Dear Movies, I Love You Episode: PTA and One Battle After Another (2025) Hosts: Millie De Chirico & Casey O’Brien Release Date: November 4, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2025 film One Battle After Another, a sprawling, genre-mixing epic based on Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland. As self-professed PTA fans with sharply contrasting tastes in his oeuvre, Millie and Casey analyze the film's tangled narrative, robust performances, and political themes—including revolution, family, paranoia, and white supremacy—through personal anecdotes, sharp critique, and plenty of movie geek banter. It’s a wide-ranging, honest, and funny conversation for anyone feeling overwhelmed by both contemporary cinema and contemporary life.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Initial Banter & Movie Context

• [01:47] The hosts catch up, riffing on Halloween hangovers and ongoing baseball obsessions.
• [09:18] They introduce the main event: One Battle After Another—a three-hour political/family/horror/thriller hybrid, and prime “movie meat on the bone.”
• [14:25] Millie notes the audience at her 70mm screening: “Just filled with men, filled with a lot of, I’m assuming straight white guys … Some of them smelled, and that was distracting.”

2. Personal Histories with PTA

• [26:10] Casey: Early PTA films were “foundational” and made him want to attend film school, but he found There Will Be Blood “more soulless.”
  • “Maybe his early movies hit me at a time that changed my life, and I’m just holding his movies now to too high a standard.” (33:03)
• [28:05] Millie: The opposite—she’s less enamored with Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love, preferring later works. “I think Phantom Thread is a masterpiece. I’m just going to throw that out there.” (31:55)
• Both agree PTA’s obsession with fatherhood is a through-line—though their favorite entries differ.

3. Plot Breakdown & Thematic Analysis

Setup and Synopsis

• [24:05, 36:59] Casey provides a clear, spoiler-light synopsis:
  • Revolutionary group French 75 stages bombings and immigrant rescues.
  • Ghetto “Pat” Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) are lovers and central members.
  • Perfidia’s affair with military man Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn) leads to entanglements, betrayals, and a daughter named Willa.
  • Sixteen years later, Pat is now “Bob,” a stoned burnout raising Willa while hiding from Lockjaw, whose white supremacist club (the Christmas Adventurers) sets him on a hunt.

Tone & Structure

• The movie is described as “a political polemic meets family story, meets kind of, I don’t know, like horror. There’s horror elements to it … or bare minimum thriller elements.” (09:28)
• Millie: “There hasn’t been a movie character that has terrified me more than [Colonel Lockjaw] in damn near thirty years.” (41:29)
• Both note the mix of tense, frightening violence with absurd, satirical elements—a hallmark of both PTA and Pynchon.

Themes

• Fatherhood: A pivot from PTA’s usual “enigmatic father” theme to the dad’s perspective, especially through Leo’s Ghetto Pat/Bob. (53:49+)
  • “I related to the movie in that regard, but also I related to this movie physically in a way … Leo is always late, he's always harried, he's always disheveled. ... Honestly, that's how I feel all the time as a dad.” — Casey [49:04, 50:52]
• Race & Identity: Willa’s biracial identity and family struggles mirror Anderson’s real-life family.
  • Millie: “Not only is this movie about dads, but it's also about their kids … this movie is the most that has happened in versus some of the other movies where it feels like maybe PTA was writing from the child's perspective; in that way it feels like now he's writing from the dad's perspective.” [53:49]
• Power & White Supremacy: The Christmas Adventurers Club, a secret society fuelled by racism, becomes a locus of both dark satire and terror.
  • “It’s this over-the-top white supremacist organization that uses all this Christmas lingo, like Hail St. Nick … but I absolutely think white people are doing this. Like old white people are congregating in this very ridiculous way ... celebrating their whiteness.” — Millie [55:40, 57:03]

4. Standout Performances & Characters

Leonardo DiCaprio (“Ghetto Pat”/Bob)

• Both hosts celebrate DiCaprio’s comedic physicality and late-career turn as a nuanced, messy dad.
  • “Since Wolf of Wall Street, I feel like he's realized … I'm actually a very good comedic actor.” — Casey [49:04]
  • “He plays [the fumbly, bumbly stoner dad] so good … those characters that he plays are so good and he plays them so good.” — Millie [48:57]

Sean Penn (Colonel Lockjaw)

