One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)

[TheTreeSong]

A global initiative to champion something everyone actually hates to make one person's life miserable——can you be gangstalked by a movie?

No, but bored critics feeling resigned to a weak year and going along with the pack doesn't seem far fetched to me at all.

[domino harvey]

A global initiative to champion something everyone actually hates to make one person's life miserable——can you be gangstalked by a movie?

No, but bored[1] critics feeling resigned to a weak year[2] and going along with the pack[3] doesn't seem far fetched to me at all.

In one sentence you’ve once more created three made up issues based on your own vibes. I refuse to let you subject this forum’s community to any more of this nonsense. Show the receipts or we’ll show you the door

[DimitriL]

It's not about liking other films more. It's more the general feeling that this has been a weak year (and a weak time in general) so there's an almost bored resignation in coronating PTA in an "Eh, sure why not? Not like there's much else out there right now." manner rather than it coming from a genuinely passionate place.

Or maybe you're just not on PTA's bandwidth, as he just took a torch in Le Monde to the whole "this has been a weak year" claptrap:

“The whole industry is constantly complaining. The sky is always falling. But let’s take a look at this year: “Eddington,” “Weapons,” “Bugonia,” two Richard Linklater films, “Sentimental Value,” “Marty Supreme,” which is coming out. Whoever wants to start complaining about movies right now needs to cool it.”

[mfunk9786]

Haven’t heard a single film critic or filmmaker or film enjoyer describe this as a weak year.

[MichaelB]

No, but bored critics feeling resigned to a weak year and going along with the pack doesn't seem far fetched to me at all.

I genuinely don't know a single critic who'd do that. What would be the point?

A sensible, evidence-backed answer would be appreciated, although I fear that it's a pretty forlorn hope.

[mfunk9786]

Just so all are aware, the user who derailed this thread is currently cooling off for a couple of weeks (not for this thread specifically FWIW). He won’t be able to respond to you directly for a little while.

[MichaelB]

In case people are as baffled by this as I was, he was specifically banned for his behaviour in another thread.

[Noiretirc]

It's just one battle after another.

Anyway...hopefully we can all be reunited for the 20 Jan disc release, which contains no extras, but a steelbook which follows soon after will have said extras, he said, while wondering if this is all in some other thread.

[TheTreeSong]

This has been getting ripped apart the last week or so (I think it's begun streaming recently on HBO Max) by Black audiences. Part of it is probably because it's seemingly the main competition for Sinners for awards but there's certainly other valid reasons. PTA with his weak writing only has himself to blame. As mentioned by other users here earlier in the thread, the Blaxploitation tropes were cringeworthy (When did people stop saying this and just start saying "cringe"?) and dated. And the "But Willa is the hero!" defenses don't really hold water IMO since she's so underwritten and functions more like a plot device for most of the film.

He went for the Tarantino thing but failed. Tarantino certainly has his issues in this department but he still wrote a 3-dimensional Black female character in Jackie Brown. I'd even say Vivica A. Fox in Kill Bill in her very brief screen time feels less like a trope than any of the women in OBAA. A similar thing happened with Licorice Pizza. PTA clearly thought the Bruce Lee segment in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was hilarious and wanted his own version yet failed again, leading to those awful restaurant scenes in Licorice Pizza.

[domino harvey]

This has been getting ripped apart the last week or so (I think it's begun streaming recently on HBO Max) by Black audiences. Part of it is probably because it's seemingly the main competition for Sinners for awards but there's certainly other valid reasons. PTA with his weak writing only has himself to blame. As mentioned by other users here earlier in the thread, the Blaxploitation tropes were cringeworthy (When did people stop saying this and just start saying "cringe"?) and dated. And the "But Willa is the hero!" defenses don't really hold water IMO since she's so underwritten and functions more like a plot device for most of the film.

He went for the Tarantino thing but failed. Tarantino certainly has his issues in this department but he still wrote a 3-dimensional Black female character in Jackie Brown. I'd even say Vivica A. Fox in Kill Bill in her very brief screen time feels less like a trope than any of the women in OBAA. A similar thing happened with Licorice Pizza. PTA clearly thought the Bruce Lee segment in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was hilarious and wanted his own version yet failed again, leading to those awful restaurant scenes in Licorice Pizza.

Jesus Christ, you learned absolutely nothing while you were banned

[Brian C]

This guy is like the swimminghorses of Armond Whites.

[Matt]

only has himself to blame

My friend, is there any movie you liked this year? I'd advise you to make a positive post on it and try to make some kind of contribution here other than rage bait. The ice is very thin for you right now, and moderators' patience is even thinner.

[MichaelB]

I had a girlfriend once who’d affect to dislike everything.

