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One Battle After Another, the next Paul Thomas Anderson film

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1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

I tried to watch this last night high as shit and I was completely lost.

Try again sober. This isn't exactly Primer. 

I agree with Eskimo’s responses on 1 and 3. That stuff all just seems completely unimportant in the context of this particular movie.
I actually agree with you on point 2 as it relates to Lockjaw. It was one of the only aspects of the movie I bumped against. I would have preferred that he be performed in a less cartoonish manner. I get that we live in a time with actualized cartoon villains, but I just never fully bought him as a real threatening presence. 

You are entitled to your opinion but it would make no sense to change much on Lockjaw. You and I will always remember this character. He had multiple scenes that crushed.

His motivation was to get membership in the Christmas Adventurers Club (serious business and funny and ironic). He also sought to locate and kill any progeny with his rebel sidepiece. He ordered agents to shut down a prom a roughly interrogate kids to locate her. And so it goes.

His scenes were well executed and he developed an outstanding character. He’ll get nominated for an oscar. He had multiple classic scenes where he tried to act like a person, a real general, a real white nationalist in-crowd, a masculine military man.

What we’re gonna make Lockjaw a real guy in this movie? It wouldnt even be close to the same movie. My comp of Dr Strangelove makes sense partly because PTA love Kubrick. And partly because it shows how a modern satire can work
20 minutes ago, Eskimohorn said:


You are entitled to your opinion but it would make no sense to change much on Lockjaw. You and I will always remember this character. He had multiple scenes that crushed.

His motivation was to get membership in the Christmas Adventurers Club (serious business and funny and ironic). He also sought to locate and kill any progeny with his rebel sidepiece. He ordered agents to shut down a prom a roughly interrogate kids to locate her. And so it goes.

His scenes were well executed and he developed an outstanding character. He’ll get nominated for an oscar. He had multiple classic scenes where he tried to act like a person, a real general, a real white nationalist in-crowd, a masculine military man.

What we’re gonna make Lockjaw a real guy in this movie? It wouldnt even be close to the same movie. My comp of Dr Strangelove makes sense partly because PTA love Kubrick. And partly because it shows how a modern satire can work

I think Penn dialed it up to a 15, and I would be interested in the movie where he is at a 7. You need only look at past PTA films for menacing yet humorous characters that don’t veer into cartoon characters. 

I’m sure Penn will win, even though a massively more nuanced and well acted Benicio performance is staring them right in the face. Historically the Academy loves a show boat performance and is inept at awarding excellence, although it is improving in both respects.

Yeah not trying to CR it up, but Penn's character could, for the most part, very well exist in real life right now. 

Yeah not trying to CR it up, but Penn's character could, for the most part, very well exist in real life right now. 



Yeah, what a crazy performance! Here are other examples of reptilian people who only care about power and ego, who’s behavior is now normalized and make satire really difficult to execute…(CR)IMG_7946.GIF
I think Penn dialed it up to a 15, and I would be interested in the movie where he is at a 7. You need only look at past PTA films for menacing yet humorous characters that don’t veer into cartoon characters. 
I’m sure Penn will win, even though a massively more nuanced and well acted Benicio performance is staring them right in the face. Historically the Academy loves a show boat performance and is inept at awarding excellence, although it is improving in both respects.

I just dont understand how you get his character to survive a gunshot wound to the face, strutting down the highway with an AR15, have him claim female male rape, do all he does to get the live dna test, get pegged or whatever by his frenemy crush sidepiece, be so obsessed that he stalks her husband, then have Lockjaw head down to the Xmas Adventure club HQ and he actually believes hes getting a corner office before getting gassed, and ask an actor to make it a 7 without completely rewriting the script and making it less interesting. Trust me, Lockjaw will be remembered like Spicoli, a complete commitment to a character that will last a lifetime

 

5 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

I tried to watch this last night high as shit and I was completely lost.

Yeah, that can happen.

1 hour ago, Eskimohorn said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I just dont understand how you get his character to survive a gunshot wound to the face, strutting down the highway with an AR15, have him claim female male rape, do all he does to get the live dna test, get pegged or whatever by his frenemy crush sidepiece, be so obsessed that he stalks her husband, then have Lockjaw head down to the Xmas Adventure club HQ and he actually believes hes getting a corner office before getting gassed, and ask an actor to make it a 7 without completely rewriting the script and making it less interesting. Trust me, Lockjaw will be remembered like Spicoli, a complete commitment to a character that will last a lifetime

 

Yeah but spicoli was funny

On 11/14/2025 at 8:32 AM, The Dude said:

I had no idea what this movie was about going in. It wasn’t what I expected but I loved it.  When the Tom Petty guitar chord struck at the end, it made me smile

Bingo.  Same for me.   I thought it was going to be a Taken knockoff with Leo as the drugged out badass dad.   Instead, Benecio Del Toro plays the badass in a completely different way.  

It was a little cartoonish but overall worth the watch.   And choosing that Tom Petty song at the end was fantastic.

