modern films, it never feels like an assault but rather an invigorating experience, the filmmaker never presenting the many storylines in such a way that we feel adrift or confused. That I was engaged from the first minute to the 161st is a testament to Anderson’s storytelling prowess and his ability to keep us in the palm of his hand throughout.
He’s aided mightily by his exceptional cast, from the main players to the minor. DiCaprio’s never been funnier, his ability to transform from slacker to fugitive in the six seconds a source of constant delight. A prolonged sequence in which he struggles in vain to recall a password he first heard 16 years earlier is a master class in timing. Penn’s trademark intensity is put to good use, his ramrod posture and determined gait tell us all we need to know about Lockjaw, the actor generating menace at every turn. Del Toro provides a great comic foil for DiCaprio, his easy nature beautifully complimenting his co-star’s mania. Infiniti, in her film debut, doesn’t shrink for the challenge of sharing the screen with her veteran castmates, commanding our attention and sympathy as the revolutionary in the making.
The film loses its way a bit toward the end, Anderson’s need to tie up the many loose ends leading to some questionable choices. For as sprawling and, at times, messy, the film is, it all comes to an end a bit too neatly. Still, there’s no denying the director’s noble intentions. Battle wears its politics on its sleeve, its anti-fascism stance evident in its every moment. While its obvious nature is rather facile, perhaps it’s better that there’s as little confusion as possible regarding the warning it contains and the call to action it preaches. While I would have appreciated a more subtle approach, I suppose our times call for more simple statements of belief and intention, lest there be any confusion as to where anyone stands. In Theaters.
Dead focuses on wrong story
I’m hoping his colleague and sometime co-star Emma Thompson isn’t following in his footsteps. Her latest, Dead of Winter, is cut from the same cloth as Neeson’s many Taken knockoffs, as its premise revolves around a haunted character seeking redemption who must rest a young person in peril. Unfortunately, screenwriters Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Keeb make many of the mistakes these films make as their story contains more than a few forehead-smacking moments. Too often, the characters’ actions defy reason, their intelligence abandoning them at key moments.
Set during a brutal Minnesota winter, Barb (Thompson) embarks on an ill-advised trip to a remote lake as the weather is taking a turn. Relying on her foggy memory of days from long ago, she loses her way and stops at an isolated home to ask directions. Its seeming sole inhabitant (Marc Menchaca) is less than cordial. Still, he manages to grunt out a helpful pointer or two but not before Barb notices a large patch of blood-soaked snow nearby.
Dismissing it, our heroine heads to her destination. As she makes her journey, we’re privy to flashbacks of her first date with her husband, which took place at the lake she seeks, where they went ice fishing. However, as Barb tries to replicate this moment, having cut through the ice and dropped her line, her reveries are interrupted by screams and gunshots. Soon, she’s greeted by the sight of her reluctant navigator chasing and catching a young woman (Leah Marsden), threatening to kill her if she tries to escape once more. As Barb sets out to rescue her, she soon discovers a formidable foe in the person of the man’s desperate wife (Judy Greer).
To be sure, most action films require that our suspension of disbelief be stretched a bit more than usual. However, mine reached its breaking point before 30 minutes had gone by. Jacobson-Larson and Keeb shamelessly pad their script by having Barb, who seems like a reasonably intelligent person, make one bonehead move after another. These actions put her in peril repeatedly, extending the story unnecessarily. An encounter with two hunters who decide to take matters into their own hands is the most egregious example of plot inflation, one of many incidents included to bolster the script to feature length but fail to move the story forward.
To cap it all off, the couple’s reasoning behind kidnapping the teen is nonsensical and insulting. My eyes could not have rolled any further back into my head after this revelation. And what makes all this so regrettable is there’s a poignant story at the heart of Dead. The flashbacks woven in between the tired action tropes, recounting Barb and her husband’s relationship, are genuine and moving. During these brief interludes, the movie finds its feet. Too bad director Brian Kirk and his company didn’t explore this quiet love story rather than produce another tired exercise. In Theaters.
Well-meaning Eleanor lacks heft
I’m not sure why Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut Eleanor the Great didn’t appeal to me. The story from screenwriter Tory Kamen is competent, the cast is solid and the premise is interesting enough. All of the elements are in place to deliver a feel-good story laced with a healthy dose of social consciousness and yet, there’s something lacking in this well-intentioned movie. (Full disclosure: I’m currently on a diet at the moment so perhaps my blood sugar was low as I watched this. Maybe …)
Eleanor (June Squibb) and Bessie (Rita Zohar) are perfectly suited for one another. The pair of widows are both in their late 80s. One picks up the other when either is feeling low, they encourage each other to get out of bed each morning, remind one another to take their meds and go out for their morning walk together. Some mornings are earlier than others as Bessie often wakes up frantic, having dreamed of her experiences in the Nazi concentration camps where she and her family were held. These memories finally leave her when she dies one morning peacefully in her sleep.
With no options, Eleanor moves to New York City to live with her daughter, Lisa (Jessica Hecht) and grandson, Max (Will Price). Cantankerous and feeling out of place, she visits a Jewish Community Center and sits down in a support group, thinking it is for widows and widowers. Only when its members begin to speak does she realize it is for Holocaust survivors, each still trying to come to terms with their experiences. Unsure of what to do, Eleanor begins to recount Bessie’s experiences, presenting them as her own. Taken by her tale, an NYU journalism student, Nina (Erin Kellyman) observing the group, asks if she can write a paper about her. Lonely and with little else to do, Eleanor agrees.
Of course, her ruse will eventually be undone, but before that occurs, an unlikely friendship develops between writer and subject. Coincidentally, both are grieving, Eleanor for Bessie and Nina for her mother, who recently died. Her journalist father, Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has been too wrapped up in his own grief to recognize his daughter’s suffering. That this subplot isn’t developed more is a gaping hole in Kamen’s script.
This bit of narrative neatness is a bit much. However, the interactions between Squibb and Kellyman are genuine, while their characters are sympathetic, so you’re likely to give this a pass. The performances are fine across the board yet there’s a lack of emotional heft that ultimately undercuts the film. For a movie intent on examining the effects of grief, as well as help document the atrocities of the Holocaust while paying tribute to its victims and survivors, it fails to stick the landing. While I sympathized with all concerned, I wasn’t moved. No tears came nor a pang of conscience over my good fortune. It was simply another movie I needed to watch and share my thoughts about.
At one point, Eleanor consults a rabbi who provides her with the rationale to keep on living her lie. He tells her, “Deception isn’t always a bad thing if the intention is good.” Johannson is hardly deceptive in her approach, but I fear her timidity in pushing her cast to dig deeper emotionally is what ultimately undoes Eleanor. Without question, her intentions are good. It’s her delivery that’s lacking. In Theaters.
This article appears in September 25-October 1, 2025.
