Plus ça change…History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The wheels on the bus go round and round. All of this has happened before, and it will happen again. Same shit, different day.

We have a lot of ways to describe the sense that human events occur in recurring patterns, and that the struggles between things like freedom and slavery or tolerance and hatred will endure even longer than the contest between good and evil that Robert Mitchum taught us about in Night of the Hunter. It can be easy to let this cyclical perspective slide into a cynical one, and on one level, including its title, Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film One Battle After Another fits that bill. After all, it centers on a burned-out, perma-stoned ex-radical who’s lucky if he can find his car keys, much less take on The Man. It’s also, though, a rip-roaring, brutally comic ode to politically radical persistence of vision that dares to imagine, despite all evidence to the contrary, if not victory, then at least glory and fulfillment in the fight.

We first meet Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio, in full flower) in what seems to be the late aughts, during a doorkicker of an opening sequence in which he (as the pyrotechnics expert) and his fellow members of French 75, a domestic terrorist organization, invade an immigrant detention facility and free its occupants. In the course of this bravura raid, French 75’s leader, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) confronts the officer in charge, Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), goading and then humiliating him sexually at gunpoint, an event that becomes Lockjaw’s inciting incident for a decades-long obsession with her. The group continues to wage intentionally non-lethal war against, well, the system until a bank robbery goes awry and Perfidia is taken into custody, leaving Bob with sole custody of their baby girl.

Cut to sixteen years later. Bob has retired from the rabble-rousing game in favor of a cannabinoid coma in the friendly, Redwooded redoubt of Northern California. That baby is now Willa (Chase Infiniti, making a supremely confident big-screen debut), a headstrong teen who chafes at her dad’s overly cautious approach toward cell phones and the like. Bob’s still worried that Lockjaw is out there somewhere, all these years later. And just because he’s paranoid, it doesn’t mean somebody’s not after him. In fact, Lockjaw, concerned that rumors to the effect that he’s Willa’s biological father will imperil his selection to join a secretive American elite, decides to take care of the problem personally. (Well, with the help of several hundred jackbooted thugs wearing camo and bearing automatic weapons.)

Once One Battle After Another becomes a story about a father trying to rescue a daughter, while maybe also rescuing himself, it moves along familiar lines. Bob, who could be confused with a more curdled version of Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski (bathrobe and all), can be pathetic when he watches The Battle of Algiers on late night television while smoking roaches. But he’s also a shambling everyman, never more so than when he’s trying to remember the next phrase in the endless series of codes used by the remnants of French 75 as proof of ID over the phone. Perhaps the film’s comic highlight comes when he’s placed on hold by what can only be called the Call Center for the Revolution after asking to speak with a supervisor. There’s plenty of this stuff in the film’s 165 minutes, during which the tempo barely slackens, and the audience is pulled along by Anderson’s masterful pacing, the editing of Andy Jurgensen, who has worked with PTA since 2014’s Inherent Vice, and especially Jonny Greenwood’s tense, repetitive score, which sometimes reduces to a single piano key being struck over and over, interrupted occasionally by a chaotic arpeggio that you feel in your spine.

There’s plenty of fun to be had, for sure. And failing to mention Benicio del Toro’s extremely del Toro-esque appearance as a small-town sensei named Sergio St. Carlos who gets Bob out of more than one pickle and is perhaps the only character who really knows what he’s doing in the entire film would be a sin. But this is also an angry, terrified movie. Its villains, of whom Lockjaw is only the most prominent and cartoonish, are baldly racist Christofascists, and the America depicted in One Battle After Another is one in which ordinary law enforcement has been almost entirely replaced by military forces, the “POLICE” patch on every soldier’s chest notwithstanding. It’s not our current world, but you can see it from here.

As with Inherent Vice, Anderson is working from a novel, Vineland, by the famously reclusive Thomas Pynchon (his new novel is out next week). It’s a very loose adaptation: Vineland was set in 1984 among ex-’60s radicals, and possesses Pynchon’s trademark surreal touches and discursive, nesting narrative strands, which Anderson largely leaves behind. (He has, even when renaming characters, retained Pynchon’s penchant for goofy monikers.) The biggest shift, however, is the film’s foregrounding of race and racism as a driving factor. Lockjaw symbolizes the psychological origins of a fascist, racist mindset in the irresolvable conflict between desire and guilt, in the way envy of others’ freedoms (sexual and otherwise) can congeal into murderous rage. Penn’s performance is masterful, just shy of over-the-top, and he’s as hilarious as he is terrifying. The famously left-wing actor has always seemed to get off on lampooning toxic masculinity, and that brew doesn’t come much stronger than this character.

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One Battle After Another may be the closest a big Hollywood movie has come to saying, “Burn it all down,” since Fight Club. And it’s perfectly pitched to this moment in history. For most filmmakers, it would be a career peak. For Paul Thomas Anderson, though, if one insists on the ranking game, it’s probably his best work since the four-out-of-five run of Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, and The Master. Although Phantom Thread is darned close. In any event, a film that will end up as one of this year’s top ten on a lot of lists only comes in at fifth or sixth in its maker’s oeuvre. That says more about Anderson, whose career has been all killer, no filler for almost thirty years, than it does about his latest, most urgent work.

