When I went into Paul Thomas Anderson’s highly anticipated political epic One Battle After Another this past weekend, I figured it would be somewhat along the lines of his past film, the absurdist and irreverent Inherent Vice (2014). The former is based on a 2009 novel by Thomas Pynchon and the latter is roughly inspired by another novel by the author, Vineland (1990).

But what I got felt more like a modernized interpretation of Victor Hugo’s 1831 classic novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, to the point where I’m a little surprised more people aren’t also seeing the parallels.

In the late 2000s, a revolutionary known as Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) leads a radical, extremist group called The French 75. In between secretly releasing immigrants from detention centers and planting bombs in various locations, Perfidia has a romantic relationship with her fellow F75 member Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) and a short, secret fling with Col. Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), who is a white supremacist obsessed with Perfidia.

When things unexpectedly go haywire during a bank bust, Perfidia instantly goes MIA and Pat is left to raise their newborn daughter, Charlene. 16 years later, Charlene, now Willa Ferguson (Chase Infiniti), is kidnapped by Lockjaw’s team, with a lone, junkie ridden Pat, now Bob, alone to rescue her.

Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall, Tony Goldwyn, Alana Haim and Kevin Tighe make up some of the supporting cast of One Battle After Another, and the movie features a score by frequent Anderson collaborator Jonny Greenwood. Anderson’s new movie is currently receiving overwhelming praise, and while it hasn’t jumped to the top of my favorite films of 2025 so far, I’m a longtime PTA fan and agree with many of the positive reactions.

The writer-director surrounds himself with performers and artists as talented as he is and it almost always pays off, with One Battle the most recent example of such. Infiniti is a revelation opposite all the veteran actors, and I was a bit bummed to see Haim exit after the first act since she was the highlight of Anderson’s previous picture, Licorice Pizza (2021).

But really, I’m most taken by how Hugo-esque the general story of One Battle After Another is. Lockjaw is a clear modern equivalent of Claude Frollo, both Perfidia and Willa are an amalgamation of Esmeralda, and Bob/Pat is our burnout-esque Quasimodo. I wasn’t expecting one of my favorite filmmakers’ movies to remind me of a famous French book, but if there was ever a time for either’s exposure, it’s probably now.

A dopey “on-the-spectrum” crook on the lam plot and two movie stars who know how to work a closeup headline the charms of the delightful and just dark enough “Roofman,” a caper comedy where the real caper is getting away with it.

It pairs up the graceful, athletic and best-in-comedic roles Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst, an earthy actress who easily summons up wary, wounded and beguiling with just a dimpled smile and a twinkle in her eye.

Throw in the deadpan delight Lakeith Stanfield, June Temple who brings more to trashy-funny than any of her peers, Peter Dinklage at his most irritable and veteran Oz-villain Ben Mendelsohn — cast against type as a good-hearted pastor — and you’ve got yourself a winner.

Still not sold? Dinklage and Mendelsohn SING. Bet you didn’t hear that coming.

“Roofman” is a period piece comedy from the golden age of Big Box Stores, from Blockbuster Video to Best Buy and Toys R Us.

In the early 2000s, one physically fit and clever robber terrorized McDonald’s stores all over because he’d found the billion dollar franchise’s security Achilles Heel. Busting in through the roof after hours, and then making the manager empty the safe before opening in the AM was easy money. He did it 45 times.

Jeffrey Manchester was a former member of the famed 82nd Airborne parachuting infantry. He knew how to get into places and sometimes even pull himself out of them. One thing the movie leaves out is that he’d worked at a McDonalds. He knew corporate protocols.

“Roofman” gives our anti-hero a best friend and former comrade in arms (Stanfield at his most sarcastic) who tells him “observation” of “details” is his “superpower.”

The “Roofman” desperately wants to provide the finer working class things to his in-the-process-of-moving-on-ex (Melonie Diaz) and their three kids. But “superpower” or not, sooner or later — 45 robberies in — even physically fit commandos get caught.

This movie by writer and director of “The Place Beyond the Pines” and “The Light Between Oceans” (Derek Cianfrance) is about what happens after Manchester gets caught, ingeniously escapes from prison and has to hole up for months in the crawl space and after hours floor space of a Charlotte, N.C. Toys R Us.

