Aftersun (2022)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Aftersun (2022) – C. Wells

After all its great reviews (which I didn’t read), I’m not sure why I shied away from Aftersun for so long.  I guess it seemed like a heartwarming father-daughter bonding story -- and I didn’t think I needed that (but see Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, 2025, where I got that and I liked it!).  In fact, this is a Scottish father-daughter bonding story and perhaps that makes a difference. It feels more authentic than what I expected an American or Hollywood version would be like.  But more importantly, this is a mood-piece (and/or a moody piece) where we’re somewhere in the future looking back on the events, years later, viewing young dad Callum (Paul Mescal) partly through the eyes of 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) and partly through adult Sophie’s eyes (but we spend only a blip of time in this present tense). Young Sophie is always watching – her dad, but also the teenagers around them at the Turkish resort town where they are holidaying. We see her observing adult things, but it isn’t quite clear how much she understands or whether she fully grasps what we as viewers can plainly see – Callum is struggling, perhaps from his divorce, perhaps for other reasons. Writer-Director Charlotte Wells (whose debut feature film this is) shows us Callum on his own, in other scenes to which Sophie is not privy, that fill in some gaps, emotional gaps, if not factual ones.  Knowing that the film is somewhat autobiographical privileges Sophie’s viewpoint and lets us understand that the director is reconstructing what she could have or should have seen, in hindsight years later.  We never know what happened next for Callum but what we do get to see, in these casual, naturalistic, real-feeling moments between father and daughter, is deeply affecting, precipitating a gentle flow of thoughts and reflections about childhood, parenthood, and how to cope in this world.  Very moving.

One Battle After Another (2025)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

One Battle After Another (2025) – P. T. Anderson

Time may not exist very clearly in Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest (and greatest?) film, which begins in an era where Weather Underground-styled activists are attacking the authoritarian and anti-immigration actions of the current US government and then fast-forwards 16 years to another timepoint where, uh, not much has changed, except the revolutionaries have aged and the authoritarians have tightened their grip.  Sounds serious (and topical) but this is a comedy … and an action film, complete with car chases.  In fact, the film script (also by P. T. Anderson but indebted to Pynchon) had been gestating for 20 years, starting with Anderson’s desire to extend his range with those car chases.  That he does.  However, the comic-book broadness of the characters here (specifically Sean Penn’s Colonel Steven J Lockjaw and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson) doesn’t feel too far afield from Anderson’s other Pynchon adaptation, Inherent Vice (2014), with a similar goofy vibe. But One Battle After Another is Anderson at the top of his powers and fearless in his willingness to “go there”. Surprisingly, this may also be Leo’s greatest performance ever – and certainly his funniest – as he bumbles his way through the action as a past-his-prime substance-addled/depleted former rebel, now paranoid stay-at-home single dad to Chase Infiniti’s mixed-race teenager, who both get dumped into a neo-Nazi operation to cleanse America.  Benicio del Toro plays a welcome role as Sensei Sergio St. Carlos, a karate instructor who helps Bob out. Indeed, there are a variety of excellent character turns here from faces familiar and not (Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, Eric Schweig, more) that heighten the kaleidoscopic experience which still, in the end, stacks up as an action movie/thriller with a not-so-disguised political theme (and call to action). Highly recommended!