There aren’t any real-world political figures mentioned in One Battle After Another to speak of, and even the specific issues the French 75 are fighting for can be vague (one early bombing is in response to an abortion ban, while others target financial institutions and politicians’ offices). This is, instead, a depiction of conflict on a broader scale: the people versus the power. Maybe that’s all it’s ever been, and maybe that’s all it’ll ever be. But whose side would you choose? Who would you want to stand beside you on the barricades? It’s safe to say that the radical pacifist A. J. Muste (1885-1967) would not have approved of the methods of Bob Ferguson, Perfidia Beverly Hills, and Sensei Sergio St. Carlos. But his most famous quote, given in response to a reporter asking if he could really change the country through non-violent protest, certainly applies to them: “Oh, I don’t do this to change the country,” he replied. “I do this so the country won’t change me.”

Dead of Winter: Emma Thompson has always, whether decked out in period garb or playing a retired teacher who hires a sex worker, managed to combine the grace and class of a British aristocrat with the down-to-earth decency and stamina of classic Midwestern stock. So maybe it shouldn’t be a shock to see her star as a Minnesotan widow who gets caught up in a kidnapping in the isolated, wintry north. In the tradition of Fargo and A Simple Plan, but inferior to both, Dead of Winter (not to be confused with the underrated 1987 Mary Steenburgen-Roddy McDowall thriller) gets a lot of mileage out of Thompson’s expertly rendered accent and her willingness to become a one-Emma army in order to rescue a teenaged girl held captive by a pair of rather pathetic villains (Marc Menchaca of Ozark and an nearly unrecognizable Judy Greer). Her character has come to this remote tundra to deposit her husband’s ashes at his favorite ice-fishing spot (as one does), but when she hears a gunshot echo over the frozen lake, she turns into a combination of Charles Bronson and MacGyver, with a little John McClane thrown in. It’s a tautly enough directed flick, and there’s novelty to seeing the star of Howards End and Sense and Sensibility kicking ass with extreme pride and prejudice. But it’s a thin premise to stretch over an entire feature, one that wears out its welcome well before the final shot. (Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village)

Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror: I don’t have to tell you about the cult that surrounds the 1975 film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, right? If I do, maybe this documentary about its origins and continued vitality isn’t for you. But for anyone who’s ever thrown rice in a theater and not been kicked out, anyone who’s ever taken a jump to the left and then a step to the right, anyone who’s ever even considered dressing up like Dr. Frank-N-Furter for Halloween (or any other occasion), it’s a must-see. The director is Linus O’Brien, son of Rocky Horror writer and Riff Raff portrayer Richard O’Brien, which could have resulted in a schmaltzy celebration of dear old pop. Instead, it adds a layer of poignant father-son appreciation and collaboration to a thorough and informative chronicle. Having left his native New Zealand for London, O’Brien teamed with director Jim Sharman to stage the original Rock Horror Show in a tiny theater. When that became an underground hit, Hollywood came calling. Remarkably, even for the 1970s, almost the entire cast and crew were enlisted to make and star in the film, rare exceptions including the casting of Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick as the hapless couple Janet and Brad. They’re both interviewed, as is Tim Curry, irrepressible as ever despite being confined to a wheelchair following a stroke in 2012. In fact, by my count, every living person who had a significant role gets to have their say. The real stars, though are the fans who took the play’s and film’s message of self-actualization and ran with it, devoting themselves fully to spreading the gospel and undoubtedly saving the lives of folks, many of them LGBTQ, who found a family every Saturday at midnight. It’s a shame that Portland’s Clinton Street Theater, which hosts the longest-running Rocky Horror experience, doesn’t get a shout-out. But other than that, this ranks as the definitive doc on one of pop culture’s most endearing and enduring slices. (Friday 9/26 & Saturday 9/27, Clinton Street Theater, Kiggins Theatre; opens Friday 10/3, Living Room Theaters)

Naked Ambition: Bunny Yeager was a trailblazer. After starting her career as a pinup model, the gorgeous Miamian soon took matters into her own hands, becoming a prolific photographer who specialized in making women look absolutely stunning and had a gift for convincing them to take off their clothes. She made Bettie Page famous, she was one of the first to shoot for Playboy, and she helped guide America from the uptight 1950s to the more liberated 1960s, although her style and talent both became vestigial when social mores relaxed enough that hard-core pornography replaced girlie mags. Through interviews with Yeager’s daughter and granddaughter, directors Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch conjure an image of the private Yeager that’s just as forthright, liberated, and driven as her public image. Sadly, Scholl and Tabsch were on the verge of interviewing Yeager herself when the photographer died in 2014, but there’s enough archival material that her presence is felt. Burlesque performer Dita von Teese, photographer Bruce Weber, and Miami native talk show host Larry King (a real horndog) lend their memories and expertise to round out the portrait. Yeager’s was a fascinating enough life that even a standard talking-head documentary such as this one is compelling. And even if it’s not, there are hundreds of photos of stunning women in various stages of undress on screen to hold one’s attention. (Wednesday 10/1, Hollywood Theatre)

