For someone who once publicly brushed off “Phantom Thread,” Jennifer Lawrence now sounds downright ecstatic about “One Battle After Another.”
Back in 2018, Lawrence told Marc Maron on his “WTF” podcast that she shut off Paul Thomas Anderson’s film after only a few minutes, recalling the moment with her signature bluntness:
I got through about three minutes of it. I put in a good, solid three. Oh my god, I couldn’t. I’m sorry to anybody who loved that movie. I couldn’t give that kind of time.
Truth be told, Lawrence hinted that the film was too hard to watch because she had just come off dating her own “narcissist” at the time, one Darren Aronofsky, whom she met while filming “mother!” in 2017.
Regardless, times have certainly changed. PTA has gone semi-mainstream, and “One Battle After Another” has completely won Lawrence over — so much so that she now calls it one of the greatest films she’s ever seen (via The New York Times).
Oh, my god. I saw it last night in 70mm IMAX as God intended. It’s the most incredible movie I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
It should also be noted that Lawrence will next star alongside ‘One Battle’ lead Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s “What Happens at Night,” which is expected to shoot early next year.
Interestingly, in that same interview, when asked directly about Donald Trump, Lawrence declined to comment. She explained that the country is already so divided and that, given his 2024 election win, she believes celebrities weighing in on politics has lost any meaningful impact.
As we’ve learned, election after election, celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for. So then what am I doing? So then what am I doing? I’m just sharing my opinion on something that’s going to add fuel to a fire that’s ripping the country apart.
I think I’m in a complicated recalibration because I’m also an artist. With this temperature and the way things can turn out, I don’t want to start turning people off to films and to art that could change consciousness or change the world because they don’t like my political opinions. I want to protect my craft so that you can still get lost in what I’m doing.
In other words, Lawrence seems to be in her zen era — out of the political trenches, far past the Aronofsky days, now a mother of two, and newly obsessed with 70mm PTA. A far cry from turning off “Phantom Thread” three minutes in.
Criterion's December lineup has some great additions to the library, but the title that jumped out at me is Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man," which officially joins the Collection on December 8.