Regina Hall | Scott's Film Reviews-1,521 Reviews posted!!! RECENTLY LAUNCHED-MY TOP 250 FAVORITE FILMS AND TOP 40 HORROR FILMS!!!

One Battle After Another-2025

Director Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti

Scott’s Review #1,497

Reviewed October 20, 2025

Grade: A

In my opinion, one of the modern great directors, Paul Thomas Anderson, has released One Battle After Another (2025), a film rich in thrills and relevance. Sought to be made for years, the film is inspired by the 1990 novel Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, with some of Anderson’s narratives peppered in.

Undoubtedly, Anderson was influenced by the current state of the United States regarding immigration issues and the tyranny withinICE (United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

While immigration is not a new hot-button issue, the inhumanity heaped onto ‘illegal immigrants’ and some US citizens is current as well as powerful.

Additionally, a frightening tone of racism and ‘white power’ is an underlying theme of the film, contrasting covert hatred by a group of white supremacists with the humanity of revolutionaries who attack the political system.

Therefore, the film has an overwhelming modern feel.

Otherwise, the breakneck twists, turns, and action make One Battle After Another the crown jewel of storytelling fun and an Anderson offering that could easily be added to his top 5 of all time.

Events follow an ex-revolutionary explosive device expert, “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun / “Rocketman” / Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is forced back into his former combative lifestyle when a corrupt military officer pursues him and his daughter.

With new identities, they had assumed they could live a peaceful life of tranquility, but they were in for a rude awakening.

Set in recent times, the film begins 15 years before events later in the story, yet maintains a clear link. This ensures the audience is invested in the characters, especially in the latter half, as we get to know them better.

While DiCaprio can never deliver a bad performance and firmly grips the lead role as the intelligent yet comically clumsy Bob, other actors shine, making One Battle After Another an ensemble piece dripping with award-worthy performances and hefty accolades.

DiCaprio improvises his way through the script, with stutters and stammering enveloping his character, endowing him with endearing qualities like forgetting a vital password or falling off a roof. Nonetheless, he has sentimental and introspective moments about his life and his teenage daughter, Willa Ferguson/Charlene Calhoun, played by Chase Infiniti.

Infiniti is tremendous in her breakout role as a mixed-race girl trying to lead an everyday life while paying for the crimes and mistakes of her parents.

Playing confident, yet scared and vulnerable, Infiniti is quite the find. Is she destined to follow in her parents’ footsteps?

Teyana Taylor is brutally talented as she plays Perfidia Beverly Hills, a tough as nails, take no prisoners, kick ass young woman known to tease and humiliate her prey strictly for laughs.

Regina Hall and Benicio del Toro bring their kind-hearted, supportive characters to life with emotional flair and some needed humor, especially from del Toro.

The standout, however, is Sean Penn. Giving a bravura performance as the hated and racist Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, a military officer who pursues the French 75, he sneers and pouts, never playing the character over the top or for laughs.

He truly believes he comes from a superior race while bedding the women he despises.

A three-way highway car chase scene nearly rivals classic sequences in The French Connection (1971) and The Getaway (1972). As three separate drivers’ points of view are featured along a hilly highway with deadly results, the audience is treated to rear-view mirror and reaction shots.

I honestly did not know what would happen next and was delighted at the outcome.

Hopefully, as the years go by, One Battle After Another (2025) will be remembered for embracing different genres and delivering a powerhouse final product. With great acting, editing, storytelling, and action, the film has it all.

Add in a timely message, and you’ve got yourself a gem.

Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director-Paul Thomas Anderson, Best Actor-Leonardo DiCaprio, Best Supporting Actor-Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn, Best Supporting Actress-Teyana Taylor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Casting, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Sound

Girls Trip-2017

Director Malcolm D. Lee

Starring Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith

Scott’s Review #760

Reviewed May 18, 2018

Grade: D-

I am genuinely baffled by some of the positive reviews of the film Girls Trip (2017) by viewers and respected critics.

Attempts to make females as raunchy as the guys in R-rated comedies never work, in my opinion (good writing does!), and the result is a largely unfunny, crude piece of drivel.

The fact that the film, which goes for a “female empowerment” theme, is directed by a man is as disappointing as disrespectful, especially given the fact that the writers are female- they couldn’t find a black female director?

At the risk of giving a testimonial, I fully know the importance of creating good female roles in cinema-perfect female black roles.

Unfortunately, the roles in Girls Trip do nothing to further the cause as tried and true, standardized parts commence with no well-written character to be found.

Modern films look to Black Panther (2018) or Hidden Figures (2016) as examples of positive black female role models- they exist!

The weak plot involves four forty-something lifelong friends who regroup for a reunion after years apart. Famous lifestyle guru Ryan Pierce (Regina Hall) decides to take her “Flossy Posse” to a music festival in New Orleans, where they will spend the weekend partying like it’s the 1990s once again.

Ryan is married to a man who cheats on her, Sasha (Queen Latifah) runs a failing gossip site, Lisa (Jada Pinkett Smith) is a divorced, overbearing nurse, and slutty, aggressive Dina (Tiffany Haddish), who has just been fired from her job.

In predictable form- think 2009’s The Hangover or a multitude of other raunchy comedies since then, the girls get into trouble, drink too much, have sex, and partake in other hi-jinks throughout the weekend.

The central plot is Ryan’s potential investment deal with rigid and uptight Bethany (Lara Grice) and a wisecracking agent. As events unfold, Ryan’s female nemesis shows up to cause trouble and stir up drama, testing the group’s patience.

Girls Trip is a typical American comedy film (not a compliment!) that offers weak writing and instead promotes stereotypical stock characters.

Many similar comedies have come before it, and many more will come after it. Since I disliked the film so much, I decided to ask myself a few rhetorical questions as I observed the mess.

In films with a group of women, why is there always a slutty one (Dina)? Why is there always a mousy one (Lisa)? Why is there always a fat one (Sasha)? Why is it deemed funny to watch women pee or suffer bathroom issues?

The only positives to Girls Trip come in one humorous scene when Dina mixes absinthe into the girls’ drinks before a meeting, causing them to hallucinate. As the girls begin to imagine themselves talking in deep baritone voices and Ryan imagines a waitress is her arch-enemy, the hilarity briefly ensues.

A quick wrap-up speech by Ryan after the film does send a nice message about being yourself and staying true to your loved ones, but why we have to suffer through two-plus hours of crap to get to the inspiration and point of the film is beyond me.

The success of Girls Trip (2017), which will inevitably produce a sequel, leads me to believe that the masses prefer their films idiotic, redundant, and fraught with cheap, crude laughs.

The film seems to be intended to push the envelope—not to create great art, but just to make the film as crass as possible. This is presumably to prove that girls can be as nasty as boys, which the film succeeds at portraying.