#73: One Battle After Another!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Death By Consumption

9/23/25 - 9/29/25

The scaffolding around my building finally came down. Over a year ago, we got the worst news a New Yorker can get, that the dreaded blight of construction scaffolding was going up for some repairs to the facade, and everyone in our building knew what that meant: when the scaffolding goes up, it never comes down. We all knew a 2-month project would push past 12 months, and we would spend an entire year in apartments shrouded in darkness, with construction workers staring into our windows at all hours of the day. More than once, I stepped out of the shower to find a man directly outside the bedroom window (always a shock when you live on the 6th floor). People in our building were on the brink of madness as the construction continued endlessly through season after season. We were at each other's throats, practically. A neighbor, coming home drunk one night, said to me, "When is the scaffolding LEAVING?" in a slurry, impotent rage, a rage that also lived inside me. In a dark moment a few weeks ago, I contemplated sending a passive-aggressive "happy one year anniversary to the scaffolding!" email to our building manager. But now the scaffolding is (mostly) gone. As it cleared away, the apartment got twice as bright, and we were finally able to see the sun again. It felt like a small miracle in a time of hopelessness. And then I quickly got used to how things were, and got annoyed at the sun for causing a glare on the TV show I was trying to watch.

This week: I saw the best movie of the year, I started spooky movie season early, I marveled at the continued unraveling of Meghan Markle, HBO's new big show darked me out, and I got annoyed with Ezra Klein's conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates but I'm actually not going to write about that below because I got annoyed even thinking about it again! (Imagine spending your one precious life thinking this much about Ezra Klein.)

One Battle After Another (2025) — at Nitehawk Prospect Park

A quick peek behind the curtain, here at Death By Consumption: throughout the week I keep notes on my stupid little notes app about the things I've consumed this week, and any thoughts about those things, which can then help me compile these emails towards the end of the week. But for One Battle After Another, the only note I have is just: "Goddamn." And that's still kind of my main thought! This is an unbelievably good movie, easily my favorite movie of the year. The last time I felt like this in a theater was... well, not that long ago actually, because it was when I saw The Substance. And not that there's anything similar between the movies, but culturally this feels like 2025's The Substance: a completely original, wildly thrilling, high-octane-but-also-hilarious commentary on How The World Is Now. It's the kind of movie you need everyone in your life to see, as if you're a religious fundamentalist forcing a holy text into their hands.

It is an all-out masterpiece, but since this is Paul Thomas Anderson we're talking about, it's just one of many masterpieces gifted to us by this very talented husband of Maya Rudolph. In fact, let me just steal from Vulture's review, which sums it up: "not as good as There Will Be Blood or Phantom Thread but so much better than the average movie that it seems to belong in a different medium entirely."

There's so much to love about One Battle After Another — Teyana Taylor! The name Perfidia Beverly Hills! Leo's entire performance! Benecio del Toro drinking and driving! Sean Penn's weird haircut and even weirder walk! Chase Infiniti!!! Alana Haim in a fuckass bob! The music! THE HIGHWAY SCENE! — that I found myself completely baffled by the promotion of this movie.

I see movies in theaters a lot, and I love Paul Thomas Anderson, and yet every time I saw a trailer for this I thought, "Well... guess PTA is in his flop era." It looked so generic and boring, a mix of basic car chase scenes and the occasional joke about how Leo is an old dad who doesn't understand teen lingo. Whoever made these trailers deserves JAIL. Even worse was the strangely quiet ad campaign — so many people didn't even know this movie existed! Thankfully, it seems to be quickly spreading via word of mouth, but, like, what is the deal?

I wonder if the studio panicked about overly promoting a movie that features protagonists (many of whom are Black women) terrorizing ICE thugs and freeing detained immigrants. In fact, I don't know why I'm even wondering, because that's exactly what happened. It feels like the executives greenlit One Battle After Another anticipating a Kamala victory, and then when Trump won they were like, "Oh nooooooooo maybe we just sneak this out at the end of September? Please nobody get mad at us :(" (Although, much like Eddington, the film does skewer "both sides," most hilariously with two Gen Z characters named Bobo and Bluto.)

If they wanted this one to slip by without any discourse, though, they're in for a nightmare, because it's the only movie I want to talk about anymore. Anecdotal evidence suggests this is starting as a film bro thing — I've seen lots of complaints about theaters having lines for the men's room and no lines for the women's, which I can say was absolutely true at ours — but already I can feel it shifting to a wider audience. This is not just a film for the bros, it's for the shes and gays and theys, too! We all want to watch Teyana Taylor be hot, and Leo be funnier than he's ever been, and Chase Infiniti become a beloved movie star. I didn't know who Chase Infiniti was 4 days ago, and now I'm going to be furious if she doesn't get nominated for every award!

