Film Review – One Battle After Another

A lot of pre-release buzz for “One Battle After Another” has labeled the endeavor an “action movie,” marking the first time writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson has gone the genre route after three decades of making highly idiosyncratic features about the private lives of broken people. The new film (his first since 2021’s sensational “Licorice Pizza”) has its moments of brutality and a few pursuits, but it’s not really a picture that uses violence all that much. “One Battle After Another” remains more in line with Anderson’s previous efforts, returning to the wily ways of determined characters and the obstacles that remain in their way. It’s a needlessly long journey (clocking in a 162 minutes), but it contains some appealing insanity and the usual cinematic buzz of Anderson’s work, rolling along with a worsening situation that commands the attention of an assortment of characters, often reflecting the madness we’re all living with these days. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com