Reasons To Go See 'One Battle After Another,' Ranked

Top ten, here we go...

TEN: It is a three-hour movie that deals with heavyyyyyy political themes related to Our Current Moment In Time and yet it still absolutely breezes by, especially in its second and third acts when all the foundation settles into place and the action propels itself forward like a dang rocket. 

NINE: If you are looking for a movie that will allow you to be very smug afterwards and do that thing where you tell people “Honestly, it’s so important right now,” but also want to see a movie where Leonardo DiCaprio accidentally gets so high that he forgets all his secret code words while dialing into an underground call center, buddy, you are in luck. 

EIGHT: Jim Downey, the legendary SNL writer who has made appearances in a bunch of SNL-adjacent movies (he's the “May god have mercy on your soul” guy from Billy Madison), shows up as part of a powerful secret racist cabal and every time he opened his mouth all I could hear was “… the New York financier?” which is a very niche internet thing that is apparently so embedded in my brain that it almost derailed my concentration for a minute. 

SEVEN: The movie has been riding something like a week-long run of near-universal acclaim, which means we’re only a few days away from some dipshit contrarian trying to hijack the discourse with an article with a title like “Actually, Here’s The Problem With One Battle After Another” or, even worse, some politics-poisoned dork taking a jackhammer to the subtext to score a point in a game no one else is playing, and I really do recommend you see it and develop your own opinions before any of that happens. 

SIX: Not to go all film geek on you, but Paul Thomas Anderson is doing some really cool stuff with cinematography here, especially in a kind of slow-motion car chase toward the end, and I’m really glad I saw it on a bigass screen. 

FIVE: At some point during the movie, maybe you, like me, will remember that Paul Thomas Anderson is married to Maya Rudolph, and then maybe you, also like me, will spend a few minutes imagining the two of them sitting at home, scripts in their hands, trying to work out the beats before filming starts, with Maya Rudolph performing the roles of every character in the movie and doing a different voice for each one.

FOUR: Benicio del Toro shows up in the second half of the movie as the sensei of a local dojo and proceeds to steal every single scene he is in as his character reveals himself to be the coolest and least flappable dude who has ever lived. 

THREE: It has been days since I saw this movie and I am still not entirely over his line reading of “I’ve had a few… a few small beers.”

TWO: Leonardo DiCaprio is so good in this as a burnout former revolutionary who is trying to raise a smartass teenage daughter, which is frustrating because people this good looking and talented should not be allowed to also be this funny, and yes, this is the same complaint I had after watching Ryan Gosling destroy as a burnout private detective trying to raise a smartass teenage daughter in The Nice Guys, another great movie where A Bozo Develops A Purpose, which is one of our finest genres of film.

ONE: It really is a good movie, guys. 

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STUFF I CLICKED ON

— Carly Lane interviewed a post-Alien Timothy Olyphant 

— Drew Magary wrote about Pablo Torre cooking the sports journalist beat

— interesting article about movie marketing written before One Battle After Another killed at the box office

— I am legitimately kind of mad at Tom Ziller for giving me hope before my hated/beloved 76ers start their season

— Vulture wrangled Nancy Wilson to talk about performing Barracuda with Chappell Roan, which I will now post because it is cool

— embarrassing behavior by Apple to pull the Jessica Chastain show no one was even mad about (or… aware of?)…

— especially considering what Peacemaker did last week…

— which James Gunn wrote and planned without even knowing what would be happening in the real world

— corndog recall

— drunk chimpanzees

— the skateboard Tony Hawk used for his 900 sold for $1.15 million, and when I make a movie about stealing it, the heist will be set to Goldfinger

— Red Panda, one of the world’s great entertainers, is on the mend

— “‘Very mean squirrel’ seeking food has sent at least 2 people to the ER in a California city”

— “Hershey wins lawsuit claiming its Reese's Halloween candies aren't spooky enough”

— “The Mets Went Out Like Chumps”

— the look this ref gives a player who cussed at him has been making me laugh for days now

Okay, that's it for this week. Please subscribe and share and have a few small beers.