One Battle After Another

Thursday

Alexander Larman

Is an Oscars upset around the corner?

Can Sinners pull off the biggest Oscars upset in recent times? That’s the question that many in Hollywood will be asking after Ryan Coogler’s genre-bending period-musical-horror picture has been nominated for a mighty 16 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor and Actress, and more. While it has been looking like a done deal that Paul Thomas Anderson’s Pynchon adaptation One Battle After Another will be sweeping to victory – and with a far from inconsiderable 13 nominations, it still could – the fact that Sinners is now the most nominated film of all time means that, on paper at least, it’s a serious challenger.

oscars

Tuesday

Curtis Yarvin

One Battle After Another may be the worst movie ever made

One Battle After Another may be the worst movie ever made. Not in the petty and obvious way of a normal bad movie, though. It is a grand, multifaceted masterpiece of badness. It is dramatically bad, morally bad, historically bad and even erotically bad. And to cram in all this badness, it is an hour too long. But you won’t be bored – it is even entertainingly bad. This film is so bad that most people will think it is good, and it will probably make a lot of money. Proving only that America is the kingdom of Cain. But we knew that. But why not start with praise, eh? The film has a beautiful celluloid look.

Battle

Thursday

Alexander Larman

The final act of Thomas Pynchon

Whisper it, very quietly, but the now 87-year-old author Thomas Pynchon is having something of a moment in 2025. Not only has his 1990 novel Vineland supposedly served as the loose inspiration for the eagerly awaited new Paul Thomas Anderson-Leonardo DiCaprio collaboration One Battle After Another, but the near-impossible has been announced: Pynchon will publish a new novel, entitled Shadow Ticket, around the time of the movie’s release. It will be his first book in more than a decade, his ninth novel and his third consecutive noir-influenced story.

thomas pynchon