REVIEWS. Three 2025 movies currently streaming that are worth a look: BALLAD OF A SMALL PLAYER, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER and NOUVELLE VAGUE.
- MaryAnn Janosik
- Nov 16
- 10 min read
Not all movies are created equal, and not all streaming options provide the best movie experience. By now, most of you who read this blog know that I'm a purist about going to a theater to see a movie: the way they were made - and intended - to be seen. Of course, certain films, notably those that are smaller and more intimate in terms of conversations between characters, set design, location, and scope of story, can play reasonably well on TV with less visual diminishment than say, Sinners, Frankenstein or Superman.
The three movies reviewed here have varying degrees of success moving to a streaming platform, with Ballad of a Small Player and One Battle After Another more reliant on big cinematic visuals than Nouvelle Vague. They also vary widely in terms of genre, style, scope and, to some extent, critical response. Of the three, One Battle After Another has received the strongest box office and critical support. It's been in theaters since late September and only recently showed up on Apple TV+, Prime Video, You Tube, and others. Nouvelle Vague and Ballad of a Small Player had very limited (re: two weeks or less) runs in theaters and are smaller in scope and story, though each one, depending on your movie taste and personal interest, merit a look.
Ballad of a Small Player
Director: Edward Berger
Starring Colin Farrell, Fala Chen, Tilda Swinton
Edward Berger is a brilliant visual director, framing every scene with meticulous detail, making the camera a character as important as any actor on set. In 2022's All Quiet on the Western Front, the viewer starts as a detached observer to the war. The expansive landscape overwhelms the soldiers who inhabit it. Then the interpersonal connections among soldiers emerges so that, by movie's end, you are a witness to the devastation of war in more intimate, personal ways.
In last year's Conclave, Berger again used the camera effectively as another character, this time playing with light and dark, close-ups and longshots, to create suspense, a feeling of urgency and even danger, as the Conclave of Cardinals gather to elect a new pope. He turned the tediousness of procedure into something else: a noirish glimpse into the politics of the Vatican, examining how the human interactions among the clergy impact the spiritual identity of the Church.
In Ballad of a Small Player, Berger's landscape is smaller, his story much more singular, yet his affection for the expansiveness of film (in this case, its physical and pscyhological location) remains and, in some ways, detracts from the movie's story. Brendon Reilly (Colin Farrell), a disgraced Irish financier and inveterate gambler, has fled to Macau in order to escape gambling debts in the United Kingdom. Passing himself off as "Lord Doyle," he lives off the generosity of weathy casino regulars and floats from one expensive hotel to another, trying to outwit his creditors and find that one final pay-off.
But Reilly/Doyle's luck is running out, and plagued by unpaid debts and increasing alcoholism, he finds himself in a bit of a bind. Needless to say, things go from bad to worse until Doyle is befriended by an enigmatic creditor named Dao (Fala Chen) who seems to offer help, then disappears. Then an investigator named Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton) shows up demanding he repay his debts from the UK.
What follows is a phatasmagoria of events and images, which don't always make sense - and probably, aren't supposed to - until the end of the movie, and even then, a lot is left to the imagination. I won't give more away here, but it seems that Berger was more enamoured with showing stunning visuals of Macau and provocative images within Doyle's head that he was in creating a coherent narrative.
Even with superb performances from Farrell, Chen and Swinton, the movie lacks the emotional punch it needs to complete the story of a man fallen from grace, driven by his own demons, who must come to terms with the havoc he has wrought on those around him and on himself. The tale as old as time - sinner (re: gambler) finds redemption - is not easily won, and Berger might have been wise to foster more internal optics than cinematic ones.
Overall, I'd watch Ballad of a Small Player again just to retrace some of the plot points that seemed missing on first view. It's not a bad film, just one that didn't fully realize its story or the emotional depth of its characters.
*******
Ballad of a Small Player is currently streaming on Netflix. It is rated "R" for language, mature themes and scenes of intense, hallucinatory violence.
One Battle After Another
Writer/Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall
The synopsis for One Battle After Another reads, "Washed up revolutionary Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) exists in a state of stoned paranoia, surviving off-grid with his spirited self-reliant daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti). When his evil nemisis Col. Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn) resurfaces after 16 years and she goes missing, the former radical scrambles to find her [as] father and daughter both battle the consequences of his past."
The trailer is fast-paced and funny, with quick cuts of car chases, clandestine encounters and a very pregnant women casually firing off an AR-15, interspersed with Bob's inability to reconnect with his resistence network contact because he can't remember the password sequence. Action. Comedy. Political Themes. Sounds like a must-see movie, doesn't it. Well, maybe. Sometimes the trailer is better than the movie.
I've had almost two months to get to a theater to see Paul Thomas Anderson's latest opus magnum. So what made me wait for it to stream? Well, I've seen all of Anderson's movies - from Boogie Nights to Licorce Pizza, and I must admit that sometimes Anderson tries my patience. Not that his movies are bad: there's really not a dud among the scant eleven feature films he's made in the past almost thirty years. It's just that most of them - except for Hard Eight (Anderson's first feature) and Punch Drunk Love (the movie that confirmed Adam Sandler can act) - run well over two hours, a few bordering on three. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but there are movies where the time flies and others where you feel every minute. For me, Anderson's movies often fall into the latter category, so I figured if I waited for it to stream, I could pause, fast forward, or just skip the parts that drive me crazy, like the the apocalyptic shower of frogs that culminates Magnolia. Unfortunately, the current cost to rent One Battle is more than it wouldn't have cost to see it in the theater. Sometimes I just can't get a break.
Anderson is the same director that both elevated Daniel Day-Lewis's career (winning a second Best Actor Oscar for 2007's There Will Be Blood) and then pushed him into early retirement a decade later. Day-Lewis has revealed that the experience making 2017's The Phantom Thread was so "awful" that it left him "hollowed out" and that he had nothing left to give. He's only recently re-emerged as an actor in this year's Anemone, admittedly to help his son Ronan Day-Lewis, who directed. Like French director Jean-Luc Godard (see next review), Anderson is more auteur than moviemaker, a label that sometimes brings out both the best and worst in the creative process.
In the case of One Battle, there's more good than bad, although the movie still dragged a bit and seemed to have an uneven pace. There's a lot of time (unnecessarily?) spent on the set-up, and too many twists and turns leading to the climax. By the time we get to the anticipated conclusion, I was weary of Bob's panic-stricken dopehead and kind of bored with Lockjaw's one-dimensional soldier. Granted, these two characters are "types," and DiCaprio and Penn give exaggerated, over-the-top comedic performances, but haven't we seen this before? Does Dr. Strangelove ring a bell?
Critical reviews have been mixed, with Manohla Dargis of the New York Times calling it "a carnivalesque epic about good and evil," while William Bibbiani of The Wire concluded it is "scattershot, overly long and unfocused." It is, for sure, an action saga / maybe love story that tackles everything from the counterculture to the counter-revolution, from fascism to racism, and father-daughter relationships. I can't fault Anderson for his ambition, but I'm not sure, except for a break-out performance by Chase Infiniti as Bob's budding second-generation revolutionary daughter, there's much here beyond very glib surface action that serves as a heavy-handed metaphor for our current political environment.
With generally favorable reviews, a healthy box office return, and awards season about to begin, One Battle After Another seems poised to receive numerous nominations. DiCaprio, Penn and Infiniti are favorites to be on the short list for lead and supporting actors, as well as Anderson for directing and writing. The movie is also expected to be among the final Best Picture nominees for the 2026 Oscars. It is, at times, amusing and frenetic, but a whole lot more.
I dunno. Any movie that has a revolutionary group called "French 75" is either drunk on its own brilliance or seriously in need of a rewrite. I'll vote for the latter.
*******
One Battle After Another is currently streaming on Apple TV+, Prime Video, You Tube and other platforms, and is still playing in some theaters. It is rated "R" for language, drug use, mature themes and gun violence.
Nouvelle Vague
Director: Richard Linklater
Starring Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, Aubry Dullin
This movie is for serious cinephiles (is there any other kind?) and dedicated followers of film.
Richard Linklater's ode to French auteur Jean-Luc Goddard (Guillaume Marbeck) is the second movie he's released this year, along with Blue Moon (with Ethan Hawke as lyricist Lorenz Hart), that explores the challenges facing an iconoclastic genius. The title is a reference to a group of French filmmakers who, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, challenged established standards of French cinema and began to make more stylistically innovative movies.
In addition to Godard, champions of this movement included François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, and Alain Resnais. They are all depicted here, along with the actors Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch) and soon-to-be heartthrob Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin), in glorious conversation about all things related to movie-making, and with all their idiosyncratic notions about the process. Everything from funding to camera angles is examined with the kind of fastidiousness needed to deconstruct an idea and then rebuild it as something coherent and maybe even artistic.
So jam-packed is this movie with names and faces likely unrecognizable or unknown to American audiences, that Linklater superimposes their real names the first time an actor appears on screen. If that isn't enough, the NYTimes published an explanation to all the references in the film for those who may still need some assistance. Reminds me of the time I gave my film class with a glossary of terms (from films to Freud and more) before they watched Woody Allen's Manhattan. Sometimes it's a good idea to provide some background to a film so that viewers will have a better appreciation for what they are watching. Does this mean I'd recommend reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein before watching Guillermo del Toro's latest iteration of her novel? Maybe, but that's probably a lot to ask of the average moviegoer.
Anyway, for those interested, I've included the link to the NYTimes article here:
Overall, Linklater's movie is a delicious feast for the eyes, ears and soul: it's shot in evocative black and white, depicting a place and time now part of late 20th century lore: that period when rock and roll was in its infancy and Vietnam was yet a heartbeat away from the counterculture's explosion, a time right before color TV arrived, but the Cold War's potential devastation hung like a shadow over the globe.
And here we are in France, filled with American ex-pat's and jazz, living for the moment in a world Godard is determined to capture on film. Working with American actress Seberg, whose blonde neurotic sex appeal felt completely in sync with Bemondo's cooly French sophistication, Godard created Breathless, a film that, over fifty years later, is still considered "a daring work of art," and is regularly listed among the greatest movies ever made.
Linklater's focus on the making of this paradigm-shifting film, arguably the zenith of the French New Wave movement in cinema, allows a kind of fly-on-the-wall voyeurism to emerge. As we watch the off-hand conversastions, furtive glances, and seemingly random series of events that produced Breathless, we get a behind-the-scenes look at how movies are made, a process that both serves as a metaphor for both the movie's narrative and, perhaps, for Linklater's own experience when first he attempted to make the feature that would become his film, 1990's Slacker.
Though you do need a good deal of knowledge about New Wave cinema to appreciate fully what Linklater is attempting here, it's worth the time investment to check out (or rewatch) Breathless, 400 Blows and maybe even Citizen Kane before taking on Nouvelle Vague. The NYTimes's reference guide is helpful, but you really need to experience what was happening in European film in the years after World War II to value the environment that Linklater has re-imagined with words, music and atmosphere. I felt transported back to a time as dangerous politically as the world is now, but one where the idea of changing and revolutionizing culture seemed sexy and exciting, not threatening and fearful.
In terms of mood and ambience, Nouvelle Vague reminded me of Cold War, the 2018 film from Poland that won the Oscar for Best International Feature. It also brought back memories of Diva (1981), another ground-breaking French film that combined fast-paced cinematography with a pop-inspired love of opera. Stylish, intelligent, and visually stunning, Diva remains one of the most significant films of the 1980s.
I wish I had seen Nouvelle Vague in a theater because it would have swept me away as only the big screen can. It would have left me, how do you say? Qui a de la peine à respirer (breathless).
*******
Nouvelle Vague is currently streaming on Netflix. It is in French with English subtitles, and rated "R" for language and mature themes.
Final Thoughts
While these three films are very different in terms of subjects, style, and substance, it struck me that all of them focused in some way on outsiders: gamblers, revolutionaries, artists, those who navigate on the periphery of conventional societal norms and behavior, who often make their own rules and carve out their own path. The approaches by each director - from expansive and epic to small and intimate, suggest that those who exist on the margins often have stories and lessons for all of us.
Whether those lessons involve redemption, political awareness or artistic change may not always be clear or important, but the fact that movies without attachments to franchises (hello, Marvel Comics) are still being made should be encouraging to those of us who continue to look to cinema for personal, intellectually transformative experiences. Every movie can't do that, but at least there are directors using diverse characters, genres, and techniques to bring these stories to the big screen. With "big" being the operative word.
Streaming has made movies more accessible to more people, so that, in itself is a good thing. I just wish movies would run longer in theaters because that's where the real power of the movie experience lives. Netflix is convenient, but it will never completely replace that beautiful, refurbished Art Deco theater that's right down the street. So, in the words of the late film critics, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, whose original show, Opening Soon at a Theater Near You, premiered fifty years ago this week on Chicago's WTTW, "Save me the aisle seat," and "See you at the movies."
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