Forgive me while the spirits of Tom Cruise and AMC's Nicole Kidman take over my body for a second, but this is why we go to the cinema. During the instantly iconic highway chase scene (you'll know the one), the guy next to me whispered, "Holy shit," to himself at around the same time I was saying the same thing to myself. This is the kind of movie that makes you believe in old-school filmmaking again, the kind that makes me feel like I should throw away my life and enroll at NYU or UCLA. Paul Thomas Anderson possibly loves making movies more than anyone else ever has! I could have stood up and saluted the screen at the end of this film, and I regret not doing so. One Battle After Another is — quite literally and in more than one way — the movie we needed most at this moment. Viva la Revolución!

The Conjuring 2 (2016) — on HBOMax

I decided it was time Justin and I become Conjuring gays, so I hit play on the original The Conjuring. 5 minutes in, we both said at the same time, "Have we seen this before?" and realized we had, in fact, watched it already. Which I guess is a sign of how memorable this series is! Nevertheless we persisted, and immediately switched over to The Conjuring 2, which is an even dumber version of an already dumb movie series.

This sequel has Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson jetting off across the pond to investigate a British poltergeist (the film lets you know it's set in England with a montage set to The Clash's "London Calling" that shows, for about 4 straight minutes, B-roll of double-decker buses, red telephone booths, and archival footage of the Queen waving. Subtle!) The movie is contrived and not that great, but it does get at a fundamental human truth — that the scariest person you can imagine is a British person.

It's a campy, stupid movie, and not as fun as The Conjuring (even though I momentarily forgot I had even seen that movie), but it's still enjoyable to watch Vera Farmiga scream at a demon, and to watch Patrick Wilson smolder handsomely at a demon. The most baffling and best part of the film is when Patrick Wilson inexplicably picks up a guitar and starts singing an Elvis song, in a gorgeous Elvis impression. Austin Butler is shaking!

With Love, Meghan, season 2 — on Netflix

Meghan Markle (sorry: Sussex) is back to terrorize us all from within her one-woman mental institution, and I couldn't be happier. After all the mocking and outrage and ridicule over her first season, I'm glad to see she not only didn't change tactics, but doubled down — this season has even more baffling guests, even stranger and less-human interactions, and gives us a fuller picture of how deeply wrong Meghan's brain is.

Some of the standout moments from season 2:

• One of her guests, a MAHA holistic scammer (along with her creepy podcast scammer husband), offers Meghan a tea by saying it will "purify your blood" and Meghan goes, "Wow!"
• Meghan frequently says, "When I was living in London..." to refer to her time as a royal in the same tone Real Housewives say, "When we were in New York..." to refer to something that happened on the reunion.
• Special guest Chrissy Teigen reveals she doesn't know her kids' birthdays, so she got the dates tattooed on her arm — but the tattoo is in a bad font, so she still doesn't know their birthdays. :(
• John Legend drops off Chrissy for the filming, says hi to Meghan and the crew, and then, I guess... hangs out in the living room? Of Meghan's fake TV house? (I assumed he wasn't actually hanging out in the living room, but when Chrissy yells for his help in remembering their kids' birthdays, he yells back to her and his voice is clearly coming from around the corner. Does he not have a piano to play somewhere?! Get a job!)
• Chef Clare Smyth says, "Fish are different all over the world," and Meghan says, "Really?! I would have never thought of that," and she seems to be genuinely, actually surprised by this fact.
• Meghan introduces us to a piece of luggage she owns by telling us a story that begins, "When my husband and I went on our third date, and I met him to go camping in Botswana..."
• Inspired by the smell of vanilla extract, Meghan tells a story about reading in a magazine when she was a teenager that boys love the smell of vanilla, joking, "I was the first person at Bath & Body Works like, 'Can I get the vanilla lotion?!'" before immediately undercutting her own story, lest we think she's tacky: "Vanilla's not a scent I would ever wear, but it's still funny..."
• A bartender asks her what kind of drink she wants to learn how to make and Meghan says, "I'm thinking something classic and modern," and his face is a wall of pure, blank panic. (He eventually suggests a martini.)
• The same bartender tells Meghan he used to be a lawyer and she immediately asks, "Did you watch Suits?" to which he says, "No."

And yet all of that doesn't even describe what it's like to actually watch this woman say these things and behave the way she does. Something is wrong with her! This remains the most baffling show on television (now that And Just Like That... is over, of course). I'm incredibly disappointed to see rumors that it didn't even crack the top 10 on Netflix, meaning it most likely won't get a third season. I did my part! This is all of your fault! We must support our princesses delusions! Stream With Love, Meghan NOW!

Task, episode 1 — on HBOMax

The first episode of Task, HBO's new big splashy drama from the Mare of Easttown guy, is genuinely great TV. It's a beautifully shot, written, and acted piece of work, and yet I'm not sure I want to watch any more of it. It's so depressing! It was a bleak hour that started sad and only got worse, and by the end I was emotionally exhausted and needed a direct shot to the brain of Housewives — at least on Housewives the bad things are happening to bad rich people, not good poor people and children. Anyway, I know it's my civic duty to support a show like this, so that the powers that be will continue to invest in serious pieces of television art, rather than turning every remaining network into a conduit of Blippi-for-adults content slop, but... it's so dark! I don't know if I can continue! Haven't we all been through enough?!