Our lovable, pushover criminal — he gives his jacket to a McDonald’s manager (Tony Revolori) when he locks him in the store freezer — finds he can’t go home again, his wife’s moved on and the cops are watching all his old haunts like a hawk. So on the advice of that old Airborne comrade Steve (Stanfield), he shelters in place.

His dream? Fleeing the country to “somewhere with beach and NO extradition treaty,” Venezuela or Brazil.

But hiding out in that big box toy store, bathing in the bathroom, sleeping behind a false wall, clothing himself with colorful not-quite-kiddywear and dining on peanut M & Ms’, he immerses himself in the dynamics of the business and the friction within this culture.

The boss (Dinklage) is a brusque bully, not interested in the “personal life” issues divorced mom Leigh (Dunst) trots out whenever she needs time off. Our store squatter surreptitiously intervenes on her behalf. When Leigh asks that same boss for donations to her church’s toy drive, she’s rebuffed. The handsome ex-con can fix that, too.

That’s how they meet and how the “detail” oriented criminal falls in love and his best laid plans “gang aft agley,” as the poet said.

That church introduction is an unalloyed delight, almost wholly out of character for this filmmaker but not these two stars. Tatum’s Jeffrey, going by “John,” goes all tongue-tied amidst the widowed and divorced man-eaters of this integrated, musical and joyous church. Dunst does the worn down divorcee charmed to blushing by the hunk who pays her extra attention.

And seeing Mendelsohn (“Rogue One,” “The Dark Knight Rises”) paired with Uzo Aduba (“Orange is the New Black,” “Tallulah”) as the bubbly married couple who minister to this flock is enough to restore your faith in casting directors, if not Southern Fried Christianity. She plays matchmaker and when he breaks into song I just about fell out of my seat. They’re a hoot.

Juno Temple (“Ted Lasso”) scores points as shifty ex-Airborne Steve’s partner in crime.

I don’t know what it is about Charlotte, North Carolina and goofball crime stories — many of them true — that have big screen appeal. Remember Zach Galifiankis and “Masterminds?” Steven Soderbergh’s NASCAR yahoo caper comedy “Logan Lucky?” Something about the city, or maybe it’s haughty self-regard (I used to live there) makes dumb criminal tales from there irresistible.

Cianfrance betters those two earlier efforts by leaning into the “Cool Hand Luke” of the caper, the ways Manchester gets away with this and that, avoiding capture.

“When they stop watching you,” he says of “working” the guards and those he deals with in prison, “you can start watching them.”

That “keep running” and you’ll outdistance any police dragnet theory is dismissed by Manchester, who narrates his story and insists “The trick is to stop — find a place no one will look.”

No wonder the cops refer to this guy as some sort of savant, “maybe a genius,” and kind of “an idiot.”

The narrative drags on a bit as the story makes its turn towards the dark finale. But with its Christmas shopping climax, we may have ourselves the first delight of the holiday cinema season right here in mid-October. And if you miss Tatum and Dunst’s chemistry in cinemas, don’t fret. They’ll be “out” for good behavior and out on video by Veterans’ Day.

Rating: R, some violence, nudity, sex, profanity

Cast: Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Lakeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Melonie Diaz, Uzo Aduba, Ben Mendelsohn, Tony Revolori and Peter Dinklage

Credits: Directed by Derek Cianfrance, scripted by Derek Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn. A Miramax/Paramount release.

Running time: 2:06

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, 2025.

Written and Directed by Mary Bronstein.
Starring Rose Byrne, Delaney Quinn, Mary Bronstein, A$AP Rocky, Ivy Wolk, Mark Stolzenberg, Conan O’Brien, Manu Narayan, Danielle Macdonald, Eva Kornet, Ella Beatty, Helen Hong, Daniel Zolghadri, Josh Pais, Ronald Bronstein, Laurence Blum, Lark White, Amy Judd Lieberman, Char Sidney. Jodi Michelle Pynn, and Christian Slater.

SYNOPSIS:

With her life crashing down around her, Linda attempts to navigate her child’s mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person, and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist.

