One Battle After Another

 

One Battle After Another

Writer & Director ~ Paul Thomas Anderson

2025 ~ US

Stars ~ Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro,

Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti

 

Paul Thomas Anderson offers up another breathless kaleidoscopic drama full of satire, poignancy, excellent ensemble performances and several effortlessly suspenseful set-pieces. Under it all, Johnny Greenwood’s score plays between scenes and time to provide a fluidity to all the chaos. Covering a lot of ground, Anderson’s editing and script effortlessly leapfrogs decades and characters with a credo that nothing changes that much and we are forever chased down by our past. Indeed, the basis of the script is Tomas Pynchon’s novel written in 1990, and then Anderson says this took him about twenty years to write, but the observations and commentary, even with a little updating, are still relevant.

I’ve seen it criticised for being “liberal propaganda”, but the leftist terrorists here are surely just as caricatured as the weirdo, heartless Right Winger cabal, the slimeball white men plotting in bunker backrooms. The black gun totin’ pregnant promiscuous revolutionaries who forfeit motherhood for jealousy of her own baby and The Cause and the burn-out paranoid loser stoner dad are exactly fitting a conservative view of Leftist Revolutionaries to sneer at. Anderson says that he based the French 75 movement on The Weather Underground from the Seventies, which is a weirdly dated exemplar when there are surely more current possibilities to imagine (but you can’t be taken seriously if you say Antifa). Brett Easton Ellis accuses the film of “liberal mustiness”, of not reading the current political room;  but if the characters are manifestations of what their enemies imagine, the film’s  representation of the Right Wing is less outdated than of the left. That it provokes criticism for the portrayal of Prefidia too surely means it is poking at both sides; not that Ellen E Jones’ criticism of Anderson’s tripping on the Racist Jezebel trope is without merit, but that it perhaps misses a wider picture where all the main characters are filtered through questionable-cartoonish-broad filters. I bristled at both the naming of characters as Lockjaw and Junglepussy for being trite/obvious/dubious, but the the former is also funny as you roll your eyes, and learning that the latter is Shayna McHayle’s stage name means it is owned as a deliberate provocation; and certainly she uses her screentime to strut it, even as it hits on blackpoitation.

 

Sean Penn’s inscrutable sleazeball weirdo is unforgettable: I mean, “Col. Steven J. Lockjaw”… But I don’t think I go too far out on a limb when I say we see such cartoonish types representing Republicans and the interests of White Supremacy on a regular basis currently. Sean Penn finding the scariness of the caricature, Lockjaw is both ridiculous and dangerous, which is a truth. Leonardo DiCaprio bumbles and rants comically over his earnest intentions with Benicio Del Toro quietly securing his corner by moseying through his scene-stealing whilst everyone else does the fireworks. Teyana Taylor is the force of nature that propels the narrative long after she’s gone in hiding, and Chase Infiniti as Willa brings the down-to-earth, confused yet headstrong outcome to all of this. The prodigy of both sides, Willa’s story is the most shaded and it is pertinent that Infiniti’s performance doesn’t follow the broad strokes most around her: her character is single-handedly dragging the film from its Seventies’ Classic feel (“mustiness”?) into a yet uncharted future rebelliousness.

 

The police descending upon Sensei Sergio St. Carlos’ operation as Bob argues about passwords trying to connect with his old movement and, especially, the final car chase are highlights. Dark farce and excellent propulsive pacing mean the momentum never lets up: we are dropped into the action and it never slows, and despite what it is made of, it never feels polemical over the movie needs of fun and thrill. Afterwards, you can do your think-piece. Amusing, exciting, a little surprising, it moves from the debatable broadsides into something more heartfelt and, through the symbol and promise of Willa, something more hopeful, even if there is no certainty of what.

In fact, how relevant and zeitgeisty it feels makes it a significant satire, because: if ‘Civil War’ was portentous in its declarations, ‘One Battle After Another’ roots it all in the messy insecurities and weirdness of the individuals concerned, trying to live down their past or abusing their positions. In fact, its skewering of political extremities to personal flaws and ego is evergreen, especially for a country always at war with itself and in the Trump era feels more vital than ever.