I daresay she thought it made her seem cool and sophisticated—she was in her very early twenties—but it was honestly exhausting and, I suspect, indicative of huge personal insecurity.

Because if you box yourself into that mindset, intentionally or otherwise, subsequent expression of enthusiasm for anything becomes magnified, potentially embarrassing, and therefore best avoided.

Anyway, the relationship unsurprisingly didn’t last, and while we’re still friends on social media some three and a half decades later, she very rarely posts anything that’s worth latching onto, as she doesn’t seem to have noticeably changed.

[MichaelB]

Incidentally, whatever Black American audiences may (allegedly) think—although I note once again the lack of any supporting evidence—Jedna bitwa po drugiej seems to have gone down a storm in Poland, the linked reaction being pretty typical. You can probably get the gist from the opening and closing sentences even if you can't read Polish.

Parafrazując Alexa Fergusona: Kino, bloody hell! Oniemiałem. I nie dlatego, że kocham reżysera produkcji, której należą się wszystkie Oscary świata, najprawdziwszą miłością. To jest po prostu urzekająca oda do rozsypanej i uginającej się od wewnętrznego chaosu Ameryki. A przy okazji absurdalny w wydźwięku list miłosny adresowany jednocześnie do ojców i X Muzy jako takiej. Powaga miesza się tu z jej brakiem, komedia z tragizmem, nadchodząca rewolucja z moralną zgnilizną. Prawdopodobnie nie istnieje produkcja, która lepiej podsumowywałaby czasy współczesne. Viva la revolucion, viva Paul Thomas Anderson!

This Google translation seems reasonably accurate:

To paraphrase Alex Ferguson: "Cinema, bloody hell!" I was speechless. And not because I love the director of this production, which deserves all the Oscars in the world, with the truest love. It's simply a captivating ode to a crumbling America, reeling from its internal chaos. And, at the same time, an absurd love letter addressed simultaneously to fathers and the Tenth Muse herself. Here, seriousness is mixed with its absence, comedy with tragedy, the coming revolution with moral decay. There is probably no production that better sums up the modern era. Viva la revolucion, viva Paul Thomas Anderson!

I can see why it would have particularly appealed to Poles, who for obvious historical reasons generally have a very keen interest in stories about against-the-odds resistance activism, and they'll also be right at home with the cynicism, sarcasm, general pessimism, and first-hand familiarity with living in a country "reeling from its internal chaos".

I'm greatly looking forward to seeing it again myself, although I might as well wait for the 4K UHD disc that's out at the end of January in my neck of the woods.

[Zot!]

Interesting concerning the Polish response…I do feel like PTA is playing to the gallery in terms of MOR champagne-socialist virtue signaling (ergo popular European views on contemporary America) but its nimble and entertaining enough that the political fluff doesn’t weigh it down. I’m also keen on revisiting. I would be interested in a source for the response by black audiences, because I too remarked above that I felt that the racial component was obvious and poorly implemented.

[TheTreeSong]

It's all over social media. Just check the OBAA tag on Threads for example. A lot of the viral comments have been from Black viewers and are overwhelmingly negative. I'm not just pulling this out of thin air.

As far as my "negativity", I just said yesterday that I enjoyed Marty Supreme, flaws and all. I do tend to be more down on films lately because I think it's a weak time for films in general IMO.

[domino harvey]

It's all over social media. Just check the OBAA tag on Threads for example. A lot of the viral comments have been from Black viewers and are overwhelmingly negative. I'm not just pulling this out of thin air.

Until you demonstrate actual proof, we’re just going to assume you’re making shit up. I just wasted a few minutes of my life doing what you just suggested— I don’t have Threads but I have Twitter. Considering “Black Threads” is not a thing, if anything this should favor your argument. Not a single one of top tweets argued what you claim. If there was such a groundswell of movement in how this film was being received by black audiences, surely some of the first seventy or so tweets featured in the top section would address this? In conclusion, you have lost your rights to claim anything without proof. Don’t even talk about tying your shoes without dated pictorial evidence of them on your feet

[MichaelB]

It's all over social media. Just check the OBAA tag on Threads for example. A lot of the viral comments have been from Black viewers and are overwhelmingly negative. I'm not just pulling this out of thin air.

As far as my "negativity", I just said yesterday that I enjoyed Marty Supreme, flaws and all. I do tend to be more down on films lately because I think it's a weak time for films in general IMO.

Are you familiar with the term "confirmation bias"?

Unless a position is genuinely howling-at-the-moon demented (and sometimes even then), you can come up with "evidence" to back up anything if you immediately go "LA LA LA CAN'T HEAR YOU" whenever confronted with something that challenges it.

