Never Lose Your Shadow

As time continues to move forward, the key is to understand where you’re going and why. It’s certainly what I’m trying to figure out and it’s a question the main character of VANISHING POINT also appears to be silently asking himself at the beginning of the film which, in a way, is also the end. The film hasn’t told us his name yet but even from the start he seems pensive, uncertain, then after taking a moment to contemplate things he drives off again and soon, as the film freezes, the car vanishes. This would presumably be symbolic since at first this seems like a realistic film, but maybe not. The moment is the vanishing point, after all, the point where the film flashes back to where his epic drive started. But even that doesn’t provide all the answers. Earlier this year, VANISHING POINT played as a midnight show at the TCM Classic Film Festival at a screening introduced by Edgar Wright. I wasn’t there, not because I didn’t want to be, I just can’t do midnight shows anymore. And VANISHING POINT has never really felt like a midnight movie to me since for a film that spends so much time in a car speeding as fast as possible, it seems oddly contemplative, unwilling to provide all the meanings. There’s much more to take away from it all than you sometimes want to do at such a late hour. Maybe the thing about this film is that it can mean just about anything you want it to. Even if the answers are right there the whole time, from the beginning to the end.

A car delivery driver known only as Kowalski (Barry Newman) arrives in Denver late on a Friday night and is ready to head out again immediately on his next job. The car he is given is a 1970 Dodge Challenger to drive to San Francisco and deliver by Monday, but Kowalski soon makes a bet with his speed dealer that he can deliver it by Sunday afternoon. Almost immediately, Kowalski is driving fast enough to catch the attention of the Highway Patrol with multiple officers coming after him as a blind disc jockey known only as Super Soul (Cleavon Little) uses a police frequency to guide Kowalski over the air and help evade anyone coming after him. But as he crosses from state to state, from the highway to the desert and back again, the Highway Patrol in California are determined to find a place to stop Kowalski once and for all.

It’s the chase. The unending feel of the chase. The enigma that is VANISHING POINT is a film I’ve returned to a number of times over the years without really knowing what I think of it, reacting a little chilly to it at first, but now there have been so many viewings for various reasons that it’s begun to mean something, even while knowing it can be a tough movie to get a full handle on. On the surface, it certainly seems like more of a straightforward car chase movie when compared to the more introspective, if not artier, approaches taken by things like EASY RIDER and TWO-LANE BLACKTOP, two films which in fairness might very well be better in many respects but sometimes you go where the mood takes you. VANISHING POINT is more about the sense of speed, for one thing, and released in 1971 somewhere in between those two, on the surface it’s the one that feels like it would be more at home in the drive-ins. Those other two films are more mellow in their sadness and sense of regret with a natural quality that makes them feel as if they emerged out of the earth completely formed, ready to be viewed for all eternity. VANISHING POINT has a little extra polish to it that plays more like a regular movie but it also has a sense of ferociousness that makes it feel like the film is going to burn out at any point, always determined to keep the car going full speed at whatever cost. It’s also not a surprise to learn that Twentieth-Century Fox later paired it on double bills with THE FRENCH CONNECTION and DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY. There were a lot of chases in the seventies but few of them feel like VANISHING POINT. Few of them offer these kinds of questions. Directed by Richard C. Serafian, whose other credits include THE MAN WHO LOVED CAT DANCING and SUNBURN plus acting appearances in films like BUGSY and BULWORTH, both opposite Warren Beatty, the film has an energy and pull to it beyond the rush of the chase, wondering what’s going on behind Kowalski’s eyes, wondering what he’s thinking about those times when he pulls the car over to contemplate and decide where he’s going to go next. To decide whether he’s really speeding towards something or away from it.

With a screenplay by Guillermo Cain (from a story outline by Malcolm Hart) the film doesn’t waste any time letting the chase begin once it goes back to the start, just as Kowalski doesn’t waste any time getting out there on the road and going as fast as possible. Some of the most impressive footage with him being pursued by multiple law enforcement officers in cars and on motorcycles is mostly confined to the first half, with an undeniable thrill to those early scenes featuring expert stunt work as he drives along the Colorado River with the water rushing by with Bobby Doyle singing “Girl Done Got It Together” on the soundtrack. It all plays like maybe a more serious version of what would turn up in multiple Hal Needham movies several years down the line, before it becomes more about Kowalski simply trying to keep going. Returning to the film draws me into that early ‘70s vibe where so much feels uncertain and it’s a film resistant to explaining itself. What’s there is the feeling that comes from staying focused on the road and you can tell just how hard Kowalski is pushing this car to go faster. To him, there’s no reason to ever slow down.

Three things matter in VANISHING POINT. Kowalski, the landscape he drives through and that Dodge Challenger. Kowalski is meant to be mythic. Everything we hear about him is part of that, he’s become a very important figure to people out there. He has a backstory that’s a little like Elliott Gould’s character in GETTING STRAIGHT which was released the previous year, someone who spent the sixties doing seemingly everything and going everywhere including a stint in Vietnam, only they face their possible futures in different ways. And the sixties are now over so, just as “Where Do We Go from Here?” is also sung by Jimmy Walker in that initial chase section, where is Kowalski supposed to go from here? Elliott Gould in GETTING STRAIGHT wants to teach. Kowalski wants to drive or maybe he just wants to go nowhere and everywhere, at least that’s what it seems like. It’s not even clear when he ever sleeps. And Kowalski does drive, pausing when he needs to even if it’s just to fill up the tank, taking that moment to decide the next step, standing next to his car when he’s out of any other ideas. We don’t know what he’s thinking, it doesn’t matter. The film is a product of its time, shaggy like so many favorite ‘70s films are, offering a nude girl riding a motorcycle like no other decade would, but so what. It’s hard to imagine this film being a product of any other time anyway and there’s no reason to want it to be.

The landscape becomes more barren the further Kowalski heads west, with the occasional gas station appearing in the middle of nowhere and it all seemingly littered with stop signs that he has no intention of ever paying attention to. The look brought to the film by director of photography John Alonzo, three years before he shot CHINATOWN, always feels undeniably alive, alternating between shots where the car is off in the distance small as a pin in the frame, viewed against those massive vistas plus there’s also the rush that comes from catching Barry Newman as Kowalski in the car, focusing straight ahead with whatever’s in front the only thing that matters. Kowalski becomes one with the road, the way his white car fits in perfectly with the desert, the way he hides in the brush as a police helicopter searches for him. He’s told to ‘root right in’ by the prospector played by Dean Jagger who helps get him through the desert even as Kowalski barely understands a single word the old man is saying, just as no one understands why Kowalski is doing any of this. Throughout the film people seem to speak to Kowalski in their own codes, almost seeming to assume he’ll understand, and he mostly doesn’t say anything at all. He’s dubbed The Last American Hero by Super Soul, driving what looks like the coolest car in a movie ever and it’s the perfect thing for him to outrun everyone trying to chase him down, whether the cops or other racers or the over-the-top gay stereotypes who try to rob him played by Anthony James and Arthur Malet. There’s also the musical revival in the middle of the desert (Rita Coolidge is one of the singers) led by Severn Darden who doesn’t want strangers visiting but whether this really is a religious group he’s leading or something more sinister during that time of Manson is unclear, maybe the piece of the film that’s more a part of when it was made then anything. He doesn’t care about Kowalski and Kowalski doesn’t care about them. The Last American Hero has to keep moving.

It’s Cleavon Little's Super Soul who calls him that and he’s the guide for Kowalski, broadcasting from his station in some small town somewhere looking forward to the DJ played by Lynne Thigpen in Walter Hill’s THE WARRIORS with an almost supernatural understanding of what Kowalski is doing with his audience out on the street, somehow able to hear him, with Super Soul somehow able to know that Kowalski is listening or sometimes not. He’s the one who can put Kowalski’s actions into words, reminding people of the freedom of the soul he represents. And some of them don’t want to hear what he says, maybe going too far as some rogue members of the law are concerned, leading to an attack on the station led by a deputy in plain clothes who’s gotten a little too riled up by Kowalski. They’re presented as simple racists here as well as wanting to destroy the freedom Kowalski represents but anyone watching this can likely tell who they represent in 2026. And freedom means something else to them. It means nothing.

