Eavesdropping At The Movies

By far Paul Thomas Anderson's most expensive film, with a budget some four or five times what he's used to, and probably his most accessible, One Battle After Another entertains us enormously and effortlessly without sacrificing the complexity and nuance for which his work is known. Set in an alternate America oppressed by Christofascism, the alternate part is that there's a very active militant revolutionary group, the French 75, setting bombs off and freeing detained minorities. Leonardo DiCaprio is part of it, and sixteen years after the conclusion of his group's activities, their work has entered countercultural legend, but he's become a drug-addicted, paranoid burnout, trying to raise a teenage daughter. When the powers that be come looking for them, they're separated, all hell breaks loose, and he has to step up. José finds One Battle After Another to be the film of the moment, the state of the nation film that Eddington could only dream of being, a powerful, invigorating expression of what ails Americ