Many critics feel that Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another passionately captures the zeitgeist, but author Bret Easton Ellis takes another view of its timeliness: He says the film already feels “very dated” and suspects it won’t hold up.
The film, released September 26, follows Leonardo DiCaprio as Bob, a burned-out former revolutionary who emerges from hiding when the evil Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) comes after Bob and his teenage daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti).
Many critics on both the left and right see it as a rejection of Trumpism and a celebration of leftist revolutionary spirit.
The film has almost universally positive reviews. The New York Times critic Manohla Dargis, for example, wrote that while she is “still sifting through its ideas and its images,” she believes One Battle After Another is “a cry from the heart that’s also a crystallizing image of resistance. It’s one for the ages, wild and thrilling, and every bit as American as the red, white and blue.”
She also noted that the film critiques liberals, and not just the bullying tyrants who Bob and Willa resist. She cited one scene, for example, in which an ineffectual Bob gets stoned and watches the classic film The Battle of Algiers, which depicts Algerian fighters battling for freedom from France.
One dissenter about the quality of One Battle After Another is critic Armond White, who sees it as potentially dangerous: In a piece for the conservative National Review, he said the film “undeniably romanticizes political assassination” and called it “the year’s most irresponsible movie.” His take led the highly influential Drudge Report on Tuesday and early Wednesday.
Bret Easton Ellis on One Battle After Another
And here enters Bret Easton Ellis. In addition to authoring American Psycho, Less Than Zero, and the recent The Shards, Ellis has become one of our most erudite and bluntly honest film critics. He speaks regularly on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast about movies new and old, never holding back on often unpredictable or contrarian opinions. He was not impressed, for example, with the widely celebrated Sinners.
In the latest episode of the podcast, Ellis noted that he is a huge fan of Anderson, and believes his 2007 There May Be Blood may be the best film of this century. But he was disappointed by One Battle After Another, and the critics’ praise of it.
“It’s kind of shocking to see these kind of accolades for — I’m sorry, it’s a not-very-good movie — because of it’s political ideology. And it’s so obvious that is what they’re responding to, why it’s considered a masterpiece, the greatest film of the decade, the greatest film ever made. Because it really aligns with this kind of leftist sensibility,” Ellis told his listeners.
The author believes that very soon, the film will be seen as “a kind of musty relic of the post-Kamala Harris era — that thing that everyone gathers around and pretends is so fantastic and so great when it really isn’t, just to make a point. And that’s unfortunate, but that’s where we are now.”
Ellis noted on the podcast that he did like aspects of the movie — like Bob’s attempts to get in touch with the revolutionary underground, and its gorgeous cinematography.
But he believes liberals and conservatives alike may be misreading the film, and disagreed with Dargis’ review stressing how important the film is.
“No, it is not. It has really not read the room. It has not read the room at all about what’s going on in America,” Ellis said on the podcast.
He elaborated: “There’s a liberal mustiness to this movie that already feels very dated by October 2025. Very dated. And it just doesn’t read the room. You know, it reads a tiny corner of the room, but it does not read what is going on in America.”
He also said be believes Anderson has made three masterpieces — the others, besides There Will Be Blood, are Boogie Nights and Magnolia — but noted that he has also made some films “that I have not responded to at all.”
Ellis added later in the podcast that not liking things is OK, and not everyone has to agree on everything. He understands that his book The Shards, for example, isn’t for everybody.
But Ellis’ podcast does have good news for One Battle After Another: The author said that based on his talks with Hollywood friends — on the left and right, some of who liked the movie and some of whom didn’t —there’s an expectation that it will get many Oscar nominations.
Main image: Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another. Warner Bros.