KWIF: One Battle After Another (+3)

 KWIF=Kent's Week In Film. This week, Kent is brain-tired after an exhaustingly thinky period of work and game, so buckle in for some abject mediocrity in the world of film reviewing (as if I deliver anything different).

This Week:
One Battle After Another (2025, d. Paul Thomas Anderson - in theatre)
A Serious Man (2009, d. Joel and Ethan Coen, dvd)
Final Destination (2000, d. James Wong, crave)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982, d.Tommy Lee Wallace  - hollywood suite)

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I just happened to be looking at a Google search result for One Battle After Another to see an "audience rating summary" of the film that, as of this writing, was sitting at an average of 3.1 out of 5 stars with over 2000 review. The rating breakdown was almost an even split between 5-star and 1-star reviews with very few 2-through-4-star reviews scattered throughout. Doing a cursory glance thought these reviews (I mean, who exactly is reviewing on Google? I don't think I've ever even looked at the Google "audience rating summary" for a film before, nevermind read any of them.) I had, wrongly, assumed that the 1* reviews were going to be simple right-wing bot-generated reviews decrying this film for it's anti-government/pro-antifa viewpoint, but from the dozens or so I took in, they *seemed* to be from legit viewers genuinely disappointed by the movie. Of course, in scanning through about 100 of these reviews, I did wind up seeing the same or similar review from the same or multiple users so, as with anything on the shitternet take it all with a healthy dash of salt. [Toasty, I think it's time to take this blog into old school 'zine territory. Get off-line and IRL.]

I thought for sure that One Battle After Another would, in today's world, rub the MAGA crowd (more specifically the MAGA leadership) the wrong way. It opens set in the nebulous past, 17 years-ish ago (it's very hard to say if the "present day" of OBAA is today-present-day or some past and/or future present day... it all goes to show how achingly timeless the film feels in a way) with a group of "freedom fighters"/"domestic terrorists" in the Weather Underground vein of militant left-wingers raiding an encampment where illegal immigrants, mostly of a Central or South American persuasion, are being held.  The French 75 liberate the prisoners from the camp and their explosives expert, "Ghetto" Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) makes a real show of it. Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), whom Pat is s sort-of in a relationship with, takes the base's commanding officer hostage and sexually denigrates him. Unfortunately for Perfidia, Lockjaw (Sean Penn) totally gets off on it, and becomes obsessed with her, stalking her in her subsequent efforts, and, on occasion manufacturing encounters with her, which he always lets her takes control of.

The immediacy of seeing people in pens right at the start in the film is disarming and, regardless of one's political views, is likely to pull their brains right out of the film with thoughts of the modern day. But it should also cause one to call into question the time period of the film, and think about just how long the government and military has been putting immigrants in pens and how little any of it has solved over the past 20+ years. It's also asking the audience to immediately be on the side of a domestic terrorist group, and that can be a tall ask, as well as making a left-wing militia the center of a big-damn Oscar-play movie is only going to fuel the fires of the commander-in-cheesepuff in his anti-antifa crusade. It's a film based on the 1990 Thomas Pynchon novel "Vineland", so it predates all our current strife, but it's uncomfortable just how explosively relevant it feels to the immediate now.

OBAA's  lengthy prologue runs through a year in the life of the French 75, along with moments in the relationship of Pat and Perfidia as she winds up pregnant, has a baby, and Pat tries to pressure her into settling down. But Perfidia is a warrior, and a runner, and she will never stop fighting as long as there's a fight to be had. At least that's what she thinks of herself as she's petrified of being a mother and anything other that a fighter. "Settling down" infers giving into the capitalistic nightmare of the American dream and nuclear family and she would rather die in a blaze of bullet than be suffocated by such a life. She keeps fighting and eventually Lockjaw, who has let the whole thing go on under his obsessive watch, turns the screws. Either Perfidia will love him or he's going to tear it all down. Caught between a rock and a hard place, she turns rat, and gives up her people to save herself, going into witness protection. Only a few of the French 75 manage to escape alive, including Pat and their daughter Charlene. Perfidia, meanwhile, escapes her new life and runs to Mexico where she disappears forever.

Pat becomes Bob, Charlene becomes Willa, and 16 years later they've forged a new, if uncomfortable life in the sanctuary city of Baktan Cross. Bob has taken to extensive drinking and routine pot smoking while Willa is an intelligent, hyper-competent, teen with a fighting spirit, and a strong anti-establishment streak. Lockjaw, meanwhile, has risen slowly through the ranks and positioned himself as a right-wing idealogue within the military. He catches the attention of a think tank of rich and powerful racists, The Christmas Adventurers, as a potential new member. It's Lockjaw's deepest dream to be a part of that club (hovering right above his dream of being loved by Perfidia). They ask him a litany of questions about his "purity" which he answers with the most assured lies committed to film. This sets Lockjaw off, and he uses his position and power to hunt down the ghosts from his past that could jeopardize his chances of joining the Adventurers ("Hail Santa!"). This includes looking for Perfidia among the refugees in Baktan Cross, under the guise of the city being a hotbed of heroin manufacturing.

