One Battle After Another — 3.5/5
Expectations hurt this one. Not because I expect a lot from PTA, I think he has extreme highs and then a bunch of movies that absolutely do not connect with me despite being celebrated by others. So yeah, the expectations that others create for him make me less interested in jumping into a similar situation of being befuddled by the larger Criterion-American populace. And so—I enjoyed the act of watching this movie, and for two hours kept asking myself — "Is it great yet? Is it great yet?" At the very end, it started approaching something I could rationalize as great? Maybe? I'd have to watch it again to confirm, and to the movie's credit, its form makes it something easy to rewatch. It feels like PTA's 'everything connects in some tenuous way' by way of Soderbergh's light '70s action chase adventures by way of Quentin Tarantino's gritty caricaturizations. So maybe not as fun as those two on their own, but also a bit more than those two on their own. And in the center, some really fun characters!! One of Leo's best roles, Benicio's very best role, Teyana Taylor has an iconic look, and Sean Penn rides a sort of perfect line between serious actor and comedic role. I think, in general, intellectual directors have trouble with humor, and this is probably a better example of them pulling it off, short of, you know, making me laugh. It has a tone! That great undefinable thing that all good movies somehow achieve. And so, to the ending — if I were to try to draw a larger meaning from the movie, and I do have to try, it's that we are all of us going to be failed revolutionaries in whatever respects, flawed as we are with our original and unoriginal sins, but the only hope we have in creating a better world is creating children that are better than us. And part of the way we make them better is that we raise them well, but also that we fail them. They will mirror us, we will see them reflected in us, even in inverse.
Dunno, I might be forcing it?
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