"Snap Crackle Pop"
French 75 resurges for one last call...Do you remeber the code ? "What time is it?" / It's Time for REVOlution (again ?)
One Battle After Another is Paul Thomas Anderson's biggest film to date (you dpon't wanna know the budget, out of which a quarter is Leo's salary..). Most expected and already lauded as film of the year. Sean Penn is in for an Oscar nod surely-best supposting. Di Caprio does a OUIH bit imo. He's like Rick Dalton playing the fried brains revolutionary recluse Bob Ferguson aka Ghetto" Pat. Benicio Del Toro is also superfunny as the Sensei, shades of him in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas...but Sean Penn's performance as Col. Steven J. Lockjaw is surreal. One for the books !
Chase Infiniti's big screen debut as Bob and Perfidia's daughter Willa is intense. Special mention to Eric Schweig as Avanti.
Plus the Christmas Adventurers Club, man, kudos for this one off ;)
I'd call this No Country For Any One...
It's a relentless ride, shot beautifully on 35 mm film in VistaVision (second film in this format in this century, after The Brutlalist), by Michael Bauman (his second film with PTA after Licorice Pizza), his first feature credit !
The film should be read through his soundtrack -I mean the overall score, again by Jonny Greenwood, his faithfull composer, this time a psychotronic overpulsating paroxistic one. I expect his Oscar next March.
The soundtrack includes great songs, from Steely Dan (
Dirty Work), to Jackson Five (
Ready Or Not Here I Come), Tom Petty's American Girl on the end credits (you will know why, "
she was raised with Promises"), Ella Fitzgerald and
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, thge classic and still subversive Gil Scott-Heron proto-rap from 1970, which plays a role also in the plot.
Thomas Pynchon's book Vineland (1990) was the inspiration of PTA, who did a crazy looney tones political bonanza. Reminde me a lot of Eddington. It's somehow PTA's funniest film to date. Some bits reminiscent of the weed haze of Inherent Vice, his adaptation of Pynchon's other counterculture book.
There is also a big connection (and inspiration) with Gillo Pontecorvo's revolutionary classic Batle of Algiers (1966).
Epic duration, 2h41, but it goes fast, on this one I would've liked to be even longer, more Christmas Adventureres, Billy Goat, Beegee, Comrade Josh and Talleyrand.
The film is dedicated to Adam Somner, the legendary second unit director (Gladiator, Phantom Thread) and producer of 5 of PTA's films from There Will Be Blood, The Master, Inherent Vice, Licorice Piza to this last, OBATA. Somner died last year in November after completing this film...
4 out of 5, 8 out of 10 !!!
*Defintely it's a film that you can revisit, plus very TODAY in the actual political climate.
