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If Warner Bros had a deliberate plan to soften expectations for the latest Paul Thomas Anderson epic – no festival premiere, worried leaks from test screenings – then that scheme looks to have worked brilliantly. One Battle After Another, a loose riff on Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, arrives to arguably the best notices of Anderson’s career. Not bad when you have The Master and There Will Be Blood in your locker.
That hyperventilation is largely justified. Pitching Leonardo DiCaprio’s ageing revolutionary against Sean Penn’s reactionary despot, this hugely generous film, now set in the present day rather than Reagan’s United States, loses Pynchon’s poignant elegy for the 1960s’ betrayed ideals. No doubt many on the contemporary right will blub about Anderson having a whacked-out left-wing “terrorist” as his protagonist, but the film is tentative in its engagement with ideology: the establishment baddies are unequivocally appalling; the left-wing goodies have aged into harmless buffoons and disappointed stoners. Make of that what you will.
Where One Battle After Another excels, however, is in its unapologetic grandeur. Anderson is the favoured director of those who think great cinema must play on the largest scale (the Kubrick tendency). His taste for maximalism is, as often before, here demonstrated through the collision of lush images – like The Brutalist, shot on the antique VistaVision format – with clattering sound design and, from his long-term collaborator Jonny Greenwood, of Radiohead, a scratchy, honky score that presses home each character’s raging anxiety. It is there too in his direction of a perfectly chosen cast. The performances are not exactly broad, but there is a refreshing theatricality to every inflection. If only Laurence Olivier had been alive to enhance an Anderson joint.
We begin thrillingly as, a decade and a half ago, a far-left group called the French 75 stages an attack on an oppressive migrant camp near the southern border of the US. Here is an odd thing. Anderson has given most of his characters freakish Pynchonian names while sending DiCaprio’s dynamiter out as plain Bob Ferguson. Teyana Taylor plays his wife, Perfidia Beverly Hills. Shayna McHayle is the ruthless comrade Junglepussy. Penn, brilliantly allowing suppressed fury to escape in grunts and twitches, is the trench-faced Colonel Steven J Lockjaw. Go figure.
That first half-hour is untouchable. Taylor is positively terrifying – and much missed when she vanishes – as mother to Bob’s ultimately adored daughter, Willa. The film stages its opening conflicts with an operatic virtuosity that argues for violence more as irresistible thrill than as political necessity. Nobody is better than Anderson at sweeping audiences along with poetic momentum.
Events calm down somewhat as we land in the present. Bob – a ringer, with his scuffed dressing gown, for “the Dude” Lebowski – now lives with Willa (the splendid Chase Infiniti, whose real name seems straight out of Pynchon) in some quiet corner of the west coast, where he watches Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers by way of afternoon relaxation.
That last reference feels like a conscious self-own. The Pontecorvo film is frighteningly confrontational in its depiction of political violence. For all the controversy One Battle After Another may yet generate, PTA’s film is closer to a blockbuster action flick than a radical provocation. Nothing wrong with that when the set pieces are so thrillingly staged. We here get two of the greatest car chases in recent cinema. Gun battles are ramped up to deafening levels. Lockjaw reappears with the ostentatious menace of a Die Hard villain.
[ Steve review: Cillian Murphy’s performance feels well-worked but unsatisfactoryOpens in new window ]
Yet Anderson and his fine cast layer all these pyrotechnics with a palpable sadness for their characters and for the country. There are few explicit arguments here about the state of the US, but one can imagine endless such arguments being projected upon it. Good luck with that, Paul.
In cinemas from Friday, September 26th
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“Giorgio Armani, Milano, for love’’ at the Brera Art Gallery opens today, mere weeks after the celebrated designer’s death at the age of 91.
Featuring 129 Armani looks from the 1980s through the present day, the exhibition places his creations among celebrated Italian masterpieces by such luminaries as Raphael and Caravaggio.
It is one of a series of Milan Fashion Week events that were planned before Armani’s death, to highlight his transformative influence on the world of fashion.
“From the start, Armani showed absolute rigor but also humility not common to great fashion figures,’’ said the gallery’s director Angelo Crespi. “He always said that he did not want to enter into close dialogue with great masterpieces, like Raphael, Mantegna, Caravaggio and Piero della Francesca.’’