Huge PTA fan, and in anticipation of this movie I read Vineland, the novel on which it is loosely based.  Wished I hadn’t done that, because I would have liked the movie more had I not read the book first. The Lockjaw/Perfidia storyline, although different from the book, was my least favorite part of the novel, and it was hard to get past it being a focal point of the film.  

Edited by destroya

8 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

I tried to watch this last night high as shit and I was completely lost.

sounds awesome, im gonna try that on my third viewing this week 😆

Second viewing was just as great as the first. Totally holds up. 

I absolutely love Sean Penn's performance. I'm glad they made the choice to dial the character up to 15. The reality is people who think like Lockjaw do exist, and by supercharging the absurdity of his values and morals, it removes your urge to feel any empathy for him . These people are monsters. They are laughably grotesque. His fate in the final act was perfection. 

 

On 12/22/2025 at 4:21 PM, Biff Tannen said:

I tried to watch this last night high as shit and I was completely lost.

"What time is it?"

On 12/23/2025 at 9:21 PM, David Dennison said:

Leo is hilarious.

yeah he really was great in this.

On 12/23/2025 at 8:21 PM, David Dennison said:

Leo is hilarious.

He was easily the best part of the movie. Penn's character was unredeemable.

9 hours ago, Cousin Strawberry said:

Perfidia is the least redeamable character in the film and it's not even close. Complete piece of shit.

So just to be clear, for you, the military officer who ordered the execution of his biological daughter so that he could be admitted into a white supremacist group is “not even close” to being the least redeemable character in the film?

4 hours ago, Reynolds Woodcock said:

So just to be clear, for you, the military officer who ordered the execution of his biological daughter so that he could be admitted into a white supremacist group is “not even close” to being the least redeemable character in the film?

Invitations to the prestigious Christmas Adventures Club don't grow on trees! Gotta do what you gotta do.

7 hours ago, Reynolds Woodcock said:

So just to be clear, for you, the military officer who ordered the execution of his biological daughter so that he could be admitted into a white supremacist group is “not even close” to being the least redeemable character in the film?

Yes. He knew what he was. She is in complete denial.

17 hours ago, Cousin Strawberry said:

Perfidia is the least redeamable character in the film and it's notn close. Complete piece of shit

The Big Lebowski Dude GIF

13 minutes ago, Cousin Strawberry said:

Yes. He knew what he was. She is in complete denial.

I didn’t realize being at one with one’s evilness is all it took to be redeemable.

1 hour ago, Reynolds Woodcock said:

I didn’t realize being at one with one’s evilness is all it took to be redeemable.

Well, he's dead. Name one redeemable thing about her. For the cause? No, just gets off on the chaos. Loyal? No, immediately ratted out her fellow revolutionaries to save herself which resulted in their being murdered or imprisoned. Good mom, maybe? Nope, gets canned while pregnant and so jealous of the attention being paid to her infant daughter, she abandons her. Perhaps she was honest? Nope, doesnt tell the man that the child he raises and sacrifices everything for isn't his kid. Moral? No, murders a security guard. She, like Lockjaw is a completely self interested piece of shit. The difference is that Lockjaw knows this and Perfidia is in complete denial.

2 hours ago, Cousin Strawberry said:

Well, he's dead. Name one redeemable thing about her. For the cause? No, just gets off on the chaos. Loyal? No, immediately ratted out her fellow revolutionaries to save herself which resulted in their being murdered or imprisoned. Good mom, maybe? Nope, gets canned while pregnant and so jealous of the attention being paid to her infant daughter, she abandons her. Perhaps she was honest? Nope, doesnt tell the man that the child he raises and sacrifices everything for isn't his kid. Moral? No, murders a security guard. She, like Lockjaw is a completely self interested piece of shit. The difference is that Lockjaw knows this and Perfidia is in complete denial.

They are both terrible people and a big part of the movie is that Bob/Pat is Charlene/Willia’s real family because the other two actively harm her.

“Pussy is for war, the guns is the fun” is her credo. Most people look at that in the frame of her imbalanced but quasi-consensual involvement with Lockjaw, but it applies to her treatment of Pat. We first see her having sex with him after seeing his explosives expertise and asking him “do you like black girls?” After a confirmed yes, she has sex with him but abandons him after he asks her to stop shooting shit and settle down and take care of their daughter. She was using him all along to keep him around blowing stuff up for the French 75 and once he was done, he was no longer instrumentally useful. Neither he or her daughter mean anything and she dumped them when needed.

She drinks while pregnant, murders an innocent man (who is black so it’s bad even in the warped ethics of the French 75), she cares more about chaos than her “cause.” And when she is down she rats on her group and runs away— again causing danger to Charlene and Bob instead of, for example, making their safety a condition of her ratting.

Her name means treachery, you aren’t supposed to like her. As I mentioned, this isnt a nuanced film in a lot of ways.

Edited by 956 Worldwide

Wacky, absurd, funny, I liked it. Not in my top PTA films due to a story I didn’t find all that interesting. But it’s incredibly well made and didn’t feel like 2:40.

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