One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)

[mfunk9786]

I was part of a 2G-to-3G upgrade effort at my former job (a home security outfit), and that was in the early ‘10s. Lemme tell you: talking old people into updating their old “radio” equipment is not easy or fun to do. But it does give me a weird level of knowledge re: when and how this stuff gets shut off. Just remember us expending more than a million dollars on this and then the announcement coming immediately after with a date for the 3G sunset. Whoops.

[hearthesilence]

I generally don't care about box office, but the implications of this doing badly or well could make a huge difference - pains me to say this, but I'm seeing fans obsessed with this sort of thing saying it's not selling many advance tickets, not even with the cheaper screening options, at least when compared to other event films and prestige films of similar stature. To be fair, it's probably going to do well for a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, maybe enough to be his biggest grossing film, and what people are seeing is just in the U.S., but hopefully things will pick up. A good comparison might turn out to be Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon which had excellent word-of-mouth and DiCaprio as a lead actor, but it stopped short of $70 million in the U.S. It did gross much more overseas - over $90 million - but with a budget of $200 million, it wasn't going to make back its cost at the box office.

[therewillbeblus]

My IMAX screening tonight had both low attendance and the worst audience - nobody laughed or engaged with so much of the material Anderson throws at us. Compared to the secret screening I attended earlier in the week where people 'got' everything, including seemingly trivial stuff like

Spoiler

DiCaprio's college-dorm-style tapestry behind Penn in the shot from the getaway tunnel hatch

Small gags like these make the movie such a pleasure, and it's a good reminder to get into a theatre at the most packed screening you can find. Even DiCaprio's broad comedy only worked a couple of times for them, so it was one lost battle after another

[hearthesilence]

It's a little unsettling to hear more sophisticated and critical viewers be dismissive of this when the critical reception has been over the moon - if it can't win over that audience easily, how's it going to get a broad one?

I saw something similar with the "universally" praised Boyhood (at least among critics) where you had reasonably intelligent people dislike it, albeit for asinine reasons - it was never a surprise that Linklater's personal films weren't as popular as his neatly plotted commercial works, but the "nothing happens!" naysayers were an obnoxious reminder of that. It wasn't a huge deal because that movie cost only $4 million to make and banked $50 million evenly split between the U.S. box office and the overseas tally - it never needed a broad audience and performed as well as could be hoped.

[hearthesilence]

Oof....anyone else hear that a VistaVision print melted during the third screening at the Vista in Los Angeles? (They fixed it, but it'll be missing like a second or two.)

[Mr.DarjeelingLimited]

One of the best films of the year and it doesn’t even break my top 5 PTA features. Counting Anima and Junun it wouldn’t even break the top 7

[TheDudeAbides]

Best film I've seen in a quite a long while. Anderson is in new territory in this one, the film is centered around large scale action moving at a blistering pace, but as usual he nails it and manages to feel right at home. This feels more like a Coen Brothers film than a PTA film, but that's hardly a knock. I'd compare this closer to Burn After Reading than I would Inherent Vice. I agree with everyone saying Sean Penn is an Oscar shoe-in, what a performance; he's a menacing and robotic villain while also providing a good chunk the films early laughs.

As for the films messaging, PTA seems to take some definite shots at ICE and American politics in general while not shying away from being critical of would-be revolutionaries.

Spoiler

One thing that really stuck out to me was the contrast of how scattered, desperate and panicked DiCaprios character was when his child went missing; compared with the calm, collected and organized group of Latinos Del Toro's character led. What was the worst case scenario for any naturalized American citizen was just a normal Tuesday for illegal migrants and the people who aid & shelter them.

Perhaps PTA is trying to suggest that the most impactful revolutionary work can't be done through loud & violent spectacle, but rather is achieved covertly in the shadows without the spilling of bloodshed.