Instead, the exhibition aims to create a symbiosis with the artworks, with the chosen looks reflecting the mood of each room without interrupting the flow of the museum experience – much the way Armani always intended his apparel to enhance and never overwhelm the individual.
A long blue asymmetrical skirt and bodysuit ensemble worn by Juliette Binoche at Cannes in 2016 neatly reflects the blue in Giovanni Bellini’s 1510 portrait “Madonna and Child”; a trio of underlit dresses glow on a wall opposite Raphael’s “The Marriage of the Virgin”; the famed soft-shouldered suit worn by Richard Gere in American Gigolo, arguably the garment that launched Armani to global fame, is set among detached frescoes by Donato Bramante. Every choice in the exhibition underscores the timelessness of Armani’s fashion.
Armani himself makes a cameo, on a t-shirt in the final room, opposite the Brera’s emblematic painting “Il Bacio” by Francesco Hayez.
“When I walk around, I think he would be super proud,’’ said Anoushka Borghesi, Armani’s global communications director.
Armani’s fashion house confirmed a series of events this week that Armani himself had planned to celebrate his 50th anniversary. They include the announcement of an initiative to support education for children in six Southeast Asian, African and South American countries. The project, in conjunction with the Catholic charity Caritas, is named “Mariu’,’’ an affectionate nickname for Armani’s mother.
In a final farewell, the last Giorgio Armani collection signed by the designer will be shown in the Brera Gallery on Sunday, among looks he personally chose to represent his 50-year legacy.
“Giorgio Armani – 50 Years” opened to the public today at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, Italy. The exhibition lasts until 11 January 2026.
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If you’re reading this today, Wednesday 24 September 2025 could be the last day before the end of the world as you know it.
If you’re reading this tomorrow, you weren’t blipped out of existence and good luck with all the rebuilding. Please do better.
Confused? We’ve got you covered.
According to the more holy corners of TikTok, it has been prophesized that yesterday – or today, they couldn’t make their minds up on which one, so just go with it – is the day of the Rapture.
For the filthy heathens among you, that’s the long-awaited end-time event when Jesus Christ returns to Earth, resurrects all dead Christian disciples and brings all believers “to meet the Lord in the air.”
It wasn’t yesterday, clearly, so today’s the day… And turn off that R.E.M. song, this is serious.
This all stems from South African pastor Joshua Mhlakela, who claimed that the Rapture will occur on 23 or 24 September 2025. Mhlakela said that this knowledge came directly from a dream he had in 2018, in which Jesus appeared to him. Mhlakela reiterated all of this on 9 September in an interview with CettwinzTV and since then, the prophecy has become a viral sensation on TikTok.
Many individuals on the social media platform have taken this literally and very seriously, with more than 350,000 videos appearing under the hashtag #rapturenow – leading to the trend / popular subsection dubbed ‘RaptureTok’.
Some videos mock the prophecy, but you don’t have to scroll for too long to find those who are completely convinced that it’s happening today.
There’s advice on how to prepare; tips on what to remove from your house should certain objects contain “demonic energy”; and testimonies of people selling their possessions. One man, who goes by the name Tilahun on TikTok, shared a video last month, in which he said he was selling his car in preparation for the big day. “Car is gone just like the Brides of Christ will be in September,” he said.
One woman in North Carolina was live recording yesterday from the Blue Ridge Mountains, fervently keeping an eye on any holy activity in the sky. Another claimed that her 3-year-old started speaking in Hebrew, thereby confirming that it’s all legit.
Some more distressing videos include American evangelicals saying goodbye to their children for the last time… We won’t share those, as they’re actually quite depressing.
It’s hard to completely blame TikTok users for wanting the final curtain to drop, as things aren’t going too great down here on Earth. That being said, it’s worth noting that the Bible never actually mentions the Rapture; it’s a relatively recent doctrine that originates from the early 1800s, one which has gained traction among fundamentalist theologians – specifically in the US, where everything is fine, civil conversation is alive and well, no one’s worried, and they’re all enjoying their “God-given freedoms”.
So, if the Rapture does come to pass, we here at Euronews Culture will be eating a whole concrete mixer full of humble pie. If it doesn’t, see you tomorrow, and do spare a thought for those who are going to be very disappointed on Thursday 25 September.
And if extra-terrestrial beings followed Tara Rule’s advice (see below), thank you alien visitors for joining in on the fun. And if you could provide some much-needed guidance on how to do better, that would be grand.
Only a few more hours left to find out…
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