All the women Kowalski encounters through the film except one (we’ll get to her) have a similar look, often with long blonde hair, a gas station attendant who makes him think of the young girl he saved when he was a police officer from being assaulted by another cop, the nude girl on a motorcycle encountered by Kowalski who offers him anything he wants before showing him a collage she once put together of his infamous exploits over the years and alludes to what she did when she finished making it. One leading to the other in his mind as part of all the flashbacks which drop hints about his past and where he came from, each of them with more than a passing resemblance to his late girlfriend Vera played by the hauntingly beautiful Victoria Medlin who looks more like a woman of 1971 than anyone ever has, with a recurring love theme by the Jimmy Bowen Orchestra that seems to represent her or maybe just his thoughts of her as she asks him about the scar he doesn’t like to talk about with all the love in the world.

VANISHING POINT possesses a sincerity to go along with how intense it always is that keeps things moving but it’s also inscrutable in the way a poem is as if it was partly designed to be studio car chase film, partly an esoteric art film that didn’t explain anything and the two halves are fighting together. It feels like a filming of a non-existent paperback novel that I imagine as one long interior monologue, which simply leaves the visuals to explain anything as well as the chance for us to project any conclusion we want against the wall the film screens on. The chases are phenomenally done at their best but it’s more the vibe the film is going for beyond all the stunt work which matters, those grace notes away from the chases where it’s simply the tiny car moving through the landscape as the camera pans off to show the vista instead, allowing us to take every inch of it in. And it’s not about realism after all, so don’t ask about all the punishment the Challenger receives due to Kowalski pushing it so hard. It makes the car and how fast it goes that much cooler anyway. The film drifts in and out of the reverie of Kowalski’s past, the music adding such a feel of electricity to every sequence and it all calls to me now, as I remember Cleavon Little talking about how it Kowalski represents “freedom of the soul”. In the end, the meaning of the film and the meaning of Kowalski are one and the same.

These themes are expanded in what seems to be called the “U.K. version” which differs from the standard cut in featuring the one woman who doesn’t resemble any of the others encountered by Kowalski, played by none other than Charlotte Rampling. She appears late in the film as a mysterious hitchhiker who is simply and illogically there on the side of the road in the dead of night who Kowalski picks up and seems to have been waiting for him. Patiently, she says, the only way to wait for somebody, as Kowalski accepts an offer of pot from her that he turned down earlier from others and he’s willing to open up to this woman like he hasn’t with anyone else. He speaks of home being San Francisco, his destination, but it’s a fair question whether he thinks of anywhere as home. Considering the way the only other women in the film, the women of the California Highway Patrol, are the ones who seem to know how to track his movements when he enters the state, maybe California wasn’t the home he thought it was. The hitchhiker scene has a completely different feel from the rest of the film, maybe why it was cut in the first place, almost as if they brought in a guest director to handle this section but the sequence fleshes the whole back end of the movie out and without it the film almost feels lacking, too abrupt near the end, missing a key moment to at least begin to understand (DVD & Blu-ray releases, at least from Fox Video in the US, include both versions of the film). With this scene back in, it’s no longer just a film about driving. It’s much more a film about where Kowalski is going, what’s waiting for him and why he does what he does. Maybe this woman doesn’t exist, maybe none of the women exist. It doesn’t matter. The witchy energy of Rampling’s hitchhiker makes it clear that she is essentially death, a specter who is waiting for him, aware of what he’s possibly going to decide to do when the time comes, much as we want Kowalski to find a way to keep going and never stop.

It isn’t clear whether the vanishing point of the title, seemingly when the flashback at the film’s beginning starts, is meant to represent Kowalski’s decision of whether he should keep going, as if at the beginning he flashes back to where he started Twilight Zone-style to live it over again and really go for it so people will notice and he’ll be remembered, determined to drive so fast that nobody anywhere could ignore it. The tiny town of Cisco which appears empty at the start of the film is filled with people waiting for him at the end, after all. And at that point there’s nowhere left for him to go but forward. The look on Kowalski’s face near the end is one of total freedom and makes him seem at peace with what he’s doing but I find myself thinking like the highway patrolman played by Robert Donner (who has many credits, including several Howard Hawks films) who earlier knew how Super Soul was guiding him over the radio and at the end sees no glory in what just happened. He seems to understand that Kowalski meant something, his pursuit of freedom meant something. And all anyone can do at the end is stare at the smoke floating up to the sky.

For someone meant to be larger than life to the world, Barry Newman always plays Kowalski in a completely down to earth way, with little to no dialogue for long stretches but what he does get to say matters just as the look on his face matters and he always seems deep in thought with a sadness in his eyes, always remembering, considering, pondering which way to turn next. There’s a weary kindness to his voice when talking to the right person, as if he’s always hiding an old wound as he tries not to think too much about the past. Cleavon Little plays Super Soul like a powder keg ready to explode until he comes back down to earth realizing that there’s only so far Kowalski can go with the defeat seen in him undeniable (an uncredited John Amos in what appears to be his first film is Super Soul’s engineer) but it’s Dean Jagger as one of the people who Kowalski encounters in the flesh who really gets some of the best and most inscrutable dialogue as the prospector, offering up riddles to Kowalski about which way he should go in the same way that his own behavior baffles almost everyone else. Paul Koslo who appeared in THE OMEGA MAN the same year is the deputy with his own plans for Super Soul, Lee Weaver (the attendant who confirms Joe Pendelton’s correct arrival date in HEAVEN CAN WAIT) is Kowalski’s speed dealer buddy, Gilda Texter is the nude girl on the motorcycle who asks Kowalski if he wants to have some fun with her, Timothy Scott (instantly recognizable to me as the flamboyant hairdresser in Blake Edwards’ THE PARTY) is the biker Angel who does some recon work to help get Kowalski over the border. Charlotte Rampling, if you’re lucky enough to see the version she’s in, is hauntingly beguiling, expressing curiosity and total knowledge of Kowalski at the same time while making the film feel like it has that much more weight to it all, whether it does or not.

On a personal note, every now and then my mother used to talk about how she knew Barry Newman a little bit in New York long, long ago and it always sounded like she had a crush on him so this is one more flashback to the past which can happen for me during one of those many rewatches. Either way, she never forgot him. These days along with VANISHING POINT, certain people likely know the actor most from his excellent performance as Peter Fonda’s head of security in 1999’s THE LIMEY directed by Steven Soderbergh; he also plays Eddie Murphy’s agent in BOWFINGER which came the very same year. According to his New York Times obituary, he lived in the same Manhattan apartment from 1962 to his death in 2023, the sort of odd factoid which always interests me. Kowalski always kept moving, in the end going everywhere and nowhere. Barry Newman traveled the world appearing in films and TV shows over several decades (which included another memorable car chase in 1972’s FEAR IS THE KEY) but always stayed in the same place. Somehow this makes sense. The answers can be found, whether in VANISHING POINT or in our own lives. After that, it’s up to us to decide what those answers mean as the future gets closer, like it or not.

Sometimes It Rains

Things change, as they always do, but even when this happens it can be impossible to feel like you’re really moving forward. BULL DURHAM opened on June 16, 1988, the same week as Walter Hill’s Schwarzenegger-Belushi team-up RED HEAT and the John Hughes-produced Aykroyd-Candy comedy THE GREAT OUTDOORS. Two films which were determined to be the ’80s formula they were always meant to be (I’ve gone into my semi-positive feelings about RED HEAT before; THE GREAT OUTDOORS is one of the weakest of the Hughes run) and another that is still very special all these years later, a film about the summer meant to be seen in the summer and how all those things in the summer which can feel like diversions become a part of us. And here I am right now writing about it in the fall so maybe I’m not fully ready for summer to go away just yet. To say that BULL DURHAM is for baseball what SLAP SHOT was for hockey isn’t totally wrong but really isn’t right either. Both films know that it’s not the big game at the end which becomes the true climax in our lives, but BULL DURHAM is more about the characters than the greater issue of what’s going on all around them. Whatever the minor leagues were really like back in the late ‘80s (I think I’ve been to exactly one minor league game in my entire life), the film seems like it was meant to be slightly out of time anyway, like the 1959 Volvo that Susan Sarandon’s Annie Savoy drives or maybe the much cooler ‘68 Mustang driven by Kevin Costner’s Crash Davis. They’re the ones who are really at home in Durham, a place where it seems like the present day still hasn’t quite arrived, more than Tim Robbins’ Nuke LaLoosh will ever be since he not only drives a Porsche, of course he brags about it too. In the world of BULL DURHAM, the future is going to happen elsewhere. The town in the movie feels like nothing much was ever going to change there but chances are some things have by now. The real team got a new ballpark in 1995, for one thing, and since 1998 they’ve been a Triple-A club which at least sounds like moving up in the world. But none of this has to do with BULL DURHAM. It’s a film about two people who suddenly discover that the thing they love isn’t treating them the way they want and the possibility of moving forward suddenly becomes real. This is all mixed up with a third person in there between them who in some ways keeps them apart but also serves as their child they need to send out into the world before realizing how much they were always meant to be together. When that happens, all the other stuff can simply fall away. And there’s baseball too. Baseball does matter.

Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) is a baseball groupie living in Durham, North Carolina and a fan of the local minor league team, the Durham Bulls, with a tendency to mentor a young player in her own special way each season. As the new season begins, the big new prospect appears to be Ebby Calvin LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), a pitcher with a very promising arm but not much of a head. This is complicated by the arrival in town of Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), a catcher who has been sent down to A Ball with the express purpose of helping to shepherd the pitcher and get him prepared for the majors. Crash turns down the chance for a season with Annie and she takes on Ebby instead, giving him the nickname of ‘Nuke’ but the interest Crash and her each have in each other is still obvious. As the season progresses and Ebby is slow to be willing to learn from Crash while being taught by Annie in her own special way, they finally start to get through to him. But as the team improves and he finally begins to listen to what Crash’s lessons, Annie’s frustration with the situation grows but eventually both of them are going to have to face what will happen when Nuke gets so good he gets called up and the team has no use for Crash anymore.

It’s a strange time right now. Some things are good. Some are wonderful. Some are stressful and continue to be. In some ways, my life has a clarity it has never had before but so much still feels up in the air. I still love films. But sometimes I wonder why I’m still doing this. Maybe it’s because I haven’t come up with a good reason not to. It would be wrong to say that writing about films is the one thing I’m good at doing but when I see Crash Davis walking the streets of Durham late at night by himself, I understand. He’s a good ballplayer, nobody denies this, but maybe he just never had that very special extra something out on the field to allow him to get to the majors and stay there. He just doesn’t know what else to do. All he has for certain are the things he believes in, his knowledge of what it takes to win and a talent at hitting the ball which no one else knows about, at least until Annie looks up a few stats. She’s probably the only one who ever did. Crash should have known what that meant right away.

Thinking about all this is a reminder that right now at this moment in time the very idea of watching BULL DURHAM feels like total relaxation. The directorial debut of screenwriter Ron Shelton, it’s a movie about two people who look at each other and just know, with a rhythm and sensibility all its own, a calm approach to the characters and every joke which fits perfectly. The two leads each have a philosophy in how they approach their lives and they come at each other like a car crash. Nuke, the younger man in between them, has no philosophy and barely knows anything at all beyond the natural talent of his arm and even that needs plenty of discipline. Annie Savoy believes in the Church of Baseball, as she says right at the start, which she found after looking seemingly everywhere else. Me, I found the Church of Cinema long ago and the film comes to mind when I think of it this way. The Road of Excess leads to the palace of wisdom, as Annie defensively says at one point, and there are days where that excess is all about watching as many films as possible. And if that doesn’t lead to the palace of wisdom, I don’t know what does. That’s the way my brain works. In the eyes of the film, the ultimate goal of all the wisdom that comes from what you believe in is to set it aside and just sit there for a few moments in silence with the one you love, nothing else mattering for a few moments. That sounds like peace. This is all a roundabout way of saying that it’s a film about baseball, but it’s a film about other things too. It’s been a long time since I read up on my baseball history. It’s not something I do anymore. I was just a kid when I visited Cooperstown, back in those days when I read about baseball as much as humanly possible. This was before I really discovered films and things changed. But I remember enough to know how much that history matters, to know what the meaning of a certain photo of Babe Ruth during the opening credits is. And BULL DURHAM isn’t a movie about being a kid. The baseball angle matters, but it’s about people who love it and it never went away for them, who love all that history, who want to be a part of it and who don’t want to be a part of anything else. They’re trapped in it all too.

Of course, along with baseball you could say it’s a film about sex and the delayed satisfaction of it as well. Either way, BULL DURHAM is a romantic comedy about people putting things off because of what they love, with a literary style to both the dialogue as well as the very nature found in each character which makes it continually rich and layered. Annie paints herself as a literary figure already, the heroine of her own story and each page of her life is what she decides it is, living as a groupie in this town where she’s the big fish in the small pond and no one can tell her otherwise, every movement she makes showing how much she’s in charge of a situation. Sarandon uses every inch of her body to become this character, along with a narration spoken by her which is like music in how it feels like a perfect fusion of her voice and all those wonderful words. You believe in her sense of control that comes out of reading poetry to the man tied up in front of her, the way she gets Nuke to discover his own sense of control by wearing those garters on the mound and breathing through his eyelids as she insists he must. And when Annie loses some of that power over things she has no idea what to do, things have been thrown off the axis of what she’s in charge of for the first time ever. The film makes it clear how much Crash and Annie want each other but it’s just as clear what’s going to get in the way, so clear that we know exactly what he really writes on that note to her in the dugout without seeing a closeup. And when they come together it really matters. Their attraction for each other becomes one more reminder of how much they’ve been spending too much time putting off what they need to do.

Crash Davis has been to the majors, “the show” as everyone in this world calls it, even if it was just for a brief time and now can’t believe that he’s back in A Ball, ready to quit but he knows he’s not going to do that, not yet anyway. And whatever he’s thinking about when he’s wandering the streets of those small towns by himself at night, he keeps it to himself. Crash carries an air of not caring but also caring too much and fighting that bitterness inside himself, still thinking about the best 21 days of his life. That inner turmoil is always there and he’s too old to pretend he’s anything he’s not, laying out his beliefs in that famous long speech to Annie, whether the small of a woman’s back, good Scotch or those slow kisses he could maybe have one day with Annie if things work out. The film holds on his face at certain times during his frustrations and his victories so just the sight of Crash in his rooming house where he’s ironing while drinking Scotch remains one of the best little Costner moments ever. It lets us get inside Crash’s head when he’s up at bat which lays out all his annoyances and his frustrations at trying to get Nuke to listen to him, telling hitters up at bat what’s coming when he won’t. If someone has achieved something real in this game, even if no one knows about it, they have Crash’s respect. When Nuke comes looking to give him the big news, Crash makes sure to tell him how tenuous it all is, how one more hit a week can get you where you want to be. Crash got close enough to taste it and he knows. He played as good as he ever did and it didn’t matter. When it’s all over and he’s told, “You know how it is,” that’s all there is to say.

This is only one example of how good Ron Shelton is with the dialogue he writes, finding the beats that bring out the humor but also done in a way that knows who the characters are which is what matters. The portrayal of the Bulls and everything around the team is all part of that ramshackle feel, the way it gives us moments between the players and all their insecurities, pausing to let Crash give the team a rainout while on the road through his own means. It’s not quite SLAP SHOT in its portrayal of the sport and the town around them never matters as much, just that the place feels a little empty and run down, maybe even forgotten by the rest of the world. The film is really interested in things like the scene at the mound where the players gather to talk about anything imaginable except for the game they’re playing with the comedy of the moment exactly what this film is supposed to be and it plays as totally natural. It’s those little moments, sometimes with a joke and sometimes not, which is more important than the plot which barely seems to matter at points. At one point the Bulls are losing. Later they’re winning. That’s about it. Figuring out what to get Millie and Jimmy for their wedding matters a lot more.