This military raid on the city leads to riots in the streets and Bob/Pat becoming reactivated, mostly because Willa/Charlene (Chase Infiniti) has been taken by the French 75 remnants, and Bob's brain is too fried to remember the safety phrases and pass codes to get the information to go to her.

Currently in the hot-bed of Coen Brothers filmography, it's hard not to see DiCaprio's Bob/Pat as "The Dude" Lebowski-coded. Much like The Dude, Bob spends the majority of the film thinking he's being proactive but never actually accomplishing anything substantial. He's pretty feckless. The appearance is everything revolves around him, but the reality is, things are happening around him, but he's inconsequential to it all. It's relatable in a way. How many of us feel like "progressives" but do very little to advance "the cause" (any cause). How many of us wish we were revolutionaries, fighting the fight that needs to be fought, but incapable of pulling ourselves away from screens or shopping or sports or other distractions to make that much of a difference. DiCaprio has been a superstar for so long, and a guy who seems so bought into his own image, that he's disconnected from reality. He's not seemed human for a very long time. Playing Rick Dalton in Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood showed he was ready to break free of his image, and here he's playing his most fallible, most human character, I think ever, and he's at his most likeable in doing so. 

Sean Penn's Lockjaw is such a unique figure on screen. At once he is a human cartoon, the absurd posture and physicality, the that-stick-up-my-ass-ain't-ever-coming-out look on his face is never not laughable. He is a figure that deserves mockery and derision. But he's also an absolutely vile, utterly gross individual who couldn't be any creepier if he had snakes and crickets crawling out of his orifices. His sense of superiority, even in the face of his own inferiority, just makes you want to puke on him, and one gets the sense that he would like that, because he's gross.

Chase Infiniti, as Willa, has to contend with a constantly disappointing father, her abandonment issues, the ghosts of her parents coming back to directly haunt her, and ultimately go face-to-face with Lockjaw who had a very uncomfortable relationship with her mother... and in every scene, Infiniti plays Willa as the adult in the room. The moments where Infiniti has to play simultaneously tough and scared is a really hard emotional balance to achieve and she absolutely loves there with seeming honesty for much of the film. It is an incredible performance and we will be seeing much more of her soon if this were a just world.

OBAA is long, it's challenging, it's darkly funny and at times exceptionally thrilling. It's bracing and confrontational, it's uncomfortable, and it's a little icky, even. It's exceptional and sometimes unpleasant. I can see why there are viewers who earnestly detested it, because it's a provocation. It's a film that is getting in your face both politically and emotionally and trying to rub you the wrong way often. It doesn't necessarily want you to agree with it, and it may not agree with you. 

I found it to be epic and engaging, but I didn't love it, whether it's because I kept fighting it, or it kept fighting me, it's hard to say. And yet, in spite of not loving it, I still think it's great.

[Poster talk ... the two posters I selected for this entry are two of the greatest things about this pretty great film that I didn't love. The first is a weird IMAX poster representing the film's climax which is a slow pursuit through the rolling hills of a desert highway. there are a lot of great sequences in the film, but this is an all-time great moment in cinema. the second poster I chose because it features Infiniti, and she deserves even more of a spotlight (and I didn't want to use the "character poster" because I'm tired of "character posters"] 

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As I've been watching their films week-to-week alongside the Blank Check Podcast, one of the things that keeps coming up over and over again with the brothers Coen is how much they dislike talking openly or honestly about their films. They're cagey interviewees who fuck with anyone who dares ask them an honest question about their films or filmmaking. You may get an answer out of them that is the truth, a lie, or a joke, or sometimes just a spiteful retort, and a lot of the time you can't tell the difference. As filmmakers, they want their work to stand on its own, and as creators they have no interest in being subjects themselves. They make narratives, they don't want to be part of them.

For A Serious Man they did drop hints about how their mid-west Jewish background influenced the story about a Jewish man in the 1960's mid-west whose life begins to unravel. But is this film any more personal to them than any other? Who can really say but the Coens and they're not really saying.

But after their massive critical, box office and awards-darling success of No Country For Old Men (and the lest critically and awards-decorated, but equally box-office boffo Burn After Reading) the Coens were due for a true blank check/do whatever you want project, and A Serious Man feels like the definitive Coen Brothers film.

