The Butcher
You love ’em, he hates ’em! The Butcher carves up your favourite films, and this week, he applies his sharpened cleaver to Paul Thomas Anderson’s multiple Oscar winner One Battle After Another, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio Del Toro, Chase Infiniti and Teyana Taylor.
If, like The Butcher, you were unfortunate enough to make it to the end of this year’s boring-as-batshit Oscars, you would have been witness to the dreadful punchline to a profoundly awful three-and-a-half-hour joke. Best Picture? One Battle After Another. Fuck me dead…
In one of the worst two-horse races ever, Paul Thomas Anderson’s over-long, overwrought, over-praised and over-priced wannabe political satire beat out Ryan Coogler’s over-long, overwrought, over-praised and over-priced wannabe political horror flick Sinners for the top prize. Sure, all the Best Picture nominees were pretty much shithouse this year – especially that over-long, overwrought, over-praised and over-priced turd F1, which was basically just a CGI game of grown-up matchbox cars starring Brad Pitt as the world’s oldest race car driver – but the two favourites let off a particularly offensive cinematic odour.
One Battle After Another, however, was definitely the worst of the two. Beginning with his second film – the tedious paean to vintage, pubic-hair-era porn that is Boogie Nights – Paul Thomas Anderson has established himself as quite possibly the most self-indulgent writer/director currently working. Magnolia, The Master, Inherent Vice, Phantom Thread…all long, pretentious cinematic follies. Even his Adam Sandler flick Punch-Drunk Love was a wank, while his dreary coming-of-age teen flick Licorice Pizza clocked in at an absurd two-hours-plus.
And as for that ridiculous exercise in over-long, overwrought, over-praised and over-priced ham-bonery that is There Will Be Blood, well…The Butcher’s feelings on that one have already been made quite clear. Paul Thomas Anderson’s films are basically just too much, and too long…and proving that The Academy has no idea, they actually gave the Best Editing gong to One Battle After Another, on which the cutter was obviously asleep at the wheel, because that shit just kept going and going and going…and going.
Despite its florid, hammy, over-the-top, wrong-headed performances (seriously, Sean Penn should have been given six months in solitary confinement for his disgraceful turn here, not an Oscar…though at least he spared us a tedious speech by having the good sense not to show up to the ceremony), revolutionary carry-on, and non-stop barrage of sound and fury, One Battle After Another is not really about anything. This shit is all heat and no light…just because its lips are furiously, flappily, profanely working over-time, that does not mean that One Battle After Another is actually saying anything.
Though praised as “brave” and “daring” by fawning critics across the globe, One Battle After Another is not really political or truly provocative…it’s basically just a bunch of kinky, over-sexed lunatics with weird hair playing with guns for two-plus hours and screaming very loudly. The only thing truly on-the-money about this film is its title…because One Battle After Another is what the audience has to fight to make it through to this horrible Best Picture winner’s very silly ending.
Viva la revolucion? Oh, get fucked…
Want to read more from The Butcher? Check out his angry missives against Birdman, Lethal Weapon, Blazing Saddles, Strictly Ballroom, Donnie Darko, Psycho, 12 Years A Slave, Red Dog, The Wolf Of Wall Street, Breathless, Elizabeth, Miracle On 34th Street, The Full Monty, There Will Be Blood, Les Miserables, The King’s Speech, Picnic At Hanging Rock, The Magnificent Seven, Gone With The Wind, The Right Stuff, 81/2, Pulp Fiction, Easy Rider, The Shawshank Redemption, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Wizard Of Oz, Jaws, Black Swan, Gladiator, Chopper, I’m Not There, Interstellar, Marvel Studios and Citizen Kane.
