Brendan Hodges

As much as the politics of ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER have been debated, It's also about what it means to grow up –– you forget the old lingo, you struggle with passivity or rage, and you hope your children will save the world

It's clearly personal for PTA: nextbestpicture.com/in-one-battl...

In "One Battle After Another," The Kids Are Alright As Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master“ ends, Lancaster Dodd, a charlatan of cosmic promises, sings a love song. He hopes to win back the affection of Freddie Quell, a wandering post-war brute of deadl...

I wrote about ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER
and how PTA uses armed revolution as a means of exploring dadhood, compromise and the struggles of aging in a world that never seems to change. It's one of the best movies this year:

nextbestpicture.com/in-one-battl...

Lockjaw is one of the saddest creations of PTA’s career

just saw ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER for a third time last night and it’s actually ridiculous how it only gets better, faster, richer and more emotional with each viewing. think it’s time I finally admitted it’s a masterpiece.

More on all this later. The big car chase indeed goes ridiculously hard; those aren’t mountains, they’re waves. As much TERMINATOR 2 as anything from Demme (that too). Chase Infiniti is unbelievable. A great, rousing, if flawed, movie. One of the best of 2025.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER is being hailed as a revolutionary text, but its politics are more complicated and knowingly messy than I think some say, making it a film as confrontational as it is cathartic, its resolutions satisfying and unsatisfying all at once.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER is an exhilarating gauntlet of American psychosexual paranoia and fight, where PTA pivots from years of Bad Dads into musing on a father's place to raise the next generation after his own already failed. A triumph, and an all-timer California movie.

Yeah, he’s an extremely cynical guy and I don’t think you need to dig very deep in his work to find the many signals of it. there’s a rather bleak worldview undercutting his more mawkish impulses.

Like minds

heard there’s a new @hitfactorypod.bsky.social about Saving Private Ryan in which @brendanhodges.bsky.social mounts a defence along the lines of this thread

now seems like a good time to say I just flew to Boston where I’ll be seeing ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER in Vista Vision and dual laser 1.43. getting to the point where the hype feels dangerous.

Re Kimmel, it's important that Disney has left itself an out--it is a "suspension," not a cancellation or firing. What happens in the next two days--reaction within the company but also in the press, in the industry, in Washington, among consumers, and on social media--may affect how this plays out.

we'll see how it does at the box office but with ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER apparently being a rousing, action-packed commercial movie, it has to be studied why the studio thought they should market it as a zany slapstick stoner thing instead of a gripping, relevant action-comedy

"DEMON SLAYER: KIMETSU NO YAIBA - INFINITY CASTLE" - Review THE STORY – The Demon Slayer Corps are drawn into the Infinity Castle, where Tanjiro, Nezuko, and the Hashira face terrifying Upper Rank demons in a desperate fight as the final battle against Muzan K...

the fact the DEMON SLAYER
movie is on pace to potentially out-earn FANTASTIC FOUR is as good reflection of the shifting cultural tides in the last ten years as I’ve seen. nobody would’ve thought this was possible not long ago, crazy stuff

I reviewed it for NBP:

nextbestpicture.com/demon-slayer...

I’m watching SAVING PRIVATE RYAN again and knowing Spielberg didn’t shot list the opening 25 minutes and in fact blocked and shot it on the fly is a little like finding out Beethoven made up Symphony No. 3 on the spot

really enjoying the mad science of ALIEN: EARTH, where corporate overlords use technology to control us (especially children), as Timothy Olyphant does xeno-mischief. It’s also one of the best and most “cinematic” looking shows recently, with actual lenses, grain and halation:

Depending who you ask WEAPONS is about the weaponization of children, school shootings, the old preying on the young, trauma, or nothing at all.

I wrote about that spin-the-dial discourse and why so many feel it doesn't amount to much:

nextbestpicture.com/weapons-the-...

"Weapons" - The Illusion Of Safety And What It Means To Be About Something Horror has a long history of confronting us with what we take for granted, revealing the dark truths we keep in the locked basements in the back of our minds. We may not like to think about it, but we...

I wrote about Zach Cregger's Rorschacian horror epic WEAPONS for @nextbestpicture.bsky.social, unpacking its cauldron of themes, the divided discourse, and what it means to be "about" something:

nextbestpicture.com/weapons-the-...

some friends attend annual spiritual retreats to reconnect with our uncertain cosmos. I just see 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY on 70mm at the @musicboxtheatre.bsky.social once a year.

Stairway to Heaven: the sacred spectacle of A Touch of Zen, 50 years on • Journal • A Letterboxd Magazine 50 years since A Touch of Zen’s first proper release dazzled viewers, Brendan Hodges reflects on King Hu’s revolutionary wuxia that’s both a swashbuckling adventure and a cosmic meditation on reality—...

🚨new byline 🚨

for @letterboxd.social I went long celebrating King Hu's wuxia masterpiece A TOUCH OF ZEN, his swashbuckling action epic that's also a powerful, transcendent meditation on reality –– and our place in it.

Very proud of this one!

letterboxd.com/journal/a-to...

bumping -- would love it if you gave this one a read

Where to Look: The Silence of the Lambs (1991) Consider how The Silence of the Lambs revolves around vision. Not only perception, but empathy and hindsight, and the non-empirical prick of intuition.

New today on the site!

“Consider how THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS revolves around vision. Not only perception, but empathy and hindsight, and the non-empirical prick of intuition, where vision exceeds the reach of training.”

- Veronica Fitzpatrick

(art by @bturnerinfo.bsky.social)

Very curious how the trailer will play to people who aren't already in the bag for an AVATAR sequel. It doesn't have the hook of a serene and stunning new biome, instead playing off familiar iconography while foregrounding new conflicts (with the Ash People) with grief and hate.

I saw the AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH trailer and besides being some of the most beautiful footage I've seen all year, struck by the real sense of doom and rage––fist fights inside of cosmic volcanoes, heroes terrified, huge aerial battles. And I'm pretty sure I know who's going to die.

recent MCU, especially BRAVE NEW WORLD, THUNDERBOLTS and now FANTASTIC FOUR, try to foreground "realistic" feelings and messier characters with action motivated by feeling more than macguffins and plot. but then Feige sands down the edges to make them as palatable as possible

You feel the tension between a more interesting FANTASTIC FOUR –– one about The Thing being a Sad Guy roaming the streets and flirting with a nice lady, and moral and domestic problems are taken seriously –– and a poppy MCU entry. I had fun, but I wish it was allowed to be more.

I liked FANTASTIC FOUR most when brainy heroes solved problems with family discussion and stretchy-arm chalkboard equations instead of Big Smash, and the cosmic stuff is terrific. The rest is rushed and labored, but it's the rare MCU to treat its characters like real human beings

more on FANTASTIC FOUR later but wow Matt Shakman really loves INTERSTELLAR

I admire this project