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philthepill.online · @philthepill.online@bridge.neodb.net

Rated One Battle After Another 7/10

There's a lot of great stuff in "Paul Thomas Anderson's most accessible film," including an enthralling Benicio del Toro performance and subplot that will become only more relevant as our fascist regime slithers its tentacles into more innocent communities' livelihoods. All the elements to do something truly great were here, but the corner that PTA cut - or perhaps, as fans would argue, intentionally wrote past - was the screenplay moments that set up the character payoffs throughout. Willa's relationship with Perfidia is at the core of this. There's an interesting aspect in that a director like PTA is obviously going to relate more to the Bob character and he's going to use him as vehicle to explore the feelings of those whose major activism days stopped when they started a family. But Willa's story does unfold with PTA at a distance, sort of just watching her instead of giving us subjective moments inside that character's psyche. Key Spielbergian moments like a forlorn look at a photograph or a biting remark during breakfast with a pregnant silence - PTA takes it as a given that we're going to understand what Willa feels about the voids in her life, but part of the magic of the movies is hooking us with empathy even when we can clinically understand everything as a plot summary. It's a key ingredient that Anderson choose to eschew in favor of some interesting procedural approaches to the thriller and action genres. Also, sorry to Jonny Greenwood fans, but I could have used a more traditional film score instead of the persistent piano tinkle)

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Published 2025-10-16 00:00 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere