One Battle After Another S4E1 Movie Review

<p>Season four kicks off with Cade and Kit officially shifting into their “Best of 2025” format: five categories, ranked by box office, Rotten Tomatoes, and audience scores, now using the five-star scale to see where their taste lands against the wider review world. They open with a “let’s start strong” pick — <em>One Battle After Another</em> — partly because it’s already getting major awards attention, but they’re immediately skeptical of the critic/audience split and the type of criticism that focuses on craft references over whether a movie actually works.</p><p><br></p><p>They summarize the film as a long, messy chain of events: an anti-resistance/elite-club conspiracy setup, a missing mom, a burned-out dad hiding out, and a 16-year-old daughter who eventually gets pulled into the endgame. They clock a few bright spots — a couple clever visual jokes (the “taco” shirt), Del Toro’s sensei character feeling grounded, and DiCaprio convincingly playing “sloppy disaster” — but most of their reaction is frustration: the tone is confused, the stakes don’t build, the movie drags (2h 41m), and they keep noticing how often they’re <em>feeling</em> the runtime.</p><p><br></p><p>Their biggest complaints are that it doesn’t satisfy any audience lane: not enough action for action viewers, not layered enough for arthouse/story people, not funny enough for comedy lovers, and even as critics they feel it’s “pretty but empty.” They call out a repetitive single-note piano cue that becomes distracting, the script feeling trope-stacked, and a finale that wraps with a cliché “letter” setup that feels like it’s begging for a sequel rather than earning an ending. By the end, they land on the simplest verdict possible: <strong>one star</strong> — not because it has zero craft, but because they wouldn’t recommend it to anyone and they can’t figure out who the movie is actually for.</p><p><br></p><p>🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kaH2BpUcEouX5LWCUQ7ed?si=ff1e2b355c5944e1</p><p><br></p><p>🍏 Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cade-and-kit/id1771553610</p><p><br></p><p>📸 Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://instagram.com/cadeandkit</p><p><br></p><p>info@CadeandKit.com</p>