Leonardo DiCaprio

Worst Best Picture: Is One Battle After Another Better or Worse Than Crash?

In “Worst Best Picture” we search every single Best Picture Oscar winner of all time from 1927 to present to uncover the worst of them all. Conventional wisdom says that 2005’s winner Crash is the worst winner in history. We won’t stop until we’ve tested every last one. Read the the first, our review of Crash, here. Posts will be relatively spoiler free, but there may be some details revealed. Today’s installment is the 2026 winner One Battle After Another. Is it better than Crash?

This series has become a review of the Oscars as much as it is a discussion of the Oscar-winning film of the year. One Battle After Another, the heavy favorite, won this year, and really the only drama to that is that people also really liked Sinners. Last year’s winner was a big shock (at least to me, even though I liked Anora) and this year’s was not. At first blush, there’s not much to say about it. Paul Thomas Anderson finally got his Oscars, even if most people probably think he should have won them for something else. It’s a The Departed situation. 2026 will be remembered for the two big films at the top and most people, seemingly, think the right one won.

This is the first year I watched all 50 films nominated: 15 short films, 5 documentaries, and 30 features. Almost everything nominated this year was at least worth watching, with exceptions of the latest Jurassic World/Earth/Place which is boring, the third Avatar which is just more Avatar, Elio which is fine enough but feels neutered from what it could have been, and The Lost Bus which is a mess of an attempt to dramatize a real event that would have been more interesting without all the added fictional drama.

Compared to most years, this is a surprising accomplishment. We aren’t too far removed from Blonde and Hillbilly Elegy, two of the worst big-release films of the decade, being nominated for big awards. The worst serious contender this year is Apple’s obvious attempt to buy some Oscars with F1, which is a shallow, overlong sports cliche film with really depressingly underwritten female roles and just about nothing new to say. But as middling as F1 is, it does what it aims to do and it isn’t a disaster. That’s not always a given for the Oscars, and the worst you can really say about it is what Conan O’Brien said during the broadcast when he called it, offhandedly, “a popcorn movie.”

A core question I have been trying to get at in this series is: What are the Oscars supposed to be? Everyone probably agrees, broadly, that F1 is not “an Oscar movie.” But is that because it’s kind of dumb and an obvious attempt to cash in on a trend? Or is it because people went and saw it in the theaters and it made money? What is it specifically that makes Train Dreams an Oscar movie but makes you scratch your head at Frankenstein?

The Academy seems to have fully killed their very bad idea of a category for “Box Office Achievement” or whatever that was going to be, but now we seem to be at a half measure. A Lord of the Rings movie might win the top prize or it might be a movie about imagining yourself as a superhero or sleeping with a fish man. For as concrete as we imagine the idea of “an Oscar movie” to be, it doesn’t actually end up that way all the time. That’s why I find it so interesting that this year’s top films aren’t the contemplative look at a quiet life in the woods or the retelling of a classic story of loss or the slightly fictionalized sad tale of a musical lyricist. All of those were nominated and some of them won other awards, but the two big ones were essentially action movies, albeit ones by directors with some serious chops and reputations.

I liked Sinners and I loved One Battle After Another, but as with most years, even though I love the winner I wouldn’t have picked it. My two favorite films of the year were The Secret Agent and Sentimental Value. There was a surprising amount of buzz around The Secret Agent given it’s a relatively quiet, strange film about a man’s search for the truth in a corrupt world, but I think it helps that Wagner Moura is extremely handsome and charming. There was less buzz around Sentimental Value which obviously never stood a chance but did have four nominations across the acting awards and is, for my money, the best film of the year. It joins the director’s other recent film, The Worst Person in the World on that list. Both films are modern masterpieces and I cannot recommend them enough.

But to the point, One Battle After Another rules. It rules that a movie that’s this funny and this relevant has near-universal acclaim and won an Oscar over another monumentally successful and beloved film and created very little controversy in doing so. We follow Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob after the fictional (but realistic) terrorist group the French 75 implodes following a heist gone wrong. He has a teenage daughter by way of another member of the group who disappeared into witness protection (and then Mexico), played excellently by Teyana Taylor. In the present, the surviving members of the group have to avoid the Oscar-awarded Sean Penn’s evil Colonel Lockjaw as he hunts down who he wasn’t able to kill with the information from informant and “rat” Perfidia, Taylor’s character.