Still, it should be said that there is a plot in there and Shelton knows how to keep those beats moving, but even though a few montages jump things forward it’s mostly in no rush whatsoever. And it feels like that’s the way it should be. Crash and Annie are attracted to each other instantly like a couple right out of a Howard Hawks film as insistent as he is when saying he doesn’t dance, but the movie keeps them apart until there’s nothing that can keep them apart anymore. It’s about two people who want to fuck but can’t, mainly because of the barriers they put up in front of themselves. And it wisely keeps them apart for long stretches so we’re almost dying to see Annie and Crash end up together and when they are in the same frame it crackles, sizing each other up in the batting cage or the unforgettable moment of the two of them shouting “William Blake!” at each other during their most heated argument until they have no idea what they’re even fighting about. Because of this, when they come together it really feels like any reasons there were for keeping apart have been washed away and the moment is genuinely powerful. But until then, it’s about each person trying to teach Nuke in their own ways, with the pitcher caught between them and only confused until they get through to him. When Nuke finally accepts that Crash really does know a thing or two about all this, it’s done in a small way but even that matters. All through it, the blocking in scenes always shows relate to each other, which one has the upper hand, and Ron Shelton’s direction is casual but he knows the way to make a shot matter whether the intimacy of two people in a scene or the way it photographs baseball games with the camera right in there with the player it’s focusing on. The chemistry between the two leads pays off beautifully when they come together, the sex scenes worth the wait with one brief interlude when they’re talking about reincarnation while on a break that feels so natural. And there’s the last scene in the rain which is the right sort of payoff to everything.

Maybe BULL DURHAM is minor in the end, which is fitting since it’s set in the minor leagues after all, a film about people who could have gotten together much sooner if they weren’t being so stubborn about the whole thing. But they needed to learn that. And there are few things in all of cinema as purely sexy as that shot which pans from Sarandon in ecstasy with her hands tied to the bed down to Costner painting her toenails. Everything about BULL DURHAM feels just right. Somehow TIN CUP, Ron Shelton’s 1996 golf movie where he reteamed with his male star, is even more laid back, if that’s possible, and has its pleasures even if it’s not quite the same. Revisiting BULL DURHAM is so relaxing, so enriching and rewarding, no matter how many times you’ve seen it already, but what can be found is more than that. In your heart you might care more than anyone else does, love it more than anyone. No one else knows this. But that doesn’t matter. Some things you can’t control. Some things you can. Focus on that. Remember what you love. Play the game if you can. Have some fun. Find that woman. Dance.

It’s not Susan Sarandon who’s top-billed but she’s the one with the best role and it really is her movie in the end, she’s the one who narrates it and she alone is the one who makes it feel unlike anything else. There’s a lot to say about Susan Sarandon. None of that matters here. Her performance as Annie Savoy is one of the best of the entire decade of the ‘80s along with being one of her best ever and every moment is unforgettable and her very being is one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen, with a sensuality and comic timing that it feels like no one else could have equaled. Kevin Costner matches up with her perfectly and every gesture he makes feels real, his being as a guy who knows how good he is, how smart he is, but it was never enough and he dreams of the day when it might be so when he lays in to his younger protege about all the things he’s doing wrong it feels effortless. Caught between them, Tim Robbins plays Nuke as a guy who knows that if he tries just hard enough, he might actually be able to have a thought and he sells his small amount of maturing just enough that you believe it demonstrated in how calm he seems in his last moment showing what he’s learned. Jenny Robertson as Annie’s friend Millie, who says just about every line that she has different than what you would expect but the film’s real secret weapons are both Trey Wilson as manager and Robert Wuhl as coach who has so many good line readings that it would take too long to list them. Anyway, lollygaggers.

But back to baseball movies, a tradition which BULL DURHAM is a part of and it’s the only one that comes to mind which features a shrine to Thurman Munson as the end credits roll. Thinking back to a few others for a moment, everyone in the world seems to love THE NATURAL but even though it’s got the famous imagery and score, to me it’s kind of a snooze. Please don’t throw stuff. MAJOR LEAGUE, unlike BULL DURHAM, is the one that really wants to be SLAP SHOT only from a much slicker, not to mention capitalistic, vantage point and it all rings hollow to me. Kevin Costner did a couple of others, of course. FIELD OF DREAMS is kind of its own thing which sets it apart from other baseball movies and it’s one which I have such a personal reaction to that I don’t even want to go into it right now. It’s that kind of film, as you surely know. FOR LOVE OF THE GAME, which I’ve written about before, probably needed a script polish and different female lead but has always been underrated. And it’s hard for me to not love THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, of course. Leaving that one aside, I would say that THE BAD NEWS BEARS (original) and A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN are the two baseball films that definitively rank up there with BULL DURHAM which leads me to the harebrained theory that the best baseball films are the ones that don’t involve the major leagues at all. And BULL DURHAM is the only one of these three that doesn’t involve any sort of climactic game, one of a number of things that sets it apart from all the others. BULL DURHAM is also part of a run of great titles that came from Orion Pictures with their other summer ’88 comedy being Jonathan Demme’s MARRIED TO THE MOB, also featuring Trey Wilson who maybe gets the biggest laugh in that film. This is a reminder that the ‘80s weren’t so bad, not always. BULL DURHAM is a film about baseball but it’s also about finding a way to enrich your life beyond what you ever expected, helping you forget about those things keeping you down and helping you to move on to what your world should turn into. Maybe you can do it with a very special person too. Because no matter what, summer ends. It does every year. Life has to begin.

A Hard Grape To Grow

Some memories stay with you, like it or not. I can still remember where I was and what I was doing when it happened. In morning traffic, heading from my appointment to my job, going over in my head what had been discussed when right at that moment I made the decision to stop drinking. Just like that. This was a little over ten years ago now, the official anniversary was several months back as I write this, but at first there was no way to know what would happen. I had no idea if it would last, but it was the decision that I made, almost as if realizing for the very first time it was an option. It took about six weeks before I told anyone because you can’t tell people right off the bat. But it happened. It wasn’t even that hard because I made the decision and that was that, but there was a lot of thinking by me for some time about what it all meant. What did it say about me and my life? Had I just been drinking too much or was it something more than that? Did the difference even matter? Maybe the only thing that mattered was at one point I was drinking and then I stopped. And that hasn’t changed.

Now it’s been over ten years. A lot of other things have changed, of course. And in addition to everything else sometimes I’ve wondered about the various films that have explored the subject of drinking, but it still isn’t something I particularly want to write about. You might be able to think of a few of the titles. Billy Wilder’s THE LOST WEEKEND, Blake Edwards’ DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES. The little-seen SMASHED, which stars an excellent Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Edgar Wright’s THE WORLD’S END, which plays like a much different movie for me now than it did on opening night. Of course, there’s ARTHUR, which also means there’s ARTHUR 2: ON THE ROCKS but never mind about that one. But each of the others are worth remembering. And the alcoholism angle of THE VERDICT may be of secondary importance to the plot, but Paul Newman holding that coffee cup while defiantly not picking up the ringing phone in the last shot stays with me. But truthfully, as much as my life is spent connecting to films, I never gave much thought to all this in relation to myself. It was something I went through and then I took care of it, which is my own private journey. End of story. And I don’t regret it for a second.

Still, to bring up another film in which drinking plays a part, there is Alexander Payne’s SIDEWAYS. A film about a writer, a film about a man who is depressed. Can’t imagine why I would relate to this. We don’t even need to get into to how it’s also a film about someone who likes to drink wine a lot and while I enjoyed wine myself very much it would be a massive stretch to claim I was ever any sort of expert. But I can certainly relate to having strong opinions about things. Also, even when I was drinking, I never liked Merlot and whatever the reasons are for the main character’s reaction to the possibility of drinking it, it feels like SIDEWAYS gets that part right. And it gets a lot of other things right too. This shouldn’t be forgotten. And maybe now I can look at it as a film about the sort of person that I’m not anymore. At least, I hope so.

When unpublished novelist and eighth-grade teacher Miles (Paul Giamatti) picks up his actor friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church) to take him away for a week to Santa Barbara wine country before getting married, Miles simply wants to spend the week relaxing and drinking wine. Jack, barely giving any thought to his upcoming wedding, is all too aware of Miles’ depression over his divorce and novel not getting published and is fully intent finding him a girl while they’re up there. And he has intentions along these lines for himself as well. Their first night out at dinner they meet Maya (Virginia Madsen) a waitress at the Hitching Post, who already knows and seems to like Miles. The second day they meet Stephanie (Sandra Oh), a pourer at one of the wineries who also knows Maya and a double date is quickly arranged for that night. Jack doesn’t waste any time with Stephanie but Miles is more hesitant and though things eventually begin to go better for him and Maya, his problems once again begin to weigh on him, not to mention the truth of Jack’s situation which the two of them have been keeping from both women.

