One Battle After Another review

 One Battle After Another (OBAA) is too young to feature on the 2015 edition of the top 1000 films of all time, but it won a whole slieu of Oscars at the 2025 ceremony including Best Picture, Director, Writing - all for Paul Thomas Anderson - and Best Supporting Actor - so I just had to watch this film.

Pat Calhoun (Leonardo Dicaprio) is a washed-up, former revolutionary who used to be the scourge of right-wing governments ever by leading the activity/terrorist group 'the French 75.' Sixteen years after a devastating defeat, Calhoun is a paranoid stoner living off-grid with his step-daughter Charlene (Chase Infiniti. Charlene's mother? Another member of the French 75- Perfidia (Teyana Taylor.) Captured by the tyrannical Colonel Steven Lockjaw - she was given the choice of imprisonent or freedom and sleeping with him. She chose the latter before disappearing into witness protection. However, when Lockjaw returns to threaten Charlene, Calhoun is forced to come out of retirement along with the help of Charlene's karate teacher Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio Del Toro.)

If you're going to watch this film, then I would recommend to be patient. Paul Thomas Anderson is not known for his long films - just like Magnolia and There Will be Blood - OBAA is over two and a half hours. It also takes a while to get going. The first thirty minutes shows the vicious actions of the French 75 as they cause chaos attacking government facilities and robbing city banks. It was all accompanied with pretty cheesy and cringy dialogue.

But if you get past the thirty minutes, you will be rewarded with a thrilling film. It starred Leonardo Dicaprio in one of his most unlikely roles ever. You see Leo Dicaprio as the star and you would expect him to be the one shooting at all the bad guys and taking the glory, but, if anything, it's every other character that shows heroism. Calhoun is merely a paranoid shell of his former revolutionary self. Don't get me wrong, Dicaprio did the paranoia well, but I kept expecting him to snap out of it and for him to become a hero. 

Yet that never really happened. Dicaprio did get a Best Actor nod, although I'm not sure if his role was worthy of such an honour. Although I would say that he was very funny in this film - this was probably one of his funniest film roles especially when he is trying and failing to remember all of the secret codes the French 75 used to communicate with each other. 

I cannot deny anything from the always terrific Sean Penn who won Best Supporting Actor for playing Steven Lockjaw - this was his third Oscar too. He beat out fellow co-star Benicio Del Toro - more on him later. Lockjaw was a great character and Penn played him well. He played him with enough ferocity to make him scary, but with enough restraint not to turn him into a cartoon. A deserving win indeed.

Del Toro would have also been well-deserving of a second Best Supporting Oscar win. His character of Sergio soon becomes one of Calhoun's biggest allies and I enjoyed seeing the two characters play off each other. It was a fun role played with lots of levity. But enough with the men, the women were great too. 

This was Chase Infiniti's debut role and she had great chemistry with Dicaprio, as she played his adoptive daughter. It was also great seeing her and all the other women characters like Perfidia getting stuck in the action. I feel like in modern films there's always a disingenuous need to showing "strong female characters who don't need no man," yet in OBAA, Charlene and Perfidia came across as nothing but genuine and authentic.

Prior to OBAA, Paul Thomas Anderson was probably one of the best directors not to have won any Oscars -  before OBAA, he currently had zero Oscars out of eleven nominations. However, this was remedied as OBAA netted him three Oscars. He really proved he was a master of his craft with some terrific cinematography especially in the film's climatic chase sequence.

Like I say, OBAA is too young to feature on any top 1000 films of all time list. Surely, it will feature on future editions. But that isn't the question. Was it truly worthy of the Best Film Oscar? I'm not so sure. It was a good film ... maybe even great. But best? I don't know... 

Milk review

 Number 624 on the top 1000 films of all time is Gus Van Zandt's biopic Milk.

Milk tells the story of Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) the first openly gay publicly elected official in California. Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna and James Franco co-star.

As a rule, I'm generally not interested in biopics especially when I have no interest in the person being portrayed. I thought that would be the case when Harvey Milk, but I was proven wrong. Clever narrative framing and an Oscar-winning performance from Sean Penn was enough to change my mind.

A problem I have with biopics is generally they're just boring and try to include too much. You sometimes need a corkboard and a mile of string to keep track of everybody. However, Gus Van Zandt employed the clever framing device of Milk transcribing a letter that should only be read in the wake of his assassination (considering this is stated in the first few minutes I don't think that it's a spoiler to say that Milk was indeed assassinated.)

But this letter was a great way to frame the narrative and keep the audience grounded in the real. Of course, it helped that you had seen Sean Penn in the lead role. He rightly won his second of three Oscars for his portrayal. This is saying a lot as he was up against some stiff competition like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler and Richard Jenkins in the Visitor. However, it was Penn's ability to give a performance that was funny, serious but also inspirational to the right people that netted him acting gold.

I also really enjoyed James Franco. As a comedy actor, he can often be over-the-top, but as Milk's boyfriend and later campaign manager Scott Smith, I thought he had excellent chemistry with Sean Penn. Alas I cannot say the same for Diego Luna who played a later flame of Harvey Milk: Jack Lira. Lira was less formed as character and he felt more extraneous to the plot.