There’s more to it than that, but it is a story of revolution and resistance that requires you to think one level deeper. I am genuinely surprised there hasn’t been more capital-D Discourse from people insistently misunderstanding the message, but maybe that’s me assuming the worst of folks. Perfidia believes herself to be the only true revolutionary, especially as Bob (not his real name, but let’s try to be consistent) pulls back once they have a child together. Perfidia represents so many elements of resistance, not just as a form of villain in the film, but as someone who can’t see herself as multiple things. She is a mother, yes, but her need to form the world into a better place through violence feels, to her, like the best thing she can do for her daughter. We see otherwise and we see where she’s making the wrong choices, but we can see how she came to the place she came to given what she’s up against.

As a viewer, it’s easy to be disgusted by her choice to inform on the group and get actual revolutionaries killed. Is this solely a selfish act that endangers even her own child to save herself? Sure, and it’s easy to see that as villainous. But it’s also what she feels like is the only option available to her and it’s what allows her to ultimately escape. If she thinks her own actions are the only true revolutionary ones, she’s staying true to her own twisted code. It’s the wrong choice, but it’s an explainable one, through that specific lens.

It’s not a huge spoiler to say that we see a few actual, real-deal revolutionaries in this movie who are much more interested in getting things done than telling everyone around them how much more revolutionary they are than everyone else. That is the message: The work is more important than the credit. That’s something that resounds way beyond the specific lives of Bob and Perfidia and their struggles with Lockjaw. It’s a really fascinating undercurrent to the movie that still sticks with me now.

Everything else here is hilarious, from the fictional (but, again, realistic) secret society of power brokers who seemingly worship Christmas and Santa Claus to the straight-out-of-Lebowski version of Bob that Leo is playing as he bumbles through a world where people revere who he was in the movement even as he obviously is something much less useful today. The performances are incredible, down to the supporting cast like a military interrogator who noticeably has no patches or identification on his uniform (which carries an extremely sinister suggestion) who is played by an actual interrogator. “Oh, no jokes now?” he says, after threatening someone in a locked room, coolly and confidently, in a way that we all know happens every day and choose not to think about.

For my money, that’s why One Battle deserved to win this year even if I think a few movies were better. There is absolutely no more appropriate movie for “the moment” than a movie about a world we all would rather not consider but are being forced, perhaps thankfully, on a long enough timeline, to contend with on the news every single day. PTA said at the Oscars that this movie is about a world that his generation has made worse and has handed to a younger generation that has to deal with it. We see that in One Battle, as almost all of the young characters live in a world they feel no control over and no safety in. Not everyone will be hunted by a sinister military killer with an axe to grind, but everyone will be impacted by a world that rewards his behavior and punishes people who resist it. If you consider how you can push back on that idea, even if you might not necessarily get credit for it, then maybe the Oscars do mean something this year.

The Best Part: Sean Penn, who I do not like, is unforgettable as Lockjaw. His delivery, his mannerisms, his rage that you feel in every small decision, it’s just an all-time role.

The Worst Part: It’s an effective piece of the film, but the opening exchange between Perfidia and Lockjaw with a very obvious, very memorable joke moment, feels almost too wacky to be part of this. I said something similar about Everything Everywhere All at Once, and I think it’s a me problem that I’m overly sensitive to wacky sex jokes. The Christmas Adventurer stuff is all played so straight that it works better for me even when it is super wacky.

Is It Better or Worse than Crash? Once again, we clear this bar easily. I think there’s a legitimate case that The Lost Bus is a worse movie, though that would be something I’d have to think about. It’s certainly lazier, at least. I don’t think anything else this year would really be in the running. The worst thing I saw all year, and maybe the worst movie ever made, was the pandemic-driven War of the Worlds remake that featured a Staples “easy button” and so much product placement for big tech companies that it is a genuinely evil film more than it is a bad one. It is absolutely worse than Crash, but it almost feels like it was made as rage bait more than anything else. I’ll be sad if the Oscars doesn’t nominate any bloviating stupid bullshit next year. Stuff like Maestro and Blonde is the closest we get to dethroning the king.