• Universally heralded: “There hasn’t been a movie character that has terrified me more than this ... He's amazing at playing a hyper-militaristic, crazy, racist, like, politically charged psychopath.” — Millie [41:29]
• “He's probably going to win another Academy Award.” — Casey [44:18]
• “He’s like a fucking goofball idiot … and yet this is the type of guy in our world that has a lot of power and is the one that will kill you.” — Casey [43:03]

Benicio del Toro (Sergio San Carlos)

• Sergio is “the calming force” and mastermind of the sanctuary city’s underground resistance—both hosts swoon.
  • “He was like the father figure in this movie to me, the viewer. I was like, take care of me, please.” — Casey [67:13]
  • Millie describes her lifelong Benicio crush and how his role as a protector for undocumented immigrants was peculiarly moving, given personal context. [65:54, 70:15]

Notable Breakout: Chase Infinity (“Willa”)

• “She was good … She was named after Nicole Kidman’s character in Batman Forever, Chase Meridian, and Buzz Lightyear’s line ‘to infinity and beyond’.” — Casey [24:52]

5. Memorable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• “There hasn’t been a movie character that has terrified me more than this in damn near thirty years or something … This guy Lockjaw exists right now.” — Millie (41:27)
• “He walks like a doofus. He has a stupid Three Stooges haircut. He kind of walks like the Three Stooges … yet this is the type of guy in our world that has a lot of power and is the one that will kill you.” — Casey (43:24)
• “I related to this movie physically in a way … Leo is always having to grab several bags and run out the door. He’s always late, he’s always harried, he’s always disheveled. And honestly, that’s how I feel all the time as a dad…” — Casey (50:52)
• “You are the first and maybe the only white guy I want to talk to about this movie.” — Millie (91:12)
• “Wokeness will not save you was kind of like what I felt at the end of the movie.” — Casey (75:41)

6. Notable Chapter Timestamps

• PTA’s Career & Dad Themes: 14:45–33:03
• Plot Recap/Synopsis: 24:05–39:36
• Colonel Lockjaw & Satire of White Supremacy: 41:17–61:20
• Benicio del Toro’s Sergio Section: 65:54–73:35
• Password/Bureaucracy Running Gag: 75:48–77:17
• Hope and Realities of Resistance/Community: 72:28–79:34
• Final Confrontation & DNA Test Scene: 80:42–84:54

7. Additional Highlights

• The bureaucracy of revolutionary movements gets a playful roast with the running “password” gag (75:48), illustrating the sometimes paralyzing rules and internal debates of the left.
• Personal connections and immigrant experiences lend poignancy to the themes of sanctuary and solidarity (70:15–73:35).
• The hosts discuss “helping for the sake of helping,” and how important it is that people quietly perform good deeds—contrasted with the outrageous performativity of social media activism (78:24).

8. Film Recommendations (Employee Picks)

• Millie: Born in Flames (1983, dir. Lizzie Borden)—a revolutionary, punk-infused feminist film set in an alternate NYC, now restored on Criterion. [92:45]
• Casey: Support the Girls (2018, dir. Andrew Bujalski)—a slice-of-life dramedy set in a “breastaurant,” featuring Regina Hall and Jungle Pussy. [95:48]

Memorable Moments

• Benicio’s Influence: Millie shares her custom Romancing the Stone Benicio Photoshop screensaver (67:31), and proclaims, “If present-day Benicio del Toro was single and wanted a wife, I would definitely be his wife.” (68:47)
• White Supremacist Parody: The Christmas Adventurers Club is described as a “white supremacist organization that uses all this Christmas lingo like Hail St. Nick … but I absolutely think white people are doing this.” (55:40)
• Confronting Real Fears: Millie’s emotional response to immigration themes, reflecting on her own immigrant parents, and the quiet heroism of resistance networks (70:18).
• Millie’s Backhanded Compliment: “You are the first and maybe the only white guy I want to talk to about this movie.” (91:12)
• Woke Satire: Both hosts relish that the film skewers both leftist performativity and right-wing delusion.

Final Thoughts

Both hosts agree: One Battle After Another is among PTA’s most urgent, personal, and socially resonant movies. Millie and Casey praise its blend of dense narrative, emotional power, and bleak but hopeful honesty. Above all, it’s a movie about surviving in a world of “one battle after another”—and finding unlikely comradery, love, and meaning along the way.

Next week: A palate cleanse with 1987’s Predator.

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