[domino harvey]

This rather surprisingly received an A Cinemascore, indicating word of mouth may bring it along to whatever kind of money it needs to break even

This is, thus, DiCaprio’s second highest rated movie with audiences, behind only Titanic. I’m not sure anyone predicted a score like this — like half of PTA’s films received Cs or worse (allegedly the Master received an F and its rating was withheld)

[therewillbeblus]

The A Cinemascore is incredibly surprising to me, and I'm intrigued by how the structure of pouring genres into one another might contribute to that. Anecdotally, saw this again today with my friend's mother, who said afterwards, "If this was on Netflix, I would've turned it off after ten minutes," but she wound up loving it cumulatively

[tehthomas]

Initial reaction:

Wow.
I think PTA made his Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

[Never Cursed]

This rather surprisingly received an A Cinemascore, indicating word of mouth may bring it along to whatever kind of money it needs to break even

I'm kinda curious how the film will do in China, where it will receive what seems to be a wide release next month. (Apparently this will be PTA's first movie to receive an official theatrical release there. If Lemmy Caution is reading this, do you have any sense of if/how the film is being promoted?

[Zot!]

Initial reaction:

Wow.
I think PTA made his Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

Wow, that is very funny because I had the same exact reaction. Outside of the thematic material, which it mirrored pretty closely, for me, personally, it brought back some memories, as I saw T2 in 70mm on opening night at a 1000 person theater. Which I repeated almost 1:1 for OBAA.

[RPG]

Spoiler

Does the film ever explicitly state the time periods we're engaging in? Because I thought it was interesting how the "90s" section you're referring to was reminiscent of today (rather than the 90s) in the exact same way the future section was. I liked Ehrlich's point that "the action starts in a recognizable today before jumping 16 years forward into a pointedly unchanged tomorrow." The film is attempting to be timeless, but I think there's just as much reason to believe that the film starts in today's timeline and jumps ahead to the future (despite phones being the same, the DNA test kit seemed futuristic, DiCaprio says he was born in the 80s - which would be accurate for a future timeline - etc.), but it doesn't really matter because Ehrlich's quote hits on a theme of incessant fascism as a constant.

Spoiler

Actually, this would accurate for a modern day timeline. I believe at one point he stated he was 42 years old (I think during the health questionnaire when the woman directs him to say he's diabetic and didn't take his insulin), which would place him being born in either 1982 or 1983 (if set in 2025).

This may very well be the best American film to be released since PTA's own There Will Be Blood. Truly incredible. I think this captured the political zeitgeist in a way that Eddington attempted to and came up short. The white nationalists are seen to be comically ridiculous, but also terrifyingly powerful and ruthless.

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah you’re right - I caught the age on subsequent viewings, definitely modern day, even if it’s all timeless “fascism doesn’t go out of style” stuff

[bearcuborg]

The Thursday 11pm VistaVision print I saw at the Regal in Union Sqaure did not have trailers-that’s been the memory that has brought the most smiles to my face since seeing this movie. I wonder if others have been this fortunate…

The print burned out twice, within the first 30mins-but it was smooth sailing after that-unfortunately the film bros next to me shouted some boos for the brief delays… Having a connection to the projectionist allowed me some access to the set up-pretty cool stuff. I’ll try to share photos later.

[pistolwink]

One big thing this film misses in terms of contemporaneity is the shift to pervasive surveillance and techno-fascism. Apparently Anderson was persuaded (by DiCaprio and Chase Infiniti) to include cell phones, and cell-phone tracking is a motif in the movie, but beyond that, there's almost no allusion to the internet and to the way our privacy, at home and in public, has been nearly obviated by state and non-state actors alike. That's something Eddington gets closer to.

This isn't a criticism of the film, which is way better than Eddington in every respect, and which wasn't intended by Anderson as a "realistic" portrayal of America in 2025 — or circa 2008, when the French 75 are at their height, at a time when in the real world there was scarcely any coordinated left-wing violence in the U.S. (Of course, the latter ananchronism is an artefact of the film's main source, Vineland, which is partly a roman à clef about the Weathermen and other 1960s radicals.) Just an observation that the film's portrayal of revolutionary activity, violent and non-violent, has a nostalgic quality insofar as it doesn't take some basic contemporary realities into account.

[Zot!]

There is a bit of reference to the surveillance thing actually. Bob is terrified to be online, and the Sensei character has no fear whatsoever of being online and making phone calls. I think the inference is that Bob is paranoid, and that Sensei knows being online without being actively surveilled (like Bob's daughter) is not actually risky. At least that is what I got out of it.