Dr Who: Horror of Fang Rock

Dr Who: Horror of Fang Rock

Director ~ Paddy Russell

1977, 4 episodes, UK

Writer ~ Terrance Dicks

Stars ~ Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Colin Douglas

It’s the claustrophobic lighthouse setting and sense of unseen dread lurking outside that makes this one. Originally a Terence Dicks vampire story (that emerged as the later story ‘State of Decay’), a hangover from the series’ previous glorious run of Gothic Horror pilfering, it features a superior chamber piece of disposable but vivid characters and an alien threat that provides the only vivid colour and light to the damp drabness.

Tom Baker is playful, charming, bullying and arrogant, whose high voltage and sometimes inappropriate smile and eccentric approach always makes the Doctor compelling. His glee at delivering the announcement, “Gentlemen, I've got news for you: this lighthouse is under attack and by morning we might all be dead. Anyone interested?” is a highlight. But it’s Leila that gets several great moments here, rolling her eyes at and not at all fitting in with the turn-of-the century’s learned helplessness construction of femininity. Louise Jameson’s excellent line-reading cannot be underestimated, making a character that will almost always be out-of-place (that is, more than usual for a companion) credible and dignified, as eager to learn as to vanquish enemies, never stupid as her “savage” origins might have her. See her explain lasers to an early Twentieth Century lighthouseman.

The cast, character interactions and insider trader backstory provide some meat as the alien menace is simply a fluorescent green blob and the showdown his mostly an argument on the stairs. Still, it is surely the shipwreck that is the most lacking, effects-wise, rather than the alien, which is at least striking (which I always misremembered from childhood being like a green bubble-wrap sleeping bag). It is the under-siege scenario with the atmosphere of creeping menace and the Doctor and Neela running around solving things that we came for, and there is plenty of that to enjoy.

You can debate what the war between the Rutans and Sontarans would look like afterwards for extra fun. 

  

Lost Hearts

Lost Hearts

Director ~ Lawrence Gordon Clark

Writer ~ M.R. James, Robin Chapman

1973, UK

Stars ~ Simon Gipps-Kent, Joseph O'Conor, James Mellor

 

I’m a big fan of M.R. James, the granddaddy of the modern ghost story, straddling the oral tradition to its more modern shadings. Originally Montague Rhodes James wrote these stories to tell audiences at Eton and Cambridge University at Christmas in the early Nineteen-Hundreds, so it seems appropriate that he became a fundament of the BBC Christmas Ghost Story in the Nineteen-Seventies. He is master of the erudite, slightly aloof slow-build that delivers a sudden shock, not only of ghosts, but demonic and folk-horror unspeakables. They still shock.

 

‘Lost Hearts’ was broadcast on BBC1 on Christmas Day 1973, directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark and written by Robert Chapman. It makes great use of Lincolnshire locations and unforgettable library hurdy-gurdy music. As a story, it is an example that James was a far grislier author than assumed from his status as a purveyor of the Victorian Ghost Story. There is cruelty, brutalised corpses and psychology that doesn’t age, giving the influence of his short stories a longevity and permanence. The brief gore imagery and horror hokum of this adaptation reminds me of the crudity and disgust I felt as a child at the Horror top Trumps: something unpleasant and visceral.  

 

As a TV short, this ‘Lost Hearts’ adaptation has a Seventies execution that makes its tacky Halloween costume elements as disquieting and grim as only TV budget can achieve. It also casts an everyday drabness to a lost era rather than ornate set design, adding to the mundane atmosphere shocked by horror that captures the aura of MR James, a trait throughout the series of adaptations. 

 

There is a big English house, fog, clueless staff, the real threat of abuse and the jangly vengeance. Presiding over this is Joseph O’Connor outdoing the eccentricities of Michael Hordern’s mumbling-to-himself performance from Jonathan Miller’s ‘Whistle and I’ll Come to You’ ~ the 1968 black-and-white short film that started the MR James Christmas franchise across the Seventies. He is wonderfully ripe as a bumbling older peculiar academic whose performance is outlandish until it isn’t. There’s a distinctly spooky edge, the sense of something truly unspeakable, and the imagery of grinning ghosts mixed with almost antithetical hurdy-gurdy music is likely to be unforgettable.