The films directed by Alexander Payne are often about dreamers trapped in lives with dreams that feel like they’re getting further away all the time and it may already be too late. His films are set in a messy world. If he’s given the choice between an actor in a scene who has either combed their hair or not, he chooses to throw the comb as far away as possible, he’s never seen a car that he wanted to pull into a car wash to get clean. And there’s someone at the center of all that messiness who can’t stop dreaming of the way they want it to be, the life they wish they could live and they’re unable to figure out why it can’t always be that way, unable to get out of the rut they’re trapped in. So much of what their life is has already been planted into the ground and they didn’t even realize it before they’re stuck there in who they are, trapped in clutter and it all fits in perfectly with Payne’s approach to every single scene. His films are acerbic but somehow soothing, able to get under our skin with all the growing tension imaginable but also comforting in how painfully relatable they are and how the things the characters dream of are there, just barely out of reach. His characters are sometimes awful but they’re still recognizable through the things they do to achieve some sort of relatability in all that messiness. The specificity to this world is something I recognize and feel at home in, even if I don’t always want to. And SIDEWAYS (screenplay by Payne and Jim Taylor, based on the novel by Rex Pickett) finds the ideal balance to all this. It’s only Payne’s fourth film as director, which seems crazy now, but it feels like a culmination of so many of the ideas he wants to explore about people and who they are when forced to look at what they’ve been doing in their lives. The clothes they wear, the food they eat, the wine they drink, the cars they drive and the people they have become because of everything around them.

This is all centered around a lead character who seems like he’s already given up, who tells a blatant lie right at the start (a small one, but still) and before the movie is even twenty minutes old does something terrible involving his mother, something that she might even suspect he’s doing already. So much of Miles is in what he does and how he behaves, obsessing over a book that may never be published and is certainly longer than anyone on the planet should have to read, looking for excuses to not try anything that doesn’t have to do with a glass of wine he can describe in full detail to whoever might be listening. A character who is desperate to have the world become what he wants, believing all that reading of the New York Times and doing the crossword puzzles will suddenly allow the world to realize he’s a man of intelligence. There’s a lot going on in Miles’s head that we never know about, likely a few things that he doesn’t want to be reminded about. Memories of his ex-wife and what went wrong there, memories of certain bottles of wine he drank, continually rewriting sentences from that endless book of his, but we don’t need to know the details. So much is already there in the way Paul Giamatti is slouched over and his eyes that are focused on all the things he doesn’t want to remember.

Miles and Jack were college roommates and their friendship probably made much more sense then. Jack seems to have the attention span of about ten seconds and floats through each moment unaware of any consequences, mainly focused on his own pleasure but it’s almost a surprise to revisit the film now and realize that as horrible as some of Jack’s behavior is, he often makes total sense when trying to talk to Miles about his situation with his divorce and book and the possibility of another woman. Miles just doesn’t realize it and Jack doesn’t always put it in the right words anyway, particularly his suggestion to Miles about his book to ‘get it in libraries’, but one thing that happens when revisiting this film after several years away is realizing how Jack is both horrible in some ways but also not always as dumb as he seems. It all just gets mixed up in his own stuff as he tries to think about anything at all except for his upcoming wedding. For Jack it’s all about the pleasure of the singular moment and nothing else, actually believing that he might really move up to wine country and move in with this woman he just met, doing all this for reasons that to him are obvious and Miles will never understand any of it. They’re different guys, too different by this point in their lives to keep all this going. College was a long time ago, except Jack only seems to partly realize this.

The way the film goes from title cards reading ‘Saturday’ at the start to ‘Saturday’ at the end underlines how much this is a trip that goes on a little too long. Like any vacation, it takes longer than expected to get going and never goes quite the way Miles wanted. Even through each serene shot of wine country, he’s never fully able to take a vacation from his own head so it becomes a road movie that keeps making stops, for wine tastings that give him all the time in the world to explain everything he knows about what they’re sampling to Jack as well as the side trip to Miles’ mother which turns out to have its own reason beyond stopping to say hello to her. But it all leads to Maya. For all the shots focusing on Paul Giamatti throughout the film to let us into the darkness of Miles’ head it’s Virginia Madsen who gets the close-up that really matters, one of the greatest I can think of. In a scene that culminates the long conversation between Miles and Maya that gets broken up into three sections of where they are—kitchen, couch and out on the porch—and after Miles gets to explain his love for Pinot that feels awfully close to his own thin-skinned self, she gets the monologue all about where her love of wine came from and why, where without saying it tells Miles everything he needs to hear about himself, trapped in the middle of living his own metaphor and still unable to do anything about it but what she does says it to him in a way she wants him to aspire to in life, not just accept. It’s a beautiful scene and a beautiful moment so naturally Miles’ response to this is beyond painful and something that of course I can understand. Or at least used to. Here and elsewhere in the film Giamatti and Madsen, or I should say Miles and Maya, have a chemistry that feels perfect and the two of them in a shot together gives the film a sense of total calm and it seems as right as everything Miles could ever want.

This all goes along like a dream, with Alexander Payne giving each scene a touch that always feels rich, playful and totally free, everything feels correctly lived in. The editing by Kevin Tent knows when to be jittery, knows when to relax, and knows when to hold on just the right look that someone is giving. Shot by Phedon Papamichael, the look of the film is earthy and alive, the jazzy score by Rolfe Kent playing all through it to counteract the abrasiveness, catching the right sense of emotion and the carefree feel of the moments that connect. The dialogue, especially coming from Jack, always catches the right joke in a moment especially when it talks around things like trying to talk around the subject of his upcoming wedding or his completely bullshit way of telling Miles that the new draft of his book is better. The extended montage where everything seems to finally be going right and Miles is finally starting to relax, ending in picnic during a gorgeous sunset, even when we know in the back of our minds all the lies and deceptions underneath this. That feeling catches in the throat, just like the laughs catch in the throat. Even the touching moments in the film get caught there. The film cuts deep while being totally soothing in the way it understands how the two feelings can get caught in between each other, just as it knows that the way the right food and wine can make you think about life. And it all makes wine seem kind of cool and fun as well, which it is, and talking about it doesn’t have to be pretentious like the stuffed shirt seen lecturing at one of the wineries. “A ’95 Opus One, with smoked salmon and artichokes, but we didn’t care,” Miles says when remembering a day with his ex and we might not understand why this particular wine shouldn’t go with that pairing, but we know he does. There’s a beauty to the way Alexander Payne stages those moments between two people, that always catches the right sense of what the scene needs to be and just how screwed up each other those relationships really are.

The trip is never in a rush, thanks to all the detours caused by both men, but the film isn’t in a rush either and any of those moments when it can pause for just the right character beat adds to the effect it has. There’s a moment where Miles and Jack are playing golf then get confronted by other players on the course and the way they deal with it shows them totally in synch with each other for just a few moments, probably like the friends they used to be and seems to give Miles a lift in a way nothing else in the film does, making him ready for Maya in a way he doesn’t even realize. The way the film pauses at times as they drive past these vineyards, filled with the grapes making all the wine that gives Miles some kind of clarity towards everything, the Pinot that he identifies with so much. So much of the time Miles and Jack are dealing with each other, trying to talk to each other about what they don’t want to talk about, as if neither one is ever listening to what the other is saying. Even when Miles is at his lowest after having finally learned his book is not going to sell, Jack is still making the attempt, trying to talk to him about things in a way that Miles never tries to do with him. Jack continues to go too far after everything goes wrong near the end and after lying about telling Maya (a slightly bigger lie than before, but still), there’s a very small piece of comeuppance involving his car but the way he helps Jack out of the biggest jam imaginable, which comes complete with a Bush-Rumsfeld cameo that seems so quaint now, is a small victory. It shows that Miles can achieve something if he’s forced to, no matter how screwed up all the reasons around it are.