It is an unpacking of Jewish culture that seeks neither to define it, nor be a statement on it. It is a film that lives and breathes the culture, but whether it's doing so honestly is besides the point. It isn't the Coen Brothers working through something, it's them in full-blown storytelling mode being hyper-specific about place and time and yet fudging the details because sometimes they can't be bothered to research and sometimes it's just more entertaining to make it up.

Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnick, a professor of theoretical physics at a Minnesotan university. He has a Korean student failing his class trying to bribe him for a passing grade, while also being under review by the school whether he's right for tenure. When he returns home, Judith (Sari Lennick), Larry's wife, asks for a divorce, because she's gotten involved with the widower across the street, Sy Abelman (Fred Melamed). His shrieking eldest teen Sarah is frustrated with everyone and everything in the , and his younger teen Danny is getting ready for his bar mitzvah while also ducking a monstrous classmate he owes money to for the pot he bought off him. Also Larry's older brother Arthur (Richard Kind), the one with the sebaceous cyst on the back of his neck, has been sleeping on his couch for weeks with no signs of him leaving.

On top of his marriage falling apart, Larry's heard that the review board is getting letters about him, painting him in a bad light, he has Columbia House calling him about overdue payments, and his alpha male war vet neighbour seems to be waging a passive aggressive war to take over some of his property. Everything is getting worse for Larry, and all he wants to know is why? He never did anything.

And that's the crux of the film. Well, the two cruxes. The cruxi.

Why?

And

"I never did anything!"

Larry searches for answers from various rabbi, from friends, from adversaries, from lawyers, and nobody cans answer "why" these things are happening to him. The film teases and teases that revelations are forthcoming, that there is potentially answers, that there's some form of text or knowledge or wisdom or signs that will provide answers. But even after Sy Abelman dies suddenly, and Danny gets through his bar mitzvah beautifully (despite being high as the stars), and Larry's seemingly given good news about his tenure, with things suddenly looking up for Larry and Danny after much angst (and oh so traumatizing anxiety dreams), the film ends screaming at them that shit. just. happens. There's no answers, there's no karma, it just is the unknowable, the chaotic nature of reality that provides no certainty. (Larry's two big class showcases are talking about the mathematical formulae proving that the Schrodinger's Cat paradox is scientifically unknowable, and the the mathematical equation proves the Uncertainty Principle (which, after doing a quick search about, I'm pretty certain that the Coens are uncertain what the Uncertainty Principle actually is, beyond thematically relevant to the story they're telling.))

Larry (and even Arthur's) refrain of "I never did anything", applied to in different contexts is not the excuse they think it is, the way they try to get out of trouble our avoid consequences. But the truth is, "I never did anything" basically is the answer to Larry's question as to "why". Nearly everything that's happening to Larry is because he never did anything. His absence of doing has led him down a road to being unfulfilled and disconnected.

A Serious Man is an incredible film, one that toys with the audience as much as it toys with its characters. It opens with a prologue that, as the Coens describe in an interview, they wanted to carry the air of a Jewish folk tale, but they didn't know any Jewish folk tales, so they made one up. It is, they say, an amuse bouche, not a prologue. It's like the short cartoon before a feature, bearing no weight. Except it's obviously a lie, as well as being the truth. It's setting up the deep-rooted Jewishness of the film, even if it's a fabrication.  It's a wonderfully twisty opening sequence that feels both deeply connected to and worlds apart from the film that follows it.

It's a riotously funny, deeply uncomfortable film without ever being cringe-comedy. Cringe comedy comes from a protagonist doing the wrong things and being adamant about their rightness, whereas here Larry is just a passenger in his own life, unable or unwilling to take the wheel despite it being right in front of him. It's a film for all of us meek types who just want things to be okay, too afraid to take risks, too worried about uncertainty, and so things crumble around them as a result of inaction.

Burwell's score is intense. Deakins once again shoots the goddamn hell out of it (through Deakins' lens, nothing is more idyllic than this suburban Minnesota neighbourhood). It is not my favourite Coen Brothers films, but it probably should be, and it's a contender for their absolute best.

[Poster talk... there is only the one poster for A Serious Man. it's a shot from the film of Larry on his roof fixing the aerial because Danny can't watch F-Troop or something, and the moment when Larry spots his next door neighbour, the divorcee played by Amy Landacker, sunbathing nude, and Larry can't help but take a reluctant ogle. there are so many gorgeous shots Deakins makes in this film but somehow that moment becomes a turning point moment for Larry in the film (but does it really?) so it makes the poster. The restraint though of never showing the nude sunbathing any closer than Larry's vantage point is such a perfect Coens move though, a real "am I actually seeing what I'm seeing" moment)

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Final Destination released its sixth entry in the franchise this year with Bloodlines. I'm not sure I ever saw another entry beyond this first one (and the internuts is trying to tell me that Ryan Murphy created a TV series called Final Destinations that ran 5 seasons, well, I say "show me proof, because I don't think it ever existed"). 