However, I think the film was initially missing a tangible villain. Sure you had Milk fighting an anti-gay system, but this isn't manifested in any one character. Not at first anyway. Sure you had the evangelist Anita Bryant who ran a rival political campaign on an anti-LGBTQ message, but she always felt too peripheral to be a true villain.

The film's true villain was Dan White (Josh Brolin) a fellow conservative city supervisor who often butted heads with Milk. Yet he doesn't appear until almost halfway throughout the film. Sure, Josh Brolin is always good, but it would have been better if he had appeared earlier in the film.

All that, notwithstanding, I thoroughly enjoyed Milk. Considering it was a biopic, I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. 

The Tree of Life review

Terrence Malik's 'The Tree of Life' does not feature on the top 1000 films of all time.

It is a highly experimental family-dama telling the story of the 1950's American family - father (Brad Pitt,) mother (Jessica Chastain) and their three sons Jack (Hunter McCracken,) RL and Steve (Tye Sheridan.) However when RL dies, the family begins to fall apart with Steve and Mr O'Brien having a tumultuous relationship. In the modern-day, an adult Jack (Sean Penn) reflects on his troubled family life.

Although the Tree of Life doesn't feature on the top 1000 films of all time list, it would definitely be number one on the top 1000 pretentious Oscar-bait list. I call it Oscar-bait. The better term would be failed Oscar-bait. It was nominated for three Oscars: director, picture and cinematography, it ultimately didn't win any. Although the cinematography was gorgeous especially the surreal visuals of the birth of the universe, it all became tedious after a while.

It reminded me of Mailk's third film: the equally pretentious The Thin Red Line, which had lots of random close-ups of bugs. Okay, it was cool and arty. But what was the point of it all? Was there even a point? Did there need to be a point? Knowing Malik, there probably was, but it all went over my head.

Another similarity is how Malik is once again wasted his casted. I can't really comment on whether Pitt, Chastain and Penn were good or bad, because they played visual to Malik's cerebral visuals. For Christ's sake, these actors have five acting Oscars between them. Sean Penn has three Oscars, yet he was completely irrelevant to the plot. Cut him out and nothing would change except for a twenty-minute shorter run-time.

The Tree of Life was classic Terrence Malik. High-brow, intellectual and just so damn pretentious.

Into the Wild review

 Number 144 on the top 1000 films of all time is Sean Penn's 2007 biopic Into the Wild.

Into the Wild tells the real-life story of Christopher Mccandless (Emile Hirsch), a recent college graduate. Disillusioned with city and capitalist life, he donates his life savings, cuts up his credits cards, adopts the moniker 'Alexander Supertramp' and backpacks around the US before finally going to Alaska to live off the land. Along the way, he meets a number of people who change how he thinks about life.

One reason why I think Into the Wild made this list was because of the universability of its themes. Christopher is one of many confused and jaded young people who go backpacking in attempts to 'find themselves. In 2019, I volunteered on a French farm and my host told me that he had deliberately moved to the countryside because he was sick of the cut-throat nature of the city.

While backpacking, Christopher finds himself in LA and staying at a homeless shelter. Already fearing he's becoming corrupted by city life, he hits the road without even staying the night. But these are themes and ideas I've seen in my everyday life. I've heard many people say they would like to pull a Henry David Thoreau and live in a hand-built log cabin in the woods.

And while Christopher idolises Thoreau and is regularly quoting him, he is far cry from being an ace survivalist/woodsman or a relatable protagonist ... at least for me anyway. I have head some people criticise him as being arrogant or naive for believing he could live off the land especially in a land as unforgiving as Alaska. And it was his arrogance that did make him a little unlikable. Sure it's all well and good having books on Alaska's flora and fauna and receiving crash courses on how to hunt and prepare game, but book knowledge can only take you so far. At some point, you need practice and experience before throwing yourself into the deep end. Although I definitely wouldn't fare much better.

But this arrogance also obscures Chris' motivations for leaving his home in the first place. It is revealed that he and sister were the product of an illegitimate relationship making them bastard children and the object of resentment for his father who is also abusive. However, I don't think this was portrayed clearly enough and I think more could have been done to demonstrate their fractious relationship. Not to mention, Chris comes from quite a privileged background and arguably he has little to be unhappy about. Having said that, just because some people have it worse doesn't therefore then invalidate Chris' experience.

This was a tragic film, but because of Chris' cloudy motivations, I was feeling less sad sympathy for him and more for the people he met and left behind along his way. There's the ageing hippie couple Rainey (Brian H. Dierker) and Jan (Catherine Keener) who has a fractious relationship with her estranged son from another marriage. This turmoil has ate away with her relationship with Rainey. But Chris helps to rekindle their love for each other and learns about family along the way.

Next you have teenage singer Tracy (Kristen Stewart) who forms an unrequited attraction for Chris. Finally, we come to the always wonderful Hal Holbrook as Ron Franz. He is an ageing veteran who lost his wife and son to a drunk driver. Now he spends his days pottering in his leather workshop as he is too afraid to face the real world. In perhaps the most heart-breaking film of the film, fearing his family name will die with him, he asks whether he can adopt Christ as his grandson. Christ replies that they'll discuss this upon his return.

While this was a powerful film with relatable themes, which sometimes broke my heart, I think this was more down to Sean Penn's writing of the suppoting characters, rather than of Christopher Mccandless himself.