American Psycho Author Bret Easton Ellis Skewers One Battle After Another Politics, Says the Film Falls Flat
American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis just torched Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, branding the critics’ darling a misfire and igniting the film’s first big backlash.
Paul Thomas Anderson drops a new movie and, like clockwork, the discourse machine fires up. This time it’s novelist Bret Easton Ellis grabbing the mic to say the quiet part loud about Anderson’s latest, One Battle After Another. He’s not buying the hype.
"It’s not a very good movie."
The movie everyone’s arguing about
Critics are already calling One Battle After Another a masterpiece, and it’s very much in the early Oscar-conversation pile. If you haven’t kept up, here’s the quick snapshot:
- Title: One Battle After Another
- Genre: Crime, action, dark comedy
- Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
- Cast highlights: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, Benicio del Toro, Chase Infiniti
- Rotten Tomatoes: 95% critics, 85% audience
- Status: Now in theaters (USA)
Ellis’s take: it’s the politics, not the movie
Ellis, the author behind American Psycho and Less Than Zero, laid out his case on the latest episode of The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast. He isn’t saying Anderson made an incompetent film. He’s saying the wave of praise has less to do with what’s on screen and more to do with what the movie signals. In his words, critics are responding to its left-leaning sensibility more than its craft. He frames the acclaim as driven by political ideology, not artistry.
The time-stamp argument
Ellis also thinks the movie won’t age well. His prediction: when the cultural winds shift, One Battle After Another will feel like a period piece of 2024’s discourse rather than a lasting work. He even tags it as "a musty relic of the post-Kamala Harris era," which is… pointed, to say the least.
What he actually liked
It’s not a total scorched-earth review. Ellis says he enjoyed stretches of the film, especially Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Bob, fumbling his way back toward an old revolutionary crew. He also tips his hat to the cinematography.
Is he right?
Short answer: kind of and kind of not. He’s not wrong that certain movies get a tailwind from the current political climate. That happens. But calling this one "not a very good movie" feels like a broad swing when Anderson’s filmmaking craft is the real conversation here. Also, the film’s politics aren’t as rah-rah as the backlash suggests; it’s pretty clear-eyed about extremes on both sides and more interested in how power and activism twist each other than in delivering a partisan victory lap.
Anyway, that’s where Ellis landed. Where are you landing? One Battle After Another is out now in the US if you want to judge for yourself.