To name a few of the later Alexander Payne films which received similar acclaim, THE DESCENDANTS and THE HOLDOVERS both work very well but they also feel like the director is doing a version of this thing again, however confident he is about it, the thing we’ve come to know and love. In SIDEWAYS he’s not trying to do it. He’s doing it. Following up his previous films CITIZEN RUTH, ELECTION and ABOUT SCHMIDT, SIDEWAYS feels like he’s perfecting the form and returning to it all these years later with very different thoughts going through my head it still feels close to perfect, a human comedy which cuts deep while completely understanding the people without excusing them and knowing their flaws. I kept away from this film for some years, partly because of all the drinking it contains but also the fear that because of those things maybe it wouldn’t speak to me anymore. Or maybe I was just afraid of all the bad feelings it would bring up. But it’s a wonderful surprise to find how beautifully the film has held up and I feel even closer to it now. I do still think about my own life while watching this and some of the things I don’t do anymore. All that drinking is in the past for me now but even if I’m in a completely different place deep down, I know some of those feelings are still there, just different, just as the stress is different as well as the depression, the fear, the regrets. Of course they exist. And SIDEWAYS knows that they’re always going to be there. The point is just not to drown in all that. I learned some time ago that when it comes to certain things in life, you need to move on. And maybe where that leads you to just might be the answer.

Maya is the dream woman in the film’s eyes, even if Miles can barely admit it to himself at first. She’s also one of those women who turn up in life when you don’t expect it and the film is clearly aware that she’s someone with her own past and regrets. It’s a woman who looks at you a certain way which can have such a power you don’t even notice it, because this has never happened before. And maybe all that matters is if you get an answering machine message like the one Maya leaves for Miles at the end. A message that tells you the exact right thing and now is the time to act on it. Because there’s no point in waiting, even if it also doesn’t hurt to sometimes pause and appreciate how good certain things are. SIDEWAYS begins and ends with a knock at a door. The first one wakes up the main character, irresponsible as always. The second comes when he’s ready. Ready to look someone else in the eyes and admit that things can be another way. Those things can be good. There’s no guarantee it’ll work out, but you never know.

Paul Giamatti’s performance feels like a miracle. There isn’t a thing he says, a gesture he makes in the film that ever feels wrong. I could go on listing all the moments here, beginning with his reaction to being told by someone the reason that reading fiction doesn’t interest them, the way he looks up when he first sees Maya at the restaurant, the sting in his voice when he calls his mother by her first name. The way he walks, the way he keeps silent when outraged, the way he keeps that smile on his face when told a certain piece of news near the end and a few minutes later, the look on his face when eating a certain burger and there’s more in the satisfaction of that moment each time I see it. Before this film, Thomas Haden Church had made me laugh in movies that didn’t quite deserve his comic timing and here finds the absolute ultimate version of that, trying to talk to his friend in the most clueless way possible and totally shutting out every possibility of consequences from his mind until it’s absolutely too late. There are so many levels and yet so much is in the way he says ‘oaky’ to describe a wine he’s just tasted. Virginia Madsen is a lifeforce, so much in her big speech but it’s also in her eyes and the looks she gives Miles in every scene, how she reverts to level-headedness when everything about the situation becomes clear. She deserved the Oscar for this. The best of Sandra Oh is in the little moments and how much she puts into just a little bit of screentime, beginning with saying she should be spanked and I particularly like how vulnerable she first seems when they first pull up for her what turns out to be her last moment, with Jack having no idea of the pain that’s coming. Marylouise Burke as Miles’ mother in just a few moments finds a certain balance between total flightiness and seemingly complete awareness of what’s going on and Jessica Hecht is also memorable as ex-wife Victoria when she turns up at the wedding, offscreen when she says her biggest revelation but also clearly trying to be kind to the ex-husband that she doesn’t need to be kind to anymore.

Alexander Payne has said that one of the key inspirations for SIDEWAYS is Dino Risi’s wonderful and funny 1962 film IL SORPASSO, a comedy about two very different personalities who take an unexpected road trip together with surprising results. Introducing the film on the Criterion Blu-ray, he talks about how he was once approached about doing a remake and though he doesn’t say it flat out, I imagine he liked the idea of doing a movie similar to IL SORPASSO (no surprise, Scorsese has spoken highly of the film as well so you should see it) but didn’t want to remake it, then when SIDEWAYS turned up it was a eureka moment. SIDEWAYS isn’t quite a road movie the way IL SORPASSO is but it is about two people who have driven away from their usual lives for a few days and what happens when they veer off the expected path. It’s the point in life where you’re old enough to have regrets and may have gone too far down the wrong road but it doesn’t have to be that way. I liked wine. In my mind I still do, I suppose. Wine is good, after all. But I don’t miss it and I don’t miss those other things I liked to drink either. There are other things out there for me now. What happened was I stopped drinking. And eventually something good happened. All this likely means that I missed my chance to take a decent tour of the locations up in Santa Ynez since it would involve a lot of wine tasting I wouldn’t want to take part in. My loss, but that’s ok. SIDEWAYS is one of the best films, one of the most human films of that early 2000s period and it’s felt in each moment. Those emotions tend to stick around. And sometimes the right thing happens to create another memory that gives you a reason to keep going. Because there is one. And there will be.

No Hands On The Clock

So many things change. Few things ever change. Long ago, barely any time at all, I went to see Paul Thomas Anderson’s BOOGIE NIGHTS at the Hollywood Galaxy on opening weekend in 1997 when about halfway through the film broke. Oddly enough, this happened only seconds after the shocking end of the New Year’s Eve sequence which, everything else aside, might be the perfect place to put an intermission. The crowd reaction to this was not good, as you would imagine, and they let the theater know this. But in the middle of all those people complaining and along with my own annoyance at having the film interrupted, this was also a slight issue for me that day because I was supposed to meet a friend immediately after right down the street at the Chinese to see DEVIL’S ADVOCATE which also opened that weekend. After several minutes of worrying the film finally started up again, eventually ended and I made it to see Keanu Reeves & Al Pacino just in time. All these years later that double bill feels like one of the best afternoons at the movies I’ve ever had. And there I was only some months back now, so long ago, down the street at the Vista in the fall of 2025 seeing the latest Paul Thomas Anderson film ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER playing on its first afternoon to a sold out house in the full glory of VistaVision when at roughly forty-seven minutes in the film broke, actually burning up in the frame. Considering all the hype around the format of the presentation it was easy to be concerned, even though this time I had nowhere else to be. But everyone in the theater stayed calm as if they correctly knew the theater would get it fixed shortly and that’s exactly what happened. The film played without further interruptions and went on to its lengthy run at the theater. This may not be much of a story, but it did happen.

The VistaVision element was a huge part of how the film was being sold at the time, complete with actual punch cards handed out at the Vista detailing all the formats you could see it in. Now, with all of that over but hopefully with revival screenings in the future whether in 70mm, 35mm or even actual VistaVision, what we’re left with is the film itself which can easily be called the best of 2025 and possibly even the best of the years surrounding it. This is also a film that means so much right now, so much more than others do, and now still less than a year after it opened, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER already feels like an essential film of the moment as well as an essential part of what’s going on around us. It already feels like a film that matters and will continue to matter, that what it’s saying means something as so much is spiraling out of control. Along with the very serious notions that it confronts about the past, future and present we’re being forced to live in, every moment of the film is infused with an undeniable feeling of pure intensity as it builds through the increasing suspense of the ongoing chase that keeps going through the second half, as well as some of the funniest moments in any film over the past few years. But it also contains an emotional power that I can’t shake and even after multiple viewings, the film remains a completely exhilarating experience. Down to the very last frame, it feels like what a film is supposed to be, what a film needs to be, at this moment in time. And it feels like it’s going to continue to be exactly that.