Alex Russell lives in Chicago and is set in his ways. Disagree with him about anything at readingatrecess@gmail.com or leave a comment on this page.

Worst Best Picture: Is Titanic Better or Worse Than Crash?

Alex Russell

In “Worst Best Picture” we search every single Best Picture Oscar winner of all time from 1927 to present to uncover the worst of them all. Conventional wisdom says that 2005’s winner Crash is the worst winner in history. We won’t stop until we’ve tested every last one. Read the the first, our review of Crash, here. Posts will be relatively spoiler free, but there may be some details revealed. Today’s installment is the 1997 winner Titanic. Is it better than Crash?

I don’t think enough time has passed yet for us to really know how to talk about Titanic yet, but at the same time, can you believe it was 17 years ago?

Titanic might be the most polarizing movie on the list. People who liked it saw it multiple times in the theater and people who didn’t like it hated it. I expected this to be a difficult trip to sea, but honestly, it’s somewhere in between those extremes. It’s sappy and silly, but it’s also got genuine moments. I suppose you can say that about most love stories, but I was most interested in attempting to judge Titanic without what I already knew about it.

I was a young teenager when Titanic came out, and the young teenager response was mostly poorly defined snark. You just had to remind whatever much-nicer-than-you person you were berating that it was a movie about a boat sinking. After three hours and a lot of Leo, I can confirm, the boat does sink, but there’s more to talk about. There’s just not… a lot more to talk about.

It’s pretty thin. Leo DiCaprio plays Jack Dawson, a plucky street urchin who just wants to find his fortune on the high seas! Kate Winslet plays Rose, who loves him because her monstrous husband-to-be (played by Billy Zane) is cartoonishly evil. There’s a bunch of other people, but calling them “characters” might be a stretch. Rose and Jack fall in love and Billy Zane tries to stop them/rob them/arrest them/kill them/etc. By the end it’s high comedy, and it really feels like James Cameron was worried that we wouldn’t understand who the bad guy was. The line between good and bad isn’t as obvious as it is in Avatar, but it’s just as likely to induce eye-rolling.

While this love triangle plays out, Rose has to show Jack she knows how to drink and dance and whatever and Jack has to yuk his way through a high-class dinner with her friends and family. Your patience for Titanic will depend on how much you like this kind of thing. If the “rich girl just wants to fall in love with someone outside her station” story is your deal, then you’re in luck. That’s 100% of what this is, right down to the famous nude scene. I like a good love story, and I can’t say I hate this one, but it’s certainly a bit much at times.

As for the whole ship sinking part, it still looks pretty spectacular now. A lot of the effects for a movie like this will date themselves quickly, but Titanic still looks solid. That’s a good thing, too, because the characters don’t have enough in them to prop this all up. Hopefully you’ll like the love story and be wowed by the boat sinking, because the connective tissue of Titanic is pretty bad.

The Best Part: The climactic sinking scenes are still worth watching. Even though Titanic is a love story before it’s a disaster movie, there’s genuine excitement and sadness built into the sinking, which is difficult to do considering none of the characters are interesting at all. It’s still visually compelling, which ain’t nothing.

The Worst Part: The dialogue in Titanic is awful. At one point Billy Zane’s character is asked about Picasso and he says “He’ll never amount to a thing, trust me.” Little garbage jokes like that are scattered through this thing, and I just can’t stand them. Add on what passes for “foreshadowing” being people constantly asking about lifeboats and it’s hard to ignore how dumb the dumb parts of this movie are.