[pistolwink]

Right, the film acknowledges the possibility of being tracked through your cell phone. But in the real world that's only the tip of the surveillance iceberg, which includes everything from traffic cameras to social media to online shopping to your IRS return to your medical records feeding into a repository of digital data largely stored on servers owned by three or four companies. A repository that is, or might be, available to state and nonstate actors for all kinds of purposes, as we're seeing with ICE's collaboration with local police, banks, cell-phone providers, etc, etc. See e.g.

Eddington ends with the construction of a giant data center, while there's no AI or Palantir in the version of fascism presented by One Battle After Another.

[hearthesilence]

The print burned out twice, within the first 30mins...

Ugh. You mean the print stalled and melted at those points?

[bearcuborg]

The print burned out twice, within the first 30mins...

Ugh. You mean the print stalled and melted at those points?

Yes, but I have heard some real horror stories where the Vista Theater in California had to show it in DCP so everyone got refunded.

[Zot!]

Sadly, the the custom-made platter system probably wasn't up to the task.

[mfunk9786]

Despite him having multiple Oscars already, I have thought "Sean Penn is back!" multiple times in the last week... he's back, folks. There's no way he doesn't take the Supporting Actor statue for this, mark it down.

[pistolwink]

It's been funny watching him on the Q&A/press junket for this film, as Penn remains a glowering, self-serious (not to say assholish) presence, even as everyone else who made the film seems to be having a lot of fun promoting it. But, yeah, this movie reminded me why he was commonly described as the "best actor of his generation" back when he made films a lot of people wanted to see.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Speaking of Penn, I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere, but his performance is basically

Spoiler

evil Popeye, right? He has a similar mug, body type, and even walks like him.

It a shame the Vistavision platter is malfunctioning at the Vista. Saw it on the Wednesday preview and had no issues. I was told the Vistavision projector there is on loan from the Academy Film Archive and retrofitted for running DTS and a platter by Warner Bros. They ran it for a week at the studio for staff prior to the wide release. I mentioned in another thread that the nice folk at Boston Light and Sound told me they were doing the same, so I wonder how their system compares. Part of me wants to blame the Vista and their commitment to running only film without paying for union labor or union rates. A bad precedent for a place that wants to celebrate projection and film as the core of the cinema experience. Again, a burn looks dramatic in projection, but it’s only a few frames lost. The issue is that it seems persistant.

I am curious about the framing ratios on this film and the different versions. I’m glad to have seen the 1.5 aspect ratio version, which I guess is basically the 3x4 aspect ratio of standard 35mm point-and-shoot camera. My feeling is that it was designed and shot with 1.85 in mind as there’s a bit of headroom in all shots, but if we’re getting into it, it does remind me quite a bit of the way Johnathan Demme would shoot a film.

[beamish14]

Speaking of Penn, I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere, but his performance is basically

Spoiler

evil Popeye, right? He has a similar mug, body type, and even walks like him.

It a shame the Vistavision platter is malfunctioning at the Vista. Saw it on the Wednesday preview and had no issues. I was told the Vistavision projector there is on loan from the Academy Film Archive and retrofitted for running DTS and a platter by Warner Bros. They ran it for a week at the studio for staff prior to the wide release. I mentioned in another thread that the nice folk at Boston Light and Sound told me they were doing the same, so I wonder how their system compares. Part of me wants to blame the Vista and their commitment to running only film without paying for union labor or union rates. A bad precedent for a place that wants to celebrate projection and film as the core of the cinema experience. Again, a burn looks dramatic in projection, but it’s only a few frames lost. The issue is that it seems persistant.

I am curious about the framing ratios on this film and the different versions. I’m glad to have seen the 1.5 aspect ratio version, which I guess is basically the 3x4 aspect ratio of standard 35mm point-and-shoot camera. My feeling is that it was designed and shot with 1.85 in mind as there’s a bit of headroom in all shots, but if we’re getting into it, it does remind me quite a bit of the way Johnathan Demme would shoot a film.

I have tickets for this Saturday, but I guess I might have to go to Universal Citywalk if things go to shit. WB probably should’ve sprung for technicians to be on hand, too