“Ghetto” Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an explosives expert for the revolutionary group the French 75, intent on breaking out immigrants held in migrant centers and spreading their message through various means, wreaking havoc on banks as well as politicians. He’s also the lover of fellow French 75 member Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) who comes from a long line of revolutionaries, unlike Pat. When she encounters Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), one of the commanding officers in charge, during one of their breakouts and he becomes immediately obsessed with her which includes coercing her into sex with him. She soon gives birth to a baby girl and though Pat is now focused on the baby, Perfidia continues her revolutionary activities which soon go bad when a security guard is killed during a bank robbery. She is arrested, then after pressure from Lockjaw whose interest in her has continued, gives up her cohorts and as she goes into Witness Protection, Pat flees with the baby. But Perfidia quickly abandons her new situation and escapes across the border to Mexico. Sixteen years later, Pat is now living under the identity of Bob Ferguson with the girl (Chase Infiniti) now known as Willa Ferguson, sixteen years old and very much her own person who, like most teenagers, is always arguing with her father. Lockjaw, meanwhile, has risen in the ranks of the military and now has the chance to join the ultra-secret white supremacist group known as the Christmas Adventurers Club but he must use his authority to track down the girl he believes to be his daughter and wipe every trace linking him to Perfidia away.

Sometimes you can feel how special a film is down in your bones as you experience it for the first time and you know that this is only going to be the first viewing of many. How the very act of seeing that film is going to become addictive. And sometimes I can’t stop watching ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER or at the very least I don’t want to. Right from the start the film offers a feeling of exhilaration which becomes so entertaining, so full of life, so moving and terrifying, always willing to embrace the ideas that keep on popping through it and always willing to confront them, turning every scene into yet another extension of all the ideas it wants to explore. Through its examination of what people become in this version of the world we’re currently living in, how they grow and change through different times, along with how much what we do affects the generation to come, it fits in perfectly with every single film Paul Thomas Anderson has made up to this point. In many ways, it feels like a sort of culmination of so many of the ideas that he’s been exploring. Every moment is thrilling, each character pops even if they only appear for an instant, every scene feels so finely honed down to its essence and what it needs to be. The way the film makes its choices is fearless, finding the correct tone between the outrageously satirical and the deadly serious nature of the time we live in which is unavoidable as well as feeling all too recognizable. Through this, it becomes one of the few films to acknowledge how dangerous the current moment really is as well as how absurd, somehow finding a way to satirize what already feels too much like satire in the first place no matter how hateful and reprehensible it is, no matter how much what these people truly are feels worse than we ever imagined. But the film also knows what can be found in the sense of joy which can come out being unrelentingly defiant against that hatred and it fits in perfectly with Paul Thomas Anderson’s other films while at the same time becoming more of a crowd pleaser than they have ever been before. Being a crowd pleaser isn’t what makes it great. But the rush you get from that effect by the end of the film is undeniable.

So much of what the film is can be found in the sense of movement. The film begins in motion, after all, and the uneasy feeling begins right from the first notes of music played over the Warner Bros. logo, the feeling that what’s about to happen matters. Perfidia Beverly Hills is the one seen first, her steady walk facing the oncoming trucks on the freeway checking out the scene of the immigrant detention center before their attack. ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, written by Paul Thomas Anderson and inspired by "Vineland" by Thomas Pynchon, barely sits still for a moment, with a sense of jagged momentum that keeps moving every second forward, a fusion of camerawork, editing and music which becomes seamless in a way that makes them all fit together. “Ghetto” Pat, the ostensible main character, appears soon enough but Perfidia is the one seen first, through his eyes as well as ours, and she’s the one who is really causing this forward motion even as she remains an enigma to us and everyone else in the film, one of several strong, extremely sexualized women of color among these revolutionaries and only willing to explain themselves on their own terms. The first half-hour of the film is in some ways an enigma as well, plot details getting revealed with an exhilaration to each movement and every single cut but there’s little to understand that can’t be read in her face, a Mona Lisa who doesn’t let anyone know her motivations even though the men around her think they can. The mystery of what she does through what feels like the complete denial of her pregnancy both before and after which is never explained and instead of trying to understand it herself, in the end she merely flees. And the film becomes about the hole her absence creates, especially considering how unusual it is for such a prominent character to exit a film this early unless they’ve been killed off, and it’s the hole anyone’s absence leaves when you don’t fully understand so nothing can feel complete ever again. Perfidia was basically the main character, then suddenly she drops out of the film so her daughter Willa essentially assumes the mantle of the film’s main character from her mother because there’s no one else around who can live up to it.

And the film does keep moving through all this, but it also starts nowhere in particular. It’s set in a time that could be this moment, it could be 16 years ago for us or maybe not, even with all the references to social media and Tom Cruise, whenever that really is. The way Terry Gilliam’s BRAZIL began with a title card reading “Somewhere in the 20th Century” this film could be set somewhere, anywhere, in the 21st, a century in which so many things have collapsed into a bland sort of sameness, just like how in the Gilliam film things stay the same while nothing seems to work anymore. Partly set in the sanctuary city of Bakton Cross, wherever this is supposed to be, there’s a reference to Bob drinking at the Rustic Inn although presumably not the one down the street from me in Los Feliz where I used to go all the time but could very well be named for it anyway. The French 75 is partly a fantasy version of what a true revolutionary group would be if it existed now leading to absurdist extremes but the film only takes that idea so far and knows they’re a bunch of fuck ups, good at the speeches but not so much at the actions, the way Shayna A. McHayle’s Junglepussy gets everyone’s attention during the bank robbery but is immediately thrown off by what her colleague Perfidia is doing off to the side to change the narrative. Unlike the other side they still seem human, no matter how dangers they still might be. They’re the side that knows how to fuck without getting hung up about it, even if Perfidia knows how to keep her secrets from Ghetto Pat. And the other side doesn’t know how to handle this at all. In other words, the film is set right now.

Among other things, Paul Thomas Anderson films are also about family. This really doesn’t need to be questioned. Of course, what a family really is can mean any number of different things and whether it’s literally that or the people who become a family as they become part of each other’s lives. Sometimes this is about the idea of parents and what they are as we try to understand the hold that they have over us forever, like it or not. HARD EIGHT is about a man who essentially becomes a surrogate parent to his protégé while keeping his own secret about what he knows about the younger man’s real father. BOOGIE NIGHTS is about a family created after the main character flees his real mother who is last seen heartlessly screaming at him in a way that always hits a little too close to home for me. MAGNOLIA has Tom Cruise’s Frank T.J. Mackey refusing to forgive until he breaks down but it still feels ambivalent, uncertain of forgiveness and whether it can ever be deserved. This can go on, but after PHANTOM THREAD which ends with a birth when two people have finally come together as the union they have created becomes undeniable and in LICORICE PIZZA which ends with Gary and Alana also coming together, whatever that really means, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER begins at things fully from the point of view of the parents, aware of who they’ve been and how they’ve screwed things up with the offspring needing the entire film before they can come to peace with where they came from but the relationships also blur the line on which is which.

Col. Steven J. Lockjaw is given just enough power to make him a threat while being pathetic to his very core, refusing to admit his own sexuality to himself and looking only for what he believes he deserves, an Anakin Skywalker of the real world turned Darth Vader looking to destroy his own offspring, who in her own way might be a Luke Skywalker. Or maybe she’s just someone trying to make the world better, living in the shadow of what was her very pregnant mother, each of them seen at different points going through training, firing that giant machine gun followed by the similar framing of her daughter firing another weapon under the watchful eyes of the Sisters of the Brave Beaver (maybe the one section of the film which feels like it got short shrift in the edit even as the piercing voice of April Grace, also the reporter interviewing Tom Cruise in MAGNOLIA, as head nun Sister Rochelle is difficult to shake) as well as the haunted look of Regina Hall close by watching each time, maybe thinking of the past, maybe wondering if it can all go wrong again.

“Sixteen years later, the world had changed very little,” goes that very short piece of narration when the film jumps forward. Of course it has. It all goes by in a flash, and it cuts in right on that first shot of Willa, everything good and hopeful in the world in her beaming face. The film presents an exaggeration of our current moment but the way the other side is presented never feels exaggerated at all, maybe because there is no way to exaggerate it because, as someone once famously and correctly stated, they’re weird. In the calm, deadpan way Anderson shoots it, all he needs to do is simply display this. Lockjaw wants to be part of that world, he’s weird too after all, though he never can be. He’s human and he’s damaged, the way he walks and talks to people is almost the way a little boy does, his references like referring to kids as ‘teeny boppers’ has no connection to the world today, but there’s no way to feel sorry for him, using his command for his own personal reasons, a reminder of how much all the actions taken by the authorities are just for show and if other people get hurt by it, all the better. The world gets fucked with because people are trying to clean up their own shit in the guise of their fake assault on Bakton Cross which even manages to piss off the all-powerful Christmas Adventurers, the way their chicken nuggets they like so much get fucked with not to mention a business owned by someone who is on their side. These weirdos who clearly don’t know what to do with their feelings about that, the racism and the hatred as well as the belief that they’re in charge all mixed in with their very likely latent homosexuality. “We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us,” was the way it was stated in MAGNOLIA and it’s what ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER looks at, whether the characters know it or not.