Is It Better or Worse than Crash? Rethinking is rampant among a lot of these movies. People just don’t love Forrest Gump or Titanic like they used to. Some of that is inevitable, because anything everyone loves has to develop a backlash. But some of it, well, some of it is because people take the time to look closer. I didn’t hate Titanic or the hype around it in 1997, but I didn’t have any interest in it. I saw the parts everyone talked about when it came on cable. I figured that Titanic was probably a little exciting and a little boring and that I wasn’t missing anything by not seeing it. The reality is that it has massive problems with pacing and length and that song got played so much that I think it’s a part of my nervous system, now. Titanic isn’t bad, but it’s certainly middle-of-the-road compared to a lot of this list, and while that means it’s certainly better than Crash, it’s a weird piece of movie history that got far more praise than it deserved. It’s also waaaaay better than Avatar, and that comparison probably helps with the rethinking.

Alex Russell lives in Chicago and is set in his ways. Disagree with him about anything at readingatrecess@gmail.com or on Twitter at @alexbad.

Worst Best Picture: Is The Departed Better or Worse Than Crash?

Alex Russell

In “Worst Best Picture” we search every single Best Picture Oscar winner of all time from 1927 to present to uncover the worst of them all. Conventional wisdom says that 2005’s winner Crash is the worst winner in history. We won’t stop until we’ve tested every last one. Read the the first, our review of Crash, here. All posts should be considered to have a blanket “spoiler alert” on them. Today’s installment is the 2006 winner The Departed. Is it better than Crash?

What is there to say about Martin Scorsese that hasn’t already been said?

He’s arguably the most-acclaimed living director in America. He made Taxi Driver. His reputation speaks for itself, so it’s surprising that The Departed was his first Best Picture Oscar win.

The Departed is the story of two moles: One is a real cop embedded into a fake life of crime and the other is a fake cop raised to infiltrate the police to protect organized crime. It provides the necessary interesting twists and it plays with the idea of loyalty and reality. Even though we know Matt Damon is the fake cop and Leonardo DiCaprio is the fake mobster, it’s repeatedly tough to tell who is in too deep. Kurt Vonnegut said it best: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

There’s also Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, and Mark Wahlberg as real cops and a series of standard “tough guys” as Jack Nicholson’s crew of bad dudes from Boston. It’s well-acted and immersive, which is tough to do for a movie about mobsters from Boston. It’s a great movie for a reason, but beyond a different take on personal identity and loyalty, there’s not really a whole lot of message.

The Best Part: There are lots and lots of movies like this. The director of Goodfellas and Taxi Driver should be expected to make a sound mob movie in Boston, but it’s still amazing that a good one came out of the late 2000s. It’s only been a few years, but it already seems like 20 versions of this movie came out in about 10 years. Much like how every TV show about a dark hero is going to have a tough time establishing itself as original for awhile, the mob genre is done for a few decades now.

The Worst Part: It feels a little silly to fill this section in on some movies. The Departed isn’t one of my favorite movies, but it’s an outstanding cinematic achievement. It feels slight to even say this, but it’s the last shot of the entire movie. It doesn’t give anything away to say this: Do you really need to have a literal rat scurry across the screen in a movie about two competing informants? The entire plot of the movie is about mixed identity and the duality of “rats.” We get it. After nearly three hours, we get it.

Is It Better or Worse than Crash? Like Crash, The Departed has an ensemble cast. There’s a million people in both movies — well, a million men. Crash paints women as evil and petty while The Departed prefers them to be absent. Only two women in The Departed have more than two minutes of screen time, and only one of them does anything more than have sex with Jack Nicholson. Neither movie is a strong contender to pass the Bechdel test. Is absent better than terrible? I guess so. The Departed makes lots of strange choices. Characters turn on and off racism and homophobia to paint the “authenticity” of Boston, but it’s never consistent or dealt with completely. The movie is mostly lots of bar fights and yelling, but it still comes off less cynical than Crash. Even if you leave out all the good parts and take The Departed as just a mean-spirited view of Boston, it’s better.

Alex Russell lives in Chicago and is set in his ways. Disagree with him about anything at readingatrecess@gmail.com or on Twitter at @alexbad.

Image source: Oscars.org

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Leonardo DiCaprio

Worst Best Picture: Is One Battle After Another Better or Worse Than Crash?

Worst Best Picture: Is Titanic Better or Worse Than Crash?

Worst Best Picture: Is The Departed Better or Worse Than Crash?