Our Mr. Matsura: Speaking of photographers, local filmmaker Beth Harrington’s latest project, an investigation into the life and work of a Japanese-American man who became a valued member of a small, rural Washington town in the early 1900s, will have its premiere this weekend. I spoke with Harrington about it, and you can read that interview here. (Sunday 9/28, Kiggins Theatre)

Also this week

2025 Manhattan Short Film Festival: “Which of these Final Ten short films is best? That is up to a worldwide audience to decide. Cinema-goers across the United States and around the globe will become instant film critics as they are handed a ballot upon entry that allows them to vote for the Best Film and Actor. Manhattan Short is the ultimate audience award that salutes the creative talents of both directors behind the camera and actors in front of it. Votes will be sent through to Manhattan Short HQ with the winner announced at ManhattanShort.com on Monday Oct 6 at 10 a.m. EST. (Saturday 9/27, Clinton Street Theater; Sunday 9/28 through Tuesday 9/30, Salem Cinema)

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25 Cats from Qatar: “The nation of Qatar has a street cat population equal to the population of the entire country. Disease is rampant, and local adoption is rare. A Midwestern cafe owner decides to bring 25 cats to Wisconsin.” (Sunday 9/28, Clinton Street Theater)

Mazel Tov: “Darío Roitman has to reunite with his family for his sister’s wedding and his niece’s bat mitzvah. When tragedy strikes, he will be forced to confront the estranged relationship with his siblings.” The Portland Latin American Film Festival presents this new Argentine comedy. (Wednesday 10/1, Hollywood Theatre)

Also opening

All of You: “A stirring near-futuristic romance of two best friends (Brett Goldstein, Imogen Poots) who harbor an unspoken love for one another even after a test matches one of them up with their supposed soulmate. (Cinemagic, also streaming via Apple TV+)

Doin’ It: “An Indian-American virgin gets a job teaching high school sex ed.” Co-written by Lily Singh and starring Stephanie Beatriz (Brooklyn Nine-Nine). (Salem Cinema)

Eleanor the Great: “After a devastating loss, witty and proudly troublesome Eleanor Morgenstein (June Squibb), 94, tells a tale that takes on a dangerous life of its own.” The feature directing debut of Scarlett Johannson. (Regal Fox Tower, Salem Cinema, Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village)

Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie: “Gabby and Grandma Gigi’s road trip takes an unexpected turn when Gabby’s prized dollhouse ends up with eccentric cat lady Vera. Gabby embarks on an adventure to reunite the Gabby Cats and retrieve her beloved dollhouse before it’s too late.” (Wide release)

The Strangers: Chapter 2: “On the final day of their cross-country road trip, a couple’s vehicle breaks down, forcing them to take refuge in a remote Airbnb. As night falls, three masked strangers terrorize them until dawn.” (Wide release)

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Repertory

Friday 9/26

• 1408 [2007] (Cinemagic)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968] (Regal Fox Tower, Bridgeport Village)
• The Invitation [2015] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Moonlight [2016] (Cinema 21)
• Oldboy [2003] (Academy Theatre, through 10/2)
• The Parallax View [1974] (Academy Theatre, through 10/2)
• The Persian Version [2023] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Rock ’n’ Roll High School [1979] (Academy Theatre, through 10/2)
• Spider-Man [2002] (wide release)

Saturday 9/27

• Close Encounters of the Third Kind [1977] (Regal Fox Tower, Bridgeport Village)
• Dogtooth [2009] (Tomorrow Theater)
• The Favourite [2018] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Lost Highway [1997] (Cinema 21)
• Killer of Sheep [1977] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Meet Me in St. Louis [1944] (Hollywood Theatre, star Margaret O’Brien in attendance)
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show [1975] (Clinton St. Theater, Kiggins Theatre)
• Spider-Man 2 [2004] (wide release)
• The Sting [1973] (Cinemagic, through 9/29)
• Tootsie [1982] (Cinema 21)

Sunday 9/28

• The Girl Who Leapt Through Time [2006] (wide release; through 9/30)
• Lawrence of Arabia [1962] (Regal Fox Tower, Bridgeport Village)
• Linda Linda Linda [2005] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Paris Is Burning [1990] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Spider-Man 3 [2007] (wide release)
• Tangerine [2015] (Cinema 21, director Sean Baker in attendance)

Monday 9/29

• Chinatown [1974] (Regal Fox Tower, Bridgeport Village)

Tuesday 9/30

• The Death of Stalin [2017] (Clinton Street Theater)
• Taxi zum Klo [1980] (Hollywood Theatre)
• There Will Be Blood [2007] (Regal Fox Tower, Bridgeport Village)

Wednesday 10/1

• The Last Man on Earth [1964]/ House on Haunted Hill [1959] (Cinemagic)

Thursday 10/2

• The Island Closest to Heaven [1984] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Split Second [1992] (Hollywood Theatre)
• The Toxic Avenger [1984] (Clinton Street Theater)
• Tremors [1990] (Cinemagic, FX artist Nick Benson in attendance)