Saturday 18 October 2025
(watched, at the theater 🍿)
Paul Thomas Anderson has one peculiar cinematic mind.
A Sorkinist exposition of a resistance group, a GTA-like chase in the streets of Sacramento, Coenesque meetups of a white supremacists fraternity, Leonardo Lebowski tripping around in his robe, a Tarantino-pop playlist of old tunes to introduce characters and time gaps, 30 minutes of the same few piano notes to keep us in suspense of a long evasion, skateboarders parkouring on rooftops over a backdrop of civil insurrection, an Hitchcockian high-speed chase in the desert.
What the fuck did I just watch.
If I was serious and close-minded, I would say that Paul Thomas Anderson should hand over the writing to a professional screenwriter in order to give a more solid skeleton to this pile of cinematic raw power. To give a punch to the humorous dialogues which didn't quite hit my theater with waves of laughter, to trade the romanticization of domestic terrorism as a play against fascist America for a more mature analysis of the situation, and to deepen the character development of those few funky characters I know barely anything about.
But who am I to stop what appears to be the work of an undeniably passionate mind who has an unbounded motivation to fire up in all directions. This was sufficiently entertaining for it to be good, and definitely peculiar enough for it to be an object of curiosity.
Paul Thomas Anderson has one peculiar cinematic mind.
A Sorkinist exposition of a resistance group, a GTA-like chase in the streets of Sacramento, Coenesque meetups of a white supremacists fraternity, Leonardo Lebowski tripping around in his robe, a Tarantino-pop playlist of old tunes to introduce characters and time gaps, 30 minutes of the same few piano notes to keep us in suspense of a long evasion, skateboarders parkouring on rooftops over a backdrop of civil insurrection, an Hitchcockian high-speed chase in the desert.
What the fuck did I just watch.
If I was serious and close-minded, I would say that Paul Thomas Anderson should hand over the writing to a professional screenwriter in order to give a more solid skeleton to this pile of cinematic raw power. To give a punch to the humorous dialogues which didn't quite hit my theater with waves of laughter, to trade the romanticization of domestic terrorism as a play against fascist America for a more mature analysis of the situation, and to deepen the character development of those few funky characters I know barely anything about.
But who am I to stop what appears to be the work of an undeniably passionate mind who has an unbounded motivation to fire up in all directions. This was sufficiently entertaining for it to be good, and definitely peculiar enough for it to be an object of curiosity.