And in this case it's not a very interesting stance in the first place. A lot of people self-evidently like One Battle After Another—I'm more than happy to stand by my own reaction, which is that it (intentionally) made me laugh out loud more than quite a few overt comedies and that the two-and-three-quarter hours absolutely flew by. Quite a few adore it. Some, for whatever reason, are less keen. All of which are perfectly reasonable positions.

But where you and I differ is that I'm not going to aggressively call out people for having a different opinion from me, and I'm certainly not going to post ludicrous conspiracy theories about critics getting together in some big cabal to deliberately vote for a film they disliked (and attach their name and reputation to said vote)—as someone who's been writing professionally about film since the last century, I can assure you that this simply doesn't happen, and I can't imagine the circumstances under which it would ever happen. And it's a perfectly reasonable reaction to give people promoting such mad theories the side-eye, because they're so clearly not interested in good-faith discussions.

Oh, and there are as yet undiscovered species in the most far-flung parts of the Amazon rainforest who must surely be broadly familiar with your take on recent films by now. Seriously, give it a rest.

[MichaelB]

Until you demonstrate actual proof, we’re just going to assume you’re making shit up. I just wasted a few minutes of my life doing what you just suggested— I don’t have Threads but I have Twitter. Considering “Black Threads” is not a thing, if anything this should favor your argument. Not a single one of top tweets argued what you claim. If there was such a groundswell of movement in how this film was being received by black audiences, surely some of the first seventy or so tweets featured in the top section would address this? In conclusion, you have lost your rights to claim anything without proof. Don’t even talk about tying your shoes without dated pictorial evidence of them on your feet

To be fair, it took only a few seconds' Googling to establish that Black audiences in the US have indeed reacted negatively to the film, and it's not a recent phenomenon either—this strongly critical take was published in September, as was this one, and I can absolutely get why Black women in particular might be less than enamoured of certain aspects of the film.

However, TheTreeSong didn't mention any of this until literally just now, which strongly suggests that he's been deliberately and cynically trawling for negative takes and has decided to jump on this particular bandwagon because it exists and it's trundling.

[domino harvey]

I don’t doubt there are negative takes on the film from members of every community— it’s a mainstream film starring one of the biggest actors in the world, there’s a larger potential audience for this versus other PTA films and there will naturally be more divergent takes as it becomes more widely seen due to streaming availability. But there is no seachange here. Most of the posts I just scrolled through were effusively positive, some were confused, and a couple were hostile… that does not indicate anything TheTreeSong has suggested is occurring en masse

[Zot!]

To be fair, it took only a few seconds' Googling to establish that Black audiences in the US have indeed reacted negatively to the film, and it's not a recent phenomenon either—this strongly critical take was published in September, as was this one, and I can absolutely get why Black women in particular might be less than enamoured of certain aspects of the film.

Thanks, some of that speaks to the weird “othering” that I felt went on, but as a SWM, I was coming at it more from my exceptions to what I viewed as cartoonish caricatures due to lazy writing rather than being genuinely offended.

[domino harvey]

One post (your second link is a comment on the first post) with a little over 300 likes… this is your evidence of something going “viral”? It took me ten seconds of Googling to find this mecha viral post of over 500 likes praising the film’s depiction of Latinos - I’m cherry picking, just like you are, but even so it isn’t hard to find an opposing view that sees merit in the film’s depictions of race

EDIT: He deleted his post while I was responding, for anyone confused about what I’m talking about

[Noiretirc]

Offs he's still here?

Edit: I'm convinced that this person throws rocks into water then pisses themselves laughing at the waves.

[TheTreeSong]

One post (your second link is a comment on the first post) with a little over 300 likes… this is your evidence of something going “viral”? It took me ten seconds of Googling to find this mecha viral post of over 500 likes praising the film’s depiction of Latinos - I’m cherry picking, just like you are, but even so it isn’t hard to find an opposing view that sees merit in the film’s depictions of race

EDIT: He deleted his post while I was responding, for anyone confused about what I’m talking about

Again, I have plenty more examples (and with more likes since that's important apparently) but you've made your point clear. No disliking a movie you like or I may get banned again.

[Brian C]

Again, I have plenty more examples (and with more likes since that's important apparently) but you've made your point clear. No disliking a movie you like or I may get banned again.

Look, I'm not a mod and I'm not going to ban you, but I wonder if you can look within yourself to ask if, just maybe, you're the one being weird here.

No one cares if you can cherry-pick examples of black people not liking this film. That's just not the issue here. It's not like you're trying to engage in a meaningful discussion of the film's treatment of race or anything else, you're just using black audiences as human shields in your own battle to drag the film down. It's cynical and kinda gross and no one wants to hear it.