Bob aka “Ghetto” Pat doesn’t know about any of this, or at least he’s trying not to think about it. He’s allegedly the lead of his film, just as Kurt Russell’s Jack Burton clearly thought he was the lead of BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA but even as Bob is apparently a legend among the French 75, we don’t see much evidence of this and he barely seems to matter at times to anyone else around him, just looking to sit around the house paranoid while getting high and watching THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS. Still, he seems to earn some points by at least trying to refer to Willa’s friend by the correct pronouns even as she still gets annoyed with him over this. Right from the start he’s always looking for direction, scrambling to get away from his house, desperately looking for where he’s supposed to go, desperately trying to get a piece of information from the people who called him in what feels like the most accurate portrayal of a customer service call ever and maybe one of the funniest sequences in any movie in years culminating in Bob shouting “Fuck you!” to Comrade Josh when he is told nothing more than what the correct response to the code words asking ‘what time is it?’ always was and hearing the totally obvious extra meaning to that password right away. His scrambling around throughout the film does nothing except to be there at the precise moment he needs to be to tell Willa who he is, who he really is but the way he’s helped by those women seems to remind him how necessary his fight is. Benicio del Toro's Sensei floats in and out of what’s happening around him, helping out Bob but also focused on all the other people he’s helping, so while Bob has accomplished nothing compared to him he does seem to understand that he’s not good enough, not even as good as the rioters out there on the streets or those skateboards who are leading him as they flee across the rooftops with a dreamlike lucidity that almost turns the sequence into a musical number for a few seconds, the imagery becoming like a ballet except for Bob who doesn’t know all the right steps.

The way ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER tells its story through every single shot it’s clear which side Paul Thomas Anderson is on. And which side the movie is on. The film doesn’t need speeches for that. It gets that feeling from each touch of humanity. It’s a movie about the moment and about decisions, not a movie about speeches or literal things or events. It’s not Sidney Lumet’s RUNNING ON EMPTY, to name one of the films that Anderson presented on TCM when his film came out; others included MIDNIGHT RUN, THE FRENCH CONNECTION, THE SEARCHERS and, no surprise considering its pertinent cameo in his film, THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS. They all make sense as an inspiration for him but the themes and ideas of the way the past connects to the present are there, done in the way people behave and the way Lockjaw’s selfish, arrogant defiance is made clear, the regret heard in Perfidia’s voice at the end. And it’s all about the chases, how so much the film is really one long chase, given a jagged momentum which eventually becomes relentless goosed on the by the incessant, jangling of the phenomenal Johnny Greenwood score which becomes passionately emotional any time it reminds us of Willa’s link to Perfidia. The camerawork by Michael Bauman which makes the faces and vistas equally important in that VistaVision clarity, from the intimacy of the closeups to the epic feeling as what happens when they confront each other, the standoff between Willa and Lockjaw. The editing by Andy Jurgensen which finds every single moment to make the scene about. It’s in the serenity of Sensei who doesn’t appear until the jump forward in time but he’s more of a true revolutionary than any of the French 75 ever are. Staying calm through every tense moment, repeating the mantra of ocean waves to Bob, ocean waves. That’s what Bob is searching for, those ocean waves to ride, ocean waves which are found in the form of those hills on the road that make up the big pursuit that develops with such perfect clarity that made it clear it was one of the most perfect cinematic chase scenes in decades, leading Bob exactly where he needs to be. And those ocean waves seen in those hills make perfect sense in how they lead Bob, fuck up that he is, to exactly where he needs to be.

In the end, what is ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER to me? It’s a film about what’s happening right now but it’s also about the past and the future and finding peace with it all for the right reasons, the way we look back on our life and try to understand what has happened to us, those moments of regret swirling in and out of our head. But if you don’t regret anything, if you don’t question anything, if you don’t try to understand your past and where you came from and why, are you even living? When you grow up, really grow up, you either understand certain things about the world and life around you or you don’t. Willa understanding her mother and understanding the man who she will always think of as her father. Lockjaw, too stupid to comprehend that he’ll never be what the Christmas Adventurers want and it all leads to the final image of Lockjaw just as Bob is telling the girl who is his daughter about the letter from her mother, the letter that will help her understand her mother in a way she never could. It's the dream that maybe your child will be the one who puts the world right, the dream that maybe you’ll be reunited as she willingly drives towards the fight, even if it is in Oakland which according to Bob is pretty far. Because there is no final battle. Things really do keep going. But it finds the possibility of a happy ending in the middle of everything happening now and, thinking of this, the final image of ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER means more to me each time I see it. This feeling of hope. That that maybe one day things will be made right, in spite of all the horrible evidence around us. I may not be so sure about this on some days, but ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER believes that it’s possible.

Leonardo DiCaprio is playing someone who doesn’t know a lot, who means well but he’s still a fuckup. And he’s tremendous here, with astounding comic timing, fierce determination and a haunted look in his eyes as he tries to come to terms with the way he’s failed Willa. That confusion in his eyes holds the movie together, knowing that he’s a few steps behind everyone and still trying to do the right thing, even if he doesn’t always know or care what that is. There’s only a brief moment in the film with both DiCaprio and Sean Penn but it’s one of the best in the film for each of them with the terror in Pat’s eyes suddenly realizing what’s happened and the nastiness of Lockjaw coming full bore. Penn, who basically won the Oscar the day this film opened, finds that line between pure satire as if he could have given this performance in DR. STRANGELOVE with an intensity filled with misplaced confidence that is always totally vicious and arrogant, each little gesture terrifying and absurd. Even his walk alone is unlike anything else.

And there’s also the total calm of Benicio del Toro as Sensei, living up to that Japanese poster for SUPERMAN on his wall while always showing no fear, complete frankness towards who he’s dealing with and knowing exactly what to do at every moment. Even if she doesn’t enter the film until well into it, Chase Infiniti is electric and fearless in her own way, fully formed right from when we see her but still the teenage girl she has to be, always ready to look someone in the eye and challenge them, no matter which one of her fathers it is. Teyana Taylor controls the first half-hour with that look on her face, the sound of her voice reading the letter at the end. The two halves that the film resists ever showing together at the same time. In some ways it’s felt in the haunted look on Regina Hall’s face and the deadly seriousness to her voice in each moment she gets. But there are so many moments. Tony Goldwyn for the way he reacts to Lockjaw, Jim Downey who gets to say both “punk trash and “semen demon”, Kevin Tighe whose phenomenal line reading of “we should all be able to eat off the floor” and the way John Hoogenakker who’s been called in to do that cleaning they need done says, “Oh no, I love their nuggets.” There’s also moments like the completely real nature of so many small parts like Tisha Sloan in her one scene as Willa’s teacher but also the true banality of evil that comes off non-actor James Raterman as the military officer in charge of finding Willa, a guy who knows how to get his job done more than anyone else in the film.

Our stories begin long before we’re here. They follow us through our past, our regrets, our failures, the way we run from one theater to another to make it to DEVIL’S ADVOCATE on time when nothing else could possibly be as important. Years later the Chinese Theater would become important to me for very different reasons. But one thing the past decade has done to me is make me miss satire. I want it back. And here it is. But the film has so much more. Willa leaves at the end of the film as Tom Petty singing “American Girl” plays at the end as Willa gets in her car and maybe the song is about her, maybe it’s a Jonathan Demme reference since it was once in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, maybe the song is a reference to its appearance in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH which happens to star one of this film’s main actors. That’s the way all these films seem to flow into each other like it or not, the way one trip to the movies can remind us of another so many years later. Through it all, the world changes very little. Which may be the only thing we can ever know for sure.