The film opens with teen Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) and class getting ready for their senior trip to Paris. Alex is having a lot of anxiety over the trip, but manages to get on the plane. He seems to pass out and has a vision of a disaster happening on the flight and when he wakes, the events from his dream begin to repeat. He freaks out and he, and a few others, are kicked off the plane. The plane does explode shortly after take off and Alex isn't feeling good about any of it.

The other survivors, though, starting with Alex's best friend, have freak accidents or unceremonious death. Alex thinks that death is coming for them, because they tricked death or escaped it. Alex begins looking for patterns and slowly goes mad, but as more deaths occur, others begin to reluctantly see what he sees. There is, possibly a pattern. 

Final Destination does a few things exceptionally well, the first of which is really effectively capturing the anxiety of flying, and even if you're not an anxious flyer, the film effectively relates that feeling. Secondly, it logically starts turning Alex into a sort of conspiracy nutcase, and by the end of the film Sawa leans into it pretty effectively. Third, the deaths are all very entertaining in how Rube Goldbergian they get. The domino effect that is needed to cause the wild deaths are so utterly improbable, except the film really makes it feel like it's the obvious outcome in any of these situations.

This started life as a treatment for an X-Files episode, if the internets can be believed (can it?), which explains how X-Files greats James Wong and Glen Morgan got involved in the film. It's so perfect a premise for a teen-deaths horror movie, where the killer is none other than fate, one that can't truly be escaped.

[Poster talk... there are a few posters for Final Destination, including the most typical one with the main young cast along the lower half in a very black and blue colour pallette with the plane in a lightning storm above the title... but that's so played out. i chose the so very, very X-Files-inspired poster which I'm not sure if I've ever seen before. It's so fitting given the director]

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In Halloween III, a doctor treats a patient who was found having collapsed outside a rural gas station. The patient clutched a soft vinyl halloween mask so tight, the hospital staff couldn't release it from his grip. In his few waking moments he proclaimed "they will kill us all". Shortly after being sedated and put in a room, a suited stranger walks in, crushes the man's skull, and leaves, only to die shortly after entering his car.

The whole situation is just perplexing, and the doctor, Dan Challas, (broad-chested, mustachioed Tom Atkins) starts inquiring wherever he can about what the fuck is actually going on. He meets Ellie (Stacey Nelkin, a real Adrienne Barbeau-type), the patient's daughter, a fetching woman about half his age. She's even more eager for answers, so Dan schluffs off his parenting duties (yet again) to run away with this young lady to the Silver Shamrock mask factory not far away in upstate California. It's a strange town completely run by this factory and its owner, and it has a 6pm curfew every night.

Nothing is right in this town and between screwing each other's brains out Dan and Ellie go investigating, only to learn the terrible secret far too late to do anything about it.

Season of the Witch is a sublimely ridiculous horror movie that just revels in its 1980's-ness, from the TV and radio ads, to the kind of American folksy quaintness that had already disappeared but was still being clung to.There's only the slightest hint of anti-capitalism baked into this story about a rich industrialist asshole who effectively buys a whole town so he can set in motion a plan to turn children's brains into snakes and crickets. To what end? Probably the raising of some elder god. And also this genius has figured out how to make lifelike automatons. This movie is wild and so much stupid nonsense fun.

I've seen Halloween III at least four times, but I still didn't really remember how everything played out in this film, so the process of discovery of Dan and Ellie playing amateur detective was thrilling. I had no recollection of what the big eval plan was (hell, I still don't). It's a rare film that seems to feel like you're discovering it all over again each time you watch it (not that it would stand up to regular repeat viewings mind you).

In the long list of Halloween films, Halloween III: Season of the Witch is probably my favourite next to the original. Michael Meyers is a fun horror icon, but also a pretty redundant one and his potency has never truly surpassed the original. But it's Season of the Witch's deviation from Meyers that makes it so exciting and enjoyable. It was the promise of something maybe really different, except audiences at the time rebuffed its lack of masked murderers (it's full of masked murderees instead) and so the fourth entry would go right back to the same old well.

[Poster talk... this one is cuh-lassic. Just so beautifully engineered with the bold seric font that was so highly prevalent in early 80's horror, along with the drop case first and last letter, all seemingly sweeping out of the haunted figure hovering in the clouds over costumed children in distorted silhouette. the red-orange tinge amidst a sea of black offers a haunting pop of colour. it's all so ...rough, unrefined, and yet completely charming. there's no other poster, but why would it need one. this is perfect]