For Rose Byrne’s high-strung psychotherapist Linda, the sky is falling metaphorically and in a literal sense. She not only has a young daughter with an unspecified eating condition that requires a feeding tube in her stomach, creating a hole, until putting on a little more weight herself through solid foods, in which case the tube would be removed, with the hole instantly closing.  In what is a more jolting jump scare than most modern horror movies offer, her ceiling has also caved in, leaving a gaping hole in her apartment.

And that’s not even the half of Linda’s problems in writer/director Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, where the rotten luck continues over multiple months yet is tightly edited together by Lucian Johnston in such a manner where time feels as if it doesn’t exist, with the concept of life presented as a series of cliff climbs where the only thing that’s there after reaching the top is yet another one to climb.

The closest thing to a free moment for Linda comes early on when she tries to enjoy a slice of cheese off of a massacred pizza (from being dropped on the sidewalk after picking it up, which also gives you another look at how everything that could go wrong is going wrong here), with a close-up of her face mid-chew and tiny pleasure for all of two seconds before her daughter (credited as Child and impressively played by Delayney Quinn) is calling for something from another room.

One other important detail regarding the presentation of Linda’s daughter is that it’s more of a disembodied voice. Yes, there are moments where a limb or article of clothing is caught in the background or in bed as Linda puts her to sleep while also changing the feeding tube liquids, but the idea here seems to be portraying parenting as hearing a voice that never stops, because it’s a job with no breaks. Then there is the creeping thought from Linda that maybe she was never meant to be a mom. It’s also a clever way around depicting a highly ill, if otherwise generally in good spirits, child in an emotionally manipulative gaze. It’s also sticking with Linda’s perspective, not only for the towering Rose Byrne performance, which runs the gamut of facial expressions, but also to maintain the feeling that a crushing weight is on her shoulders as a woman and a mother.

Keep in mind, Linda has to work with the problems of several other patients as a psychotherapist while barely holding it together herself. The film also offers a uniquely nuanced look at therapy, with at least one of Linda’s patients coming across as excitable, seemingly living a good life, yet wasting everyone’s time. Then there is Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), a mother obsessed with protecting her daughter to the point of sheer terror at the thought of leaving her child with a babysitter, having watched far too much true crime and fearing that whoever she leaves her baby with will be a murderer.

Despite Linda trying to work Caroline through some of these exaggerated thoughts into more rational thinking, there is also a fascinating juxtaposition, perhaps even a mirror, in that Linda finds herself looking at the same true crime story later, as worrying over the most unlikely scenarios is also part of being a mother.

With Linda’s demeaning husband away on a work trip (catching sports games while rudely and wrongly accusing her of having a life of rest, listening to “whiny” patients in between caring for their daughter), she and her child are staying at a nearby motel. During these nighttime scenes, it becomes evident that Linda isn’t exactly Mom of the Year, and that’s okay, because the point of this anxiety-ridden movie is the messiness and never-ending stress of parenting itself. Nevertheless, Linda has a bit of a drinking problem, which threatens to spiral into a drug problem as she makes the acquaintance of nearby cashier James (A$AP Rocky), striking a friendship.

Perhaps the real kicker in all of this is that psychoanalyst Linda has her own psychoanalyst in an unnamed coworker played by Conan O’Brien of all people, disappearing into a role that’s primarily stripped of comedy (although it would be fair to ascribe much of what happens here is nervous, nerve-racking comedy that’s not funny because of what’s happening, but more due to the amount of bad luck on display). It’s a dynamic that complicates the already complicated relationship between patients and therapists, further complicating it now with a woman refusing to take the advice she herself gives to most of her patients.

That’s possibly because what If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is getting at is that perhaps therapy isn’t always helpful if one doesn’t want to address what’s wrong with themselves first. Maybe Conan O’Brien’s psychotherapist does have valid answers, but Linda wouldn’t be able to put them to use anyway, since, in her mind, she is already a failure, and everything, including things that are impossible to be her fault, such as her daughter’s illness, is her fault. Having an unsupportive husband lacking empathy doesn’t help matters, either. Maybe most of all, Linda needs to find some way to help herself before she can ever help her daughter. Underneath all the manic energy and stress is a film that, even if every big swing doesn’t work, leaves so much to contemplate and grapple with; it